In today s post, I am looking at a phrase that everyone recognizes and almost nobody examines. The phrase is think outside the box. It is usually presented as an invitation to break free from conventional thinking and arrive at something genuinely new. But the phrase hides a number of assumptions. It assumes there is a [ ]
In today s post I am looking at Shunryū Suzuki s beginner s mind in Zen and von Foerster s ethical imperative. Readers of my blog know that I love connecting the dots often in seemingly varying fields. Suzuki said something useful: In the beginner s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert s mind, there are few. Suzuki did [ ]
The great Systems Thinker, Russell Ackoff, had a provocation that stayed with me. A system is not the sum of its parts. It is the product of their interactions. He used a simple example. Take the best engine from one car, the best transmission from another, the best brakes from a third. You will not [ ]
The ideas discussed here will form part of the second edition of my book, Second Order Cybernetics. The second edition will include a first half where I go into the introduction of cybernetics and related ideas. The post is slightly longer than usual because of that. In today s post I am exploring what I think is [ ]
In today s post, I want to sit with a question that keeps surfacing in discussions about artificial intelligence and cognition, and one I am increasingly convinced is itself part of the problem. The question is: does AI know? The reason it may be the wrong question is not that the answer is obviously “no”, but [ ]
In today s post, I want to offer an introduction to Cybernetic Constructivism. The ideas discussed here will form part of the second edition of my book, Second Order Cybernetics. The second edition will include a first half where I go into the introduction of cybernetics and related ideas. The post is slightly longer than usual. [ ]
In today s post, I want to look at a question that seems almost too simple to ask: when does a system exist? For this I will be drawing on ideas from Wilfrid Sellars, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Heinz von Foerster, and Martin Heidegger. We talk about “systems” all the time. The healthcare system. The education system. The [ ]
In today s post, I want to clarify what it means to care as a human being and why that clarification matters for how we think about “systems”. This is a continuation of my previous post, in which I clarify the notion of “care” from a Heideggerian and existential standpoint. I hope this provides further food [ ]
In today’s post, I am inspired by the ideas of cybernetics, Heidegger, and Taleb. I am looking at what I think is the largest danger of large language models (LLMs). LLMs are extraordinarily proficient in the domain of language, and that proficiency has quietly created a philosophical problem that most technical discussions fail to notice. [ ]
In today’s post, I want to revisit the notion of information from a cybernetic viewpoint, drawing primarily from Gregory Bateson’s well known formulation that information is the difference that makes a difference. This definition does not merely redefine information. It quietly displaces where information is assumed to reside and how it is assumed to function. [ ]