Incumbent Thinking

"Circular reasoning is bad mostly because it’s not very good."

http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/begging-the-question

Here a whole large cc-licensed poster by @jesserichardson and @somethingfornow.


While on the topic of logical fallacies, here are their mental bedfellows, cognitive biases. You can download a PDF of the groupings of biases that occur most frequently in business. Courtesy of McKinsey & Co. https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/files/article/PDF/BiasSpread.pdf

Tue, Sep 4, 2012  Permanent link
Categories: collective intelligence, science, learning, collective logic

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If we are only teaching what we know...
Project: Polytopia, The Total Library

... our children can only do as bad as we are doing, and this is the challenge we are facing - we have to go beyond it. — Gunter Pauli

Click image for video

Quoting more for context

Forget about the fact that while we were doing in the past the right way is going to bring us to the future.
It is not
and this is one of the biggest lessons we have
as parents, we want our kids to be better
and here is a picture of my little baby
and my two sons
we always want it to be better but that means that we have to create the space of our children
can invent, develop new pathways to the future
Because if we are only teaching what we know
our children can only do as bad as we are doing
and this is the challenge we are facing
we have to go beyond it.

...

My quest today is to see how can we design a new competitive model
a business model based on sustainability whereby we define sustainability
as the capacity to respond to the needs of all with what we have
and that's the way natural systems do it all the time
the past twenty years we've been doing things…
that we thought were the normal way to do it
but it was an economy that was based on what we did not have
and so what do we have?
well, first of all we have a lot of needs
and since there are so many unmet needs for water, for food, for healthcare, for housing
there is a growing demand, even at a time of a recession
and we have the science to develop it
so much of the science is available
and we don't use it, it gets buried
so how do we achieve a sustainable society?
we achieve a sustainable society when first of all, we think positive
that's what this conference is all about
think positive
second, learn creatively
and third, if any one of you thinks this meeting is a success
it is because when you go out of this meeting you do something
too many meetings are talk shops
too much talking, no action
dream it, don't do it
that's unfortunately what we hear too often
so my work today, is very much focusing on doing all of this at once

...

More from Gunter Pauli's TEDxTokyo talk, with full transcript on http://dotsub.com

Sun, Jan 1, 2012  Permanent link
Categories: introduction, science, thrivability, future Polytopia, visionary, learning, education, sustainability
Sent to project: Polytopia, The Total Library

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Sensemaking Systems
Project: Polytopia

Jeff Jonas wrote in General Purpose Sensemaking Systems and Information Colocation

... With information trapped in the tailored database schemas of systems of record, operational data stores, data warehouses and data marts, it is no wonder organizations continue to struggle to make sense of it all – despite decades of effort and innovation.

Performing some kind of federated search over all these disparate data sets just has not ever delivered. In fact, federated search bites when it comes to sensemaking because the diverse data structures are incapable of supporting a sensemaking function.

If you want to be smart, you will want to jam the available, diverse, observational space into the same data structure and in as close to the same physical space as possible.

Data is data.

When reference data, transactional data, and even user queries are colocated in the same data structures and is the same indexes as the extracted features from text, video, biometrics, and so on … something very exciting happens: data naturally finds data and context can accumulate.

...

Long story short, when this general sensemaking system came on-line it started finding marketing hosts comping their roommates and lots of other unanticipated novel discovery. So much novel discovery, it earned the name Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness or NORA, we got two rounds of funding, IBM bought my company to get its hands on the technology, and the rest is history.

Simply said, you have to have a brain (multi-purpose, general structure) to think (sense make). Then with a brain, the smartest you are going to be is a function of what observations you have properly contextualized into that meat space between your ears.

Wed, Dec 28, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: collective intelligence, science, Systems Science, bizarre problems, learning, thrivability, analysis, Polytopia, artificial intuition
Sent to project: Polytopia

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No Straight Lines
Project: Polytopia

Why No Straight Lines

By Alan Moore

We are now living in what many people now call the Networked Society, where we are creating, collaborating, in ways that defy the logic of our industrial era.

Video 2:33

Tue, May 31, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: Future, collective intelligence, polytopia, science, inspired, visionary
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Emergent on a roll
Project: Polytopia

Kevin Kelly, author, Out of Control

Chapter 2: HIVE MIND - The collective intelligence of a mob

In a darkened Las Vegas conference room, a cheering audience waves cardboard wands in the air. Each wand is red on one side, green on the other. Far in back of the huge auditorium, a camera scans the frantic attendees. The video camera links the color spots of the wands to a nest of computers set up by graphics wizard Loren Carpenter. Carpenter's custom software locates each red and each green wand in the auditorium. Tonight there are just shy of 5,000 wandwavers. The computer displays the precise location of each wand (and its color) onto an immense, detailed video map of the auditorium hung on the front stage, which all can see. More importantly, the computer counts the total red or green wands and uses that value to control software. As the audience wave the wands, the display screen shows a sea of lights dancing crazily in the dark, like a candlelight parade gone punk. The viewers see themselves on the map; they are either a red or green pixel. By flipping their own wands, they can change the color of their projected pixels instantly.

Loren Carpenter boots up the ancient video game of Pong onto the immense screen. Pong was the first commercial video game to reach pop consciousness. It's a minimalist arrangement: a white dot bounces inside a square; two movable rectangles on each side act as virtual paddles. In short, electronic ping-pong. In this version, displaying the red side of your wand moves the paddle up. Green moves it down. More precisely, the Pong paddle moves as the average number of red wands in the auditorium increases or decreases. Your wand is just one vote.

Carpenter doesn't need to explain very much. Every attendee at this 1991 conference of computer graphic experts was probably once hooked on Pong. His amplified voice booms in the hall, "Okay guys. Folks on the left side of the auditorium control the left paddle. Folks on the right side control the right paddle. If you think you are on the left, then you really are. Okay? Go!"

The audience roars in delight. Without a moment's hesitation, 5,000 people are playing a reasonably good game of Pong. Each move of the paddle is the average of several thousand players' intentions. The sensation is unnerving. The paddle usually does what you intend, but not always. When it doesn't, you find yourself spending as much attention trying to anticipate the paddle as the incoming ball. One is definitely aware of another intelligence online: it's this hollering mob.

The group mind plays Pong so well that Carpenter decides to up the ante. Without warning the ball bounces faster. The participants squeal in unison. In a second or two, the mob has adjusted to the quicker pace and is playing better than before. Carpenter speeds up the game further; the mob learns instantly.

"Let's try something else," Carpenter suggests. A map of seats in the auditorium appears on the screen. He draws a wide circle in white around the center. "Can you make a green '5' in the circle?" he asks the audience. The audience stares at the rows of red pixels. The game is similar to that of holding a placard up in a stadium to make a picture, but now there are no preset orders, just a virtual mirror. Almost immediately wiggles of green pixels appear and grow haphazardly, as those who think their seat is in the path of the "5" flip their wands to green. A vague figure is materializing. The audience collectively begins to discern a "5" in the noise. Once discerned, the "5" quickly precipitates out into stark clarity. The wand-wavers on the fuzzy edge of the figure decide what side they "should" be on, and the emerging "5" sharpens up. The number assembles itself.

"Now make a four!" the voice booms. Within moments a "4" emerges. "Three." And in a blink a "3" appears. Then in rapid succession, "Two... One...Zero." The emergent thing is on a roll.

Source: Kevin Kelly, Out of Control, Chapter 2: HIVE MIND - The collective intelligence of a mob

Photo by Joi Ito

Mon, Aug 9, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: collective intelligence, science, bizarre problems, inspired
Sent to project: Polytopia

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