Adventures in Thought Space

Almost everything in this universe—from galaxies and clusters of galaxies to solar systems and planets, to climates and ecosystems to industries and economies—comes from things organizing themselves. They are SELF-organized. Most things can’t be understood by straightforwardly analyzing the parts/variables, like in math, physics, and engineering; only by accounting for unknowns and appreciating the complexity of the interactions BETWEEN variables can one hope to understand the rest of Nature. The former type of thinking is called reductive or reductionistic; extralogical reasoning calls the latter  scientific holistic thinking .   Complexity theory studies complex systems such as economies, ecosystems and their evolution, societies, and various related phenomena. If these phenomena are complex systems, then Nature and the World are, likewise, complex systems. The interactions between a psychology and the external World, in turn, make LIFE a complex system.    A compl...

The crux of the environmental debate is a disagreement over the relationship humans and animals have with the planetary environment and each other. This debate includes but is by no means limited to evolution. Although humans are a grave threat to their environment and themselves (at least over a geologic/evolutionary timescale), the popular/layperson’s pro-environmentalist position isn’t much more scientific than their counterparts’. Ironically, they reveal their ignorance in part by their UNDERESTIMATION of humankind’s threat. Also interesting is the fact that the best summary explanation for humanity’s threat is simpler than most of the “scientific” ones generally offered by lay environmentalists.    It all comes down to this:  The health of ecosystems depends on their naturally-selected physical, chemical, and biological compositions and interactions; and humankind’s lifestyle alters environments in vast excess of what evolution can keep pace with.    Since ...

This is an "alternative" and more objective analysis of the issues discussed in the article " More on the Ills of Academia and Excessive School Learning ." Everyone is affected to one degree or another by conditioning and habits. How you learn, how you solve problems/are trained to solve problems, the things you are taught, and the things that are implied—all affect what you believe, how you think, how you learn, and how you solve problems. There may be great variation in how it affects individuals, but to say one is impervious to environmental conditioning and the influences of habitual behaviors is tantamount to denying one’s humanity. One of the things that makes conditioning so potentially influential—and often pernicious--is how easy it is to accept a genuine fact and unconsciously extrapolate one or more misbeliefs in response, making it all too easy for educators to TEACH one thing and unintentionally CONDITION something else entirely. And it’s a scientific f...

Although there's a brief conclusion at the end, the following is a collection of self-contained commentaries on causation, NOT an actual essay.  The Need For "Scientific Holistic Thinking" The primary law of this Universe is the law of causality, which states that for every effect, there’s at least one cause that precedes it. But there is nothing inherent to the law that says that causality must be simple, tangible, or understandable to humans. Unfortunately, people are programmed to believe exactly the opposite. Although the term has undergone many iterations throughout the extralogical reasoning literature, extralogical reasoning now calls this the  causation bias , the natural human tendency to be too quick to assume that the relationship between cause and effect will be ascertainable and satisfying.    The factors/variables relevant to causation are greater, less tangible and articulable, and more interactive than most people think. Organization and complex ...

Intellectuals are so plagued by unwisdom three seven-to-ten-page posts didn’t afford me ample opportunity to fully explain its origins. This is the first sequel to the intro, especially Part Two: “ Knowledge (alone) isn’t Power. ” It might require an additional one. Previously, I discussed the ills of knowledge idolatry and the intellectual debilitations that accompany excessive schooling. This essay will further expound the deleterious effects of the mindsets encouraged by university education. If people pursue school and general learning optimally, they can still get a great net gain from higher education, but that’s a much bigger IF than most think. People’s unwitting insistence on believing in guarantees, including guaranteed benefits, could make IF one of the most underappreciated words in the English language. As stated in the intro, it’s impossible to cultivate a type of learning without cultivating a type of MINDSET. Because of the powerful psychological components of thinking ...