“Two years earlier, the Economist invited readers finally to relieve James I of his title, and nominate the wisest fool of the past 50 years. Maybe, as we take a gulp, and look at the world after the apocalypse, we should look wider than the markets. What’s the wisdom guiding the crowds? If the crowd [...]
Stuart Glendinning Hall
Complexity —
Category Archives: Complexity
Is complexity to blame?
AIG’s complexity blamed for fall: “The complexity and international spread of AIG’s operations impeded regulatory oversight of the derivatives unit that helped bring down the insurer, according to former executives, analysts and regulators.” (FT report)
Hmm, complexity? Maybe they should have invested in a product such as Datawatch’s Monarch software which is designed to transform report [...]
CERN says
15:02, that’s it. Second beam all the way round (via Twitter)..
..and the LHC is up and running.
Systemantics
The Fundamental Law of Administrative Workings (F.L.A.W.): Things are what they are reported to be. The real world is what it is reported to be. (That is, the system takes as given that things are as reported, regardless of the true state of affairs.)..
Process is an embedded reaction to prior stupidity
Process is an embedded reaction to prior stupidity
Measuring the Impossible
Scientists set out to measure how we perceive naturalness..
No longer risk, now uncertainty rules
Hmm, interesting paragraph on the credit squeeze and the times we live in: Excerpt from the Complexity Digest: “So the rules of the game have now fundamentally changed. Our global financial system has become so staggeringly complex and opaque that we’ve moved from a world of risk to a world of uncertainty. “In a [...]
3 types of people
1. Those who want to be ‘on time’. 2. Those who want to be ‘in time’ (synchronicity). 3. Others.
The holy grail for the Healthy Schools Programme
The holy grail for the Healthy Schools Programme? Maybe an ‘objective measurement of evidence of impact’? I tried to find it (and my question recently surfaced again, via Google, thanks) but failed; though I had a go presenting a kind of a v. short paper (’From systems to evidence: a study in applying complexity [...]
Army social scientists calm Afghanistan, make enemies at home
Fascinating news story about the use of social scientists in Afghanistan from Wired magazine, first class, following the magazine’s feature on war and social networks. Reminds me of some work I’ve done on understanding insurgency strategy after 9/11. And brings to mind one quote I used for a chaos psychology conference in 2002:
“Because we the [...]