David Ing @daviding@qoto.org

With an academic search on #enshittification coined by @pluralistic on Google Scholar, the first link is to @blair_fix , where the tie is made to inflation.

> What’s this enshittification got to do with inflation? Everything! [....]

> It’s inflation through enforced scarcity.

> The ‘enforced’ part is key. Yes, we live in a world in which resources are finite, and hence ‘scarce’. But regardless of a resources’ innate abundance, maintaining high prices requires restriction.

https://bnarchives.yorku.ca/764/3/20230126_fix_the_cause_of_stagflation.html

Cory Doctorow @pluralistic reasons through lock-in in markets, with a eucalyptus tree strategy, resulting in enshittification play.

> Amazon – like other platform businesses – externalizes its costs onto its suppliers, then harvests the majority of the reward. Uber drivers take the risks – car and fuel payments, unpaid time waiting for a ride – and then it creams off most of the money that riders pay to get from A to B .....

> You can think of this as the eucalyptus tree strategy: eucalypts drop oily leaves around their base. The leaves pile up, trapping heat among all that oil until, eventually, they burst into flame, burning down all the vegetation for miles around. The only things that survive the conflagration are the eucalypt seed-pods, which need fire to open and begin germinating. Meanwhile, all the potential competitors for water, sunshine and soil nutrients have been incinerated, forming a rich, ashy mulch for the eucalypts to grow in.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

The "doable dozen" is a phrase that #BjornLomborg picked up from #JordanPeterson on the April 3 interview. The list is now more complete at Halftime for the Sustainable Development Goals microsite at https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/halftime

> The 12 best policies to scale up, that our experts have identified, cover a wide range of areas: tuberculosis, education, maternal and newborn health, agricultural research and development, malaria, e-procurement, nutrition, land tenure security, chronic diseases, trade, child immunization and skilled migration.

> The benefit of these 12 best policies can really only be described as momentous. It will save 4.2 million lives each year and generate $1.1 trillion in additional economic benefits each and every year for the developing world.

A series of articles by #BjornLomborg with leading media outlets has been lined up. This article in Forbes sets a direction.

> But in 2015, when the world replaced the #MDGs [#MillenniumDevelopmentGoals], things went wrong. World leaders could again have chosen to focus on a few, crucial targets. They could even have kept the same targets, since they are so important to the world’s most vulnerable people. We could have focused on pinpointing where the needs are deepest and the opportunities are greatest.

> Instead, the #UnitedNations and world leaders came up with a hodge-podge, absurdly long list of 169 targets for the world to achieve from 2015-2030: the #SustainableDevelopmentGoals.

https://archive.is/LiShI

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

https://podcastdisclosed.com/12-ways-the-planet-could-truly-be-saved-bjorn-lomborg-jordan-b-peterson-podcast-345/

On the #DaveSnowden lecture, with conversation with #MichaelCJackson, @psybertron writes:

> Many practitioners and academics have taken systems thinking down to the most fundamental areas of physics and into cognitive science. Dave is not alone in promoting latest thinking on these topics into systems practice and Mike is not alone in doubting the idea that such science can really be applied to the psychological context of human and social, organisational and political activities. Certainly doubting that law-like science can be applied any more than metaphorically.

http://www.psybertron.org/archives/17100

#SystemsThinking #sensemaking

Greater appreciation of #SystemsThinking contextual-dyadic thinking of #KeekokLee, 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

https://daviding.wordpress.com/2023/04/24/2021-06-17-keekok-lee-philosophy-of-chinese-medicine-2/

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 https://codeforamerica.org/news/building-a-better-future-a-conversation-with-tim-oreilly/

Greater depth into the #SystemsChanges Learning foundations may be gained from the work on the philosophy of science underlying #ClassicalChineseMedicine, by #KeekokLee. 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.

https://daviding.wordpress.com/2023/04/19/2021-06-16-keekok-lee-philosophy-of-chinese-medicine-1/

#SystemsThinking #SystemsSciences #PhilosophyOfScience

Web video of open access book launch #Ecological Limits to Development: Living with the #SDGs #KaitlinKish #StephenQuilley #SophiaSanniti @KatyGwiazdon

https://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/ecological-limits-to-development-living-with-the-sdgs-st-on-2023-03-13/

#SystemsThinking Ontario, #Sustainability #Development Goals

Instead of #SustainableDevelopmentGoals, #KaitlinKish #StephenQulley say #EcologicalLivelihoodGoals.

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

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

#SystemsThinking #EcologicalEconomics

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.

https://ingbrief.wordpress.com/2023/03/10/concerns-with-the-way-systems-thinking-is-used-in-evaluation-michael-c-jackson-obe-2023-02-27/

#SystemsThinking #evaluation

Peer-reviewed article on #SystemsChanges Learning 2019-2022 published in special issue of J. #Systemics #Cybernetics & #Informatics, on "#Sustainable, Smart and #SystemicDesign #PostAnthropocene" edited by #MarieDavidova #SusuNousala #ThomasJMarlowe

https://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/systems-changes-learning-recasting-reifying-jsci/

#SystemsThinking

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 https://archive.is/lkEMX , original at https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/magazine/17FOB-onlanguage-t.html

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 https://news-artnet-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/news.artnet.com/art-world/chatgpt-art-theory-hal-foster-2263711/amp-page

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 https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/

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.

https://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/appreciating-systems-changes-isss-proceedings/

Rethinking #SystemsThinking

Ironically, our action learning team has been scheduling Skype meetings since 2019. It's free, records video with free 30-day retention, and has native apps for almost every platform. Sometimes, old tech is better than new tech, @costrike

For one on one voice, telephone works great, and reduces fatigue.