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A new book by is coming out, . I listened to the 2-hour interview by released on April 3 (as usual, while on my bike and driving). The timing seems related to the upcoming meeting in October, where we are at the midpoint of the , and failing.

Here's a text summary of the interview. The list of 12 proposed initiatives isn't given as straightforward, but the idea that we might succeed on some things rather than failing on everything is likely to be appealing to many.

podcastdisclosed.com/12-ways-t

Greater appreciation of contextual-dyadic thinking of , with
anatomy as structure / physiology as function (and process);
process ontology / thing ontology;
qi ju as qi-in-concentrating mode / qi san as qi-in-dissipating mode

daviding.wordpress.com/2023/04

On individual versus collective advancement, via @timoreilly :

> I remember once I was working on our property in Sebastopol where I used to live, and I had this landscape architect who came in to help us.

> And she said, “Everybody always wants to put their nice new thing where it’s already beautiful.” She said, “No, you want to put your nice new thing in the worst part of your property, so you will make it better.” And I thought that was really good advice.

"Building a Better Future: A Conversation with Tim O’Reilly" | May 5, 2021 at codeforamerica.org/news/buildi

Greater depth into the Learning foundations may be gained from the work on the philosophy of science underlying , by . Highlights from this 2021 lecture are digested for easier indexing. For those not immersed in pinyin (Romanized Chinese spelling), the text may or may not be less confusing than the verbal presentation.

daviding.wordpress.com/2023/04

Instead of , say .

"informal processes of exchange, familial care, place-bound community, mutual aid, and reciprocation –​which we designate as _Livelihood_"

Open access book for March 13 wiki.st-on.org/2023-03-13

From the debate between Michael Quinn Patton and Michael C. Jackson OBE on "Systems Concepts in Evaluation" on 2023-02-27, I've digested into text the few minutes with the largest contention.

ingbrief.wordpress.com/2023/03

Truthiness was coined by Stephen Colbert in 2005, and became legitimated as an entry in a dictionary by 2010.

> ... _truth_ just wasn’t “dumb enough.” “I wanted a silly word that would feel wrong in your mouth,” he said.

> What he was driving at wasn’t _truth_ anyway, but a mere approximation of it — something _truthish_ or _truthy_, unburdened by the factual. And so, in a flash of inspiration, _truthiness_, was born. [....]

> Five years later, _truthiness_ has proved to be no _bushlips_. It has even entered the latest edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary, published earlier this year, with Colbert explicitly credited in the etymology.

"Truthiness" | Ben Zimmer | The New York Times Magazine | October 13, 2010, cached at archive.is/lkEMX , original at nytimes.com/2010/10/17/magazin

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Generative AI, such as ChatGPT, may be better viewed as putting together hypotheses, where testing either leads to corroboration or truthiness.

> The glitch seems to be a linear consequence of the fact that so-called Large-Language Models are about predicting what _sounds right_, based on its huge data sets. As a commenter put it in an already-months-old post about the fake citations problem: “It’s a language model, and not a knowledge model.”

> In other words, this is an application for _sounding like an expert_, not for _being an expert_ — which is just so, so emblematic of our whole moment, right? Instead of an engine of reliable knowledge, Silicon Valley has unleashed something that gives everyone the power to fake it like Elizabeth Holmes.

"We Asked ChatGPT About Art Theory. It Led Us Down a Rabbit Hole So Perplexing We Had to Ask Hal Foster for a Reality Check" | Ben Davis | March 2, 2023 at news-artnet-com.cdn.ampproject

Generative AI is more about language tricks than knowledge (as human beings knowing).

> ... instead what we should conclude is that tasks—like writing essays—that we humans could do, but we didn’t think computers could do, are actually in some sense computationally easier than we thought.

> In other words, the reason a neural net can be successful in writing an essay is because writing an essay turns out to be a “computationally shallower” problem than we thought. And in a sense this takes us closer to “having a theory” of how we humans manage to do things like writing essays, or in general deal with language.

