Complex Anarchism Symposium, 19-23 May 2025 in Brussels
https://clea.research.vub.be/complex-anarchism-symposium-19-23-may-2025-in-brussels
Massive NHS reorganisation, with ‘devolution’ and local government reform – and more to come. It's like crossing the straits with the ice floes both shifting and melting underfoot. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_hsj-icbmergers-integratedcare-activity-7325429570424233984-C26Y What's your advice for people trying to get through their working day, make things a little better, and deal with this overwhelming #complexity?
This article is available free for a limited time via #BulletinOfTheAtomicScientists
“Fragile, impermanent things”: #JosephTainter on what makes #civilizations fall
" #Collapse occurs, he argues, when the costs of #complexity are greater than its returns to society. Complex societies are problem-solving organizations, and when the costs of coping with crises are too great, they fail."
#civilisation #tippingPoints #civilization #climatecrisis #DoomsdayClock
The world is getting more complex, but why? Please check out my thoughts in the free-to-read weekly essay on my personal blog after the jump! https://sharpenyouraxe.substack.com/p/increasing-complexity #Complexity
A quotation from Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Categorizing is necessary for humans, but it becomes pathological when the category is seen as definitive, preventing people from considering the fuzziness of boundaries, let alone revising their categories.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (b. 1960) Lebanese-American essayist, statistician, risk analyst, aphorist
The Black Swan, Part 1, ch. 1 “The Apprenticeship of an Empirical Skeptic” (2007)
Sourcing, notes: wist.info/taleb-nassim-nichola…
Just published: my (translated) chapter on "Unconventional Computing" as a pre-print on ResearchGate:
The origin of the eukaryotic cell corresponded to the most significant increase in #complexity in the history of #life's evolution on Earth.
The billions of years that have passed since the fusion of an #archaea and a #bacteria have resulted in a lack of evolutionary intermediates in the phylogenetic tree until the emergence of the #eukaryotes.
Now researchers present theoretical and observational evidence that a phase transition in genetic complexity was involved.
https://phys.org/news/2025-04-evolutionary-algorithmic-phase-transition-billion.html
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.
— E. W. Dijkstra
The Evolution of Biological Information: How Evolution Creates Complexity, From Viruses to Brains by Christoph Adams, 2024
Why information is the unifying principle that allows us to understand the evolution of complexity in nature. More than 150 years after Darwin’s revolutionary On the Origin of Species, we are still attempting to understand and explain the amazing complexity of life.
@bookstodon
#books
#nonfiction
#biology
#evolution
#information
#complexity
The function of good software is to make the complex appear to be simple.
— Grady Booch
@AlexanderKingsbury @JugglingWithEggs
Could have been Emergent, #complexity arising from simplicity. Designed, but not by discrete authorial process or gesture.
“A petition over DWP PIP has highlighted a fact all disabled people should know”
by The Canary @thecanaryuk @UKLabour
“A new petition is making waves as it calls on [..] DWP to update the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) application form to include important information about the high success rate of appeals”
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/news/2025/04/08/dwp-pip-appeals/?__s=1toyfummtp6bhspv4akg
Making big beat takes no less than six drum loop layers.
Also true about big beat: if it's worth doing it's worth overdoing.
> The purpose is to warn bystanders to invest in technological #complexity
I think your point is well taken. My introduction to ZFS was gradual, deploying it first on spare H/W to see what it was all about and about half a year later, migrating my home lab file server to ZFS. Years later I'm installing desktop, laptop and servers with ZFS on root. I admit to being a ZFS fanboy, but that took time and practice.
And as always backups are king!
1/2
@janl The purpose is to warn bystanders to invest in technological #complexity that seems to be very attractive for its advanced features without acknowledging the risks or efforts associated.
Its learning curve doesn't even allow for an easy start.
As with so many awesome tools, this is something for specific experts and not for new/occasional/advanced users.
BTDT and I've had my fair share of bad experiences.
Current pain in my setup: #NixOS. Instead of providing an abstraction layer to keep away certain OS setup & maintenance problems for good, I got into so many little & bigger troubles that I try to tell people only to use it when they are ready to invest its required learning effort all the way.
From my point of view, this also holds true for "advanced" file systems like #ZFS, #XFS, ... YMMV.
UNIX is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity.
— Dennis M. Ritchie
An interdisciplinary team of researchers has proposed nothing less than a new law of #nature, according to which the #complexity of entities in the #universe increases over time with an inexorability comparable to the second law of #thermodynamics — the law that dictates an inevitable rise in entropy, a measure of disorder.
If they’re right, complex and intelligent #life should be widespread.
#astrobiology #physics
https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-everything-in-the-universe-turns-more-complex-20250402/
Here it is, finally, the non-nerdy, updated and refined version of the theory of Requisite Inefficiency, which some of you may remember from over a decade ago.
Some of what is not needed for what is known is an indispensable resource to deal with what is unknown.
https://www.linkandth.ink/p/requisite-inefficiency
#complexity
