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Yoda: Dynamic Causation vs. Systemic Causation II

Earth Intelligence
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Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Complex, force is.

Yoda: Dynamic Causation vs. Systemic Causation

Further commentary:

IDEN C:  John Pourdehnad just gave a talk, and I thought David Ing's notes from it were good reading. John more or less channels Ackoff, but also relates it to contemporary efforts.  About half way down he says this:

Mechanical systems may explain through cause and effect, but social systems are producer-product” and then he explains further.

IDEN A  might object that there should be one universal description of something like causation for all systems.  I sympathize, but if 'cause' continues to work for the physicists, I really don't want to get in their way (though some might argue that it is a problem in non-classical physics).  I just want something that works for social systems, where we have the symbol as well as the physical referent to deal with (Peirce), plus the purposes of the symbolizers, and that's not physics.

IDEN B:  Ether matters.  The Eastern school of the space between the things, the relationships between any two things and all other things, the time, the context, the phase of the moon.  I believe science is starting to discover that that there is no “nothing” only, there is “something” everywhere, we just cannot see it.  Jump to 26 dimensions instead of 3 or 4.  Bottom line:  there is no one answer, only infinite answers, and the only way to get a tentative grip on infinite answers is to have infinite diversity of minds speaking with clarity and grounded in integrity.

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Owl: Both Parties Died on 7 November 2012 — The Angry White Guy GOP *and* the Well-Intentioned Liberal Left — Gone, Gone, Gone

Politics
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Who? Who?

None of my liberal friends who I sent this article have responded or commented on it. Perhaps they cannot be bothered, since they are rejoicing at Obama's win? Or could it be that Professor James Petras, who wrote it, and an outstanding scholar with many books and articles to his name, is puncturing their illusions of Obama, and it's too painful to acknowledge the truth?

This article effectively summarizes in one place Obama's near absolute and locked-step alignment to the American Police State, to Wall Street, to utter betrayal of his naive supporters, to the evaporation of the middle class. It blows up any illusions that the victorious second term president is really a “lesser evil”, that it makes any difference. He shows the distinction between lesser and greater evils is irrelevant when it comes to Obama and Romney. One could add to this what Mish Shedlock said in his blog: “If you keep voting for the lesser of two evils, then you will continually be presented with two evil choices!”

Democrats & Liberals: “They Placed the Re-Election of a Police-State Democrat Over and Above Their Putative Defense of Constitutional Rights”

Some highlights:

Continue reading “Owl: Both Parties Died on 7 November 2012 — The Angry White Guy GOP *and* the Well-Intentioned Liberal Left — Gone, Gone, Gone”

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SmartPlanet: Closed Short-Term Systems Do Not Do Disruptive Innovation

Innovation
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Clayton Christensen: why America’s innovation engine is sputtering

By | November 7, 2012, 2:17 PM PST

Clayton Christensen

Truly disruptive innovation — the kind that creates new markets, opens up new ways of looking at problems, and greatly expands wealth — is in short supply, and that is what is dragging the current economy. There isn’t enough innovation because business leaders and managers have become too focused on short-term gains.

That’s the view of disruptive innovation guru and Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, who, in a New York Times editorial,  explains why America’s innovation system has gone off the tracks.

Basically, the economy has long been driven by three types of innovation that all industries cycle through: empowering innovations, which transform complicated and costly products available to a few into simpler, cheaper products available to the many (think Ford’s Model T); sustaining innovations, in which old products are replaced with new models (think Toyota’s Prius); and efficiency innovations, which reduce the cost of making and distributing existing products and services (think Geico in online insurance underwriting).

The problem these days, Christensen says, is that instead of cycling through these three phases, businesses are stuck on efficiency innovations — streamlining, paring, cutting and squeezing. While efficiency innovations liberate capital, there isn’t enough energy and resources going to empowering innovations — which generates new wealth and opportunity within underserved or unserved parts of markets.

Read full article.

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Michel Bauwens: Marcin Jakubowski on The Open Source Economy

#OSE Open Source Everything
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Michel Bauwens

Marcin Jakubowski – The Open Source Economy

The Open Source Ecology – 50 Do It Yourself Tools for Civilization focused on 12 people, 2 hours a day living very well.

Ethical open production yields a 50 times cost reduction over any given lifetime.

