Theology Slam entry 2022

Those who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are often the ones who do. That was written in my Twitter bio for years. Ambitious, yes, sizeable ego, yes. But it also reveals where I perceived the source of worldly renewal. Myself. Seeing change take place in one direction from one human …

A corrupted sense of learning

Are you doin' this work to facilitate growth or to become famous?Which is more important?Getting or letting go?John Heider, in The Tao of Leadership, sampled by J Cole in t h e . c l i m b . b a c k Getting or letting go? Do we see learning as accumulating, adding information to our stores, …

Coaching with more problem-solving and less instructions, Part 1

This post was written for STS Community Project. Different ways to control a movement Have you ever seen an athlete choke? The phenomenon of choking in sports is a much studied event, particularly in sport psychology. The idea of an elite athlete failing to perform a movement on a big stage that they must have …

Why do we ask why?

We can appreciate a great piece of music without understanding music theory, and can even generate pleasing sounds with various instruments and our voices without understanding music theory or the notes or rhythms we may generate. It's quite incredible really, and I think this example challenges both the theory of the brain and the excessive …

Commentary: Forms of prediction in the nervous system – Teufel and Fletcher

As we interact with the world around us, we process loads of sensory information across different modalities. But this isn't done passively – the overwhelming consensus is that we proactively interact with the environment, using priors or predictions about the world and about sensory consequences to optimise and streamline perception and action. For instance, when …

Yaneer Bar-Yam discusses response to Covid-19

I was really impressed by Yaneer Bar-Yam's arguments on how to 'crush the curve' and not just flatten it. He discusses treating communities as infected and not just individuals, as well as how to lockdown effectively, and the flaws of the UK's initial herd immunity approach. His conversation with Azeem Azhar of Exponential View below. …

A small problem

64 divided by 16 equals 4. That's how division works. But for the sake of a maths puzzle, let's just cross out the digits in the numerator and denominator that are shared by both. In this case, we can cross out both 6's and are left with 4/1 which also equals 4. The question is …