"What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?: It’s Just Adding One Word at a Time" | Stephen Wolfram | February 14, 2023 at writings.stephenwolfram.com/20

For those who thought I spoke too quickly at the ISSS 2022 plenary talk, the article on "Appreciating Systems Changes via Multiparadigm Inquiry" in the Proceedings of the 66th Annual Meeting has been formally released.

coevolving.com/blogs/index.php

Rethinking

Many of the luminaries of the systems sciences spent a year at the (e.g. Kenneth Boulding wrote _The Image_ in a burst of inspiration, with his participation). In the current day, the CASBS continues to encourage inquiries worth following.

> Capitalist democracy needs rethinking and renewal. Our current political economic framework is fixated on GDP, individual achievement, and short-term profit, all the while heightening barriers to widespread prosperity. Faced with mounting climate crises and systemic discrimination, we must reimagine ways to ensure ethical flourishing for all. In response, the Winter 2023 issue of Dædalus focuses on “Creating a New Moral Political Economy,” and addresses these long-standing problems and how to combat the resultant unequal footing across the polity, marketplace, and workplace. In eleven main essays and twenty-two responses, the authors raise questions about how to create supportive social movements that prioritize collective, equitable, and respectful responsibility for care of the earth and its people.

amacad.org/daedalus/creating-n

In associated with scientific pluralism, the treatments of world theories as (i) analytic or synthetic have generally received more attention than (ii) dispersive or integrative.

coevolving.com/blogs/index.php

Any country concerned about population decline could learn from Finland on policies encouraging infertile mothers, balancing personal and societal concerns.

> In Finland – where women first gained suffrage, where a woman is now Prime Minister – it is illegal to pay egg donors more than a basic €250 compensation for temporary discomfort (plus the basic daily allowance and kilometre allowance for transportation).

> Women in Finland donate for various reasons, but a scramble to pay bills is not one of them. Recipients do not pick their donor but are matched by doctors on basic biological criteria (donor height and her skin, eye and hair colour). At an average private clinic in Finland, one round of egg donation IVF treatment costs around €7,000, excluding medication.

> ... I became pregnant with a donor egg from a Finnish clinic. I have since left Finland to resume my university position in the United States

| "I finally got pregnant in Finland - a country that hasn’t commodified infertility" | Dec. 12, 2022 | Globe & Mail (paywall) theglobeandmail.com/life/first

"An Extended Stay" | September 27, 2022 | UW Lacrosse at uwlax.edu/news/posts/an-extend

While institutions are incorporated to live beyond the lifetime of a single human being, perhaps fulfilling its mission can lead to a conclusion that the best course is to wind itself down. Courage at the , led by

> One of Canada’s largest and oldest philanthropic organizations has decided to wind down and distribute its entire endowment – $100-million – to expedite efforts to align the economy with net-zero emission targets.

> The Ivey Foundation has determined that the need to transform industrial policies to meet climate goals is too acute to keep funding projects at its current rate, said Bruce Lourie, the foundation’s chief executive officer. The money will be dispersed to its slate of economic and environmental partner organizations over the next five years.

> Dr. Lourie said slashing carbon emissions by 40 per cent to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and getting to net zero by 2050, as per Ottawa’s international commitments, are only getting tougher to achieve. [....]

> From the foundation’s perspective, the two biggest risks facing the country are failing to adequately deal with climate change and missing related economic opportunities, such as electric vehicle and battery manufacturing and transforming the power grid, as other countries establish dominance in those areas. “So, in our philanthropic work, we’re really trying to integrate those two things – Canada’s competitiveness and prosperousness, together with the need to address our emissions,” Dr. Lourie said.

"Ivey Foundation will distribute $100-million endowment to causes aimed at accelerating progress on climate change" | Jeffrey Jones | Globe & Mail | 2021-11-29 theglobeandmail.com/business/a

Researching , online archive of ": The Live Thought of " from Paunch 1980 magazine is helpful. Philosopher of aesthetics a follower of , contemporary of , senior to ,

ingbrief.wordpress.com/2022/11

Refugees from birdsite missing QT Quote Tweet might reflect on conscious design decisions made in Mastodon core, that could be modified in a specific instance. This means that if a poster REALLY wants QT, he or she has the option to move to an instance where that is supported.

Original 2018 Design Decision at blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/07/

Pointer from discussion thread from 2000 on Quote Toots github.com/mastodon/mastodon/i

Just because birdsite declares a unitary design approach doesn't mean that Mastodon developers haven't thought about a feature.

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