Published on Oct 31, 2012 by MarionInstituteTV

http://www.connectingforchange.org  Connecting for Change: Bioneers by the Bay conference hosted by the Marion Institute is A SOLUTIONS BASED gathering that brings together a diverse audience to create deep and positive change in their communities. The conference connects the dots between food and farming, health and healing, indigenous knowledge, women and youth leadership, green business and restorative living.

MARCIN JAKUBOWSKI – “Growing up in Poland, and having a grandparent in the concentration camps, I was aware even at an early age what happens when materials are scarce, and people fight over opportunity.”

Continue reading “Michel Bauwens: Marcin Jakubowski on The Open Source Economy”

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Penguin: Election Theater, 50 Companies “Own” All

Commerce, Corruption, Economics/True Cost, Government, Politics
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Who, Me?

To set the stage, here is a quote from a top Reagan era economist.

“Paul Craig Roberts: “As readers know, I don’t think that either candidate is a good choice or that either offers a choice. Washington is controlled by powerful interest groups, not by elections. What the two parties fight over is not alternative political visions and different legislative agendas, but which party gets to be the whore for Wall Street, the military-security complex, Israel Lobby, agribusiness, and energy, mining, and timber interests.”

Now imagine a populist revolt that eliminates absentee owners and declares local to global debt jubilees, much as the IMF is (rather radically) considering in The Chicago Plan Revisted (August 2012), while the local, state, and federal government also agree on the Automated Payment Transaction Tax or the Tobin Tax (two different ideas that can be implemented separately or together).

No Conspiracy Theory — A Small Group of Companies Have Enormous Power Over the World

October 31, 2012  |

In October of 2011, New Scientist reported that a scientific study on the global financial system was undertaken by three complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. The conclusion of the study revealed what many theorists and observers have noted for years, decades, and indeed, even centuries: “An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.” As one of the researchers stated, “Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it’s conspiracy theories or free-market… Our analysis is reality-based.” Using a database which listed 37 million companies and investors worldwide, the researchers studied all 43,060 trans-national corporations (TNCs), including the share ownerships linking them.[1~footnotes at the end of the article]

Read full AlterNet article and notes.

Continue reading “Penguin: Election Theater, 50 Companies “Own” All”

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Eagle: Department of Justice Defendes Controversial Unlimited Military Detention

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call
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300 Million Talons…

DOJ Defends Controversial Military Detention Provision

As presidential election returns rolled in Tuesday night, the U.S. Justice Department filed its opening brief defending a controversial military detention provision that a trial judge in Manhattan declared unconstitutional earlier this year.

The suit, filed in Manhattan federal district court by a group of journalists and activists, challenges a section of the National Defense Authorization Act that DOJ lawyers said reaffirms presidential detention authority under the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF. That authorization was passed in response to the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Government lawyers said in the papers filed last night in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that the plaintiffs “are in no danger whatsoever of being subject to capture and detention by the U.S. military.” The provision in question allows the detention of people who “substantially supported” al-Qaeda or “associated forces.”

“The district court nonetheless issued an extraordinary and sweeping injunction at their behest,” DOJ lawyer August Flentje of the Civil Division said in the brief filed last night. Flentje said the trial judge, Katherine Forrest of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, “entered a sweeping and permanent injunction against the president.”

Continue reading “Eagle: Department of Justice Defendes Controversial Unlimited Military Detention”

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Tom Atlee: Political Dichotomies are Illusory

Cultural Intelligence, Politics
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Tom Atlee

Dear friends,

In anticipation of challenges to my assertion that our political dichotomies – especially the liberal/conservative, blue-red divide – are illusions, I offer the following references:

1.  The “Purple USA” map – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_America

2.  My writeup of my first transpartisan experience – “A Personally Transformational Encounter of Left and Right”
http://co-intelligence.org/polarization-Fetzer.html

3.  The story of the first pro-life and pro-choice activist dialogue done by the Public Conversations Project
http://co-intelligence.org/S-beyondabortiondebate.html in which participants were invited to confidentially discuss the “grey areas” where they weren't FULLY comfortable with the archetypal public position of their “side”, but with which they compromised in order to be politically effective.  What emerged was a full spectrum of different perspectives on abortion, not just two.

4.  The “Crossing the Line” diversity exercise –
http://www.trainingforchange.org/walking_across_the_room

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Political Dichotomies are Illusory”