David Ing @daviding@qoto.org

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

Many of the luminaries of the systems sciences spent a year at the #CASBS (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.

https://www.amacad.org/daedalus/creating-new-moral-political-economy

#SystemsThinking

Web video recording of relaxed conversation on Sensemaking and Theory-Building led by #GarySMetcalf for #SystemsThinking Ontario.

https://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/sensemaking-theory-building-gary-s-metcalf-st-on-2023-02-13/

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

https://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/world-theories-as-analytic-deductive-dispersive-integrative/

#SocioTechnical #SocioEcological #SystemsTheory

Might we have an indicator that lives for Canadians are at a stress level lower than other countries? Either that, or spouses are just nicer to each other.

> Canadian marriages are oddly stable

> In 2020 – the most recent year for which data is available – Canada recorded fewer divorces than at any point since 1973. This is particularly impressive given that Canada has 16 million more people than we did in the early 1970s. The low divorce rate was driven in large part by COVID; couples forced into close proximity by public health lockdowns unexpectedly responded by learning to tolerate one another. But even before the pandemic, Canada was already boasting a crude divorce rate that was one of the lowest in the G7.

National Post: FIRST READING: Canada is a broken disaster (except in these areas).
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/first-reading-canada-is-a-broken-disaster-except-in-these-areas

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

#HeidiMorrison | "I finally got pregnant in Finland - a country that hasn’t commodified infertility" | Dec. 12, 2022 | Globe & Mail (paywall) https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/first-person/article-i-finally-got-pregnant-in-finland-a-country-that-hasnt-commodified/

"An Extended Stay" | September 27, 2022 | UW Lacrosse at https://www.uwlax.edu/news/posts/an-extended-stay/