Four ways to assemble the evidence on climate change

To pursuade more people about climate change we need a greater diversity of argument

Why are people so conflicted about the right response to the pandemic?

Is there a cultural theory perspective on the COVID pandemic of 2020-21? Of course there is: Davy, Benjamin. "Social Distancing and Cultural Bias: On the Spatiality of COVID-19." Journal of the American Planning Association 87, no. 2 (2021): 159-166. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2020.1824617

Cultural Theory in 2019

When Mary Douglas published her groundbreaking work, Natural Symbols in 1970, journals of anthropology, sociology and philosophy reviewed it. Although Douglas was an anthropologist, her work had implications well beyond that single discipline. Chapter 4 of the book, 'Grid and group' summarised an approach to social analysis that has been greatly extended and widely adopted … Continue reading Cultural Theory in 2019 →

Google must drop Dragonfly

Seeing that Google’s management (now called Alphabet) is at serious odds with its employees over working in China on Project Dragonfly, it appears that the Google Dilemma is very far from over. I wrote a short series of posts about the cultural misunderstandings between Google and the Chinese Government, and it's still going on. To … Continue reading Google must drop Dragonfly →

Loving Nostalgia

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/conservatives-love-of-nostalgia-can-be-used-to-promote-liberal-values.html http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-00810-001 Conservatives appear to be more receptive to liberal ideas when they are associated with the past. Conversely, though, liberals do not appear receptive to conservative ideas when they are associated with the future. The abstract concludes : "A large portion of the political disagreement between conservatives and liberals appears to be disagreement over … Continue reading Loving Nostalgia →

Make your own rules

Here's a photo taken a while ago that never made it into a post. It's an advert I saw on a bus shelter. It isn't the clearest photo in the world, but it tells a story. The story it tells is very clearly expressed by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. It shows that in our society, … Continue reading Make your own rules →

The worst of superstitions

Yet the superstition In which we have grown up, not therefore loses When we detect it, all its influence on us. Not all are free that can bemock their fetters... The worst of superstitions is to think One's own most bearable. G. Lessing, Nathan the Wise

Coding is still not the new literacy

People are often saying that programming is the new literacy, but actually thinking about programming is more significant. Creating the models that are to be computed is what we need to be teaching and learning.

The feedback loop as a symbol for life in the 21st Century

self-organisation is a high-level property that emerges from the underlying network, not a feature of any of the individual components. This has interesting consequences. Where any part of the mechanism is sensitive to the environment, the whole self-organising loop can be too. http://aeon.co/magazine/science/why-the-symbol-of-life-is-a-loop-not-a-helix/ Here's an example from the Resilience Alliance - the adaptive cycle - that … Continue reading The feedback loop as a symbol for life in the 21st Century →

Bias: it’s not a bug, it’s a feature

"Kahan’s argument about the woman who does not believe in global warming is a surprising and persuasive example of a general principle: if we want to understand others, we can always ask what is making their behaviour ‘rational’ from their point of view. If, on the other hand, we just assume they are irrational, no … Continue reading Bias: it’s not a bug, it’s a feature →