![]() Two recent victims of Iraq death squads, via Reuters/Namir Noor-Eldeen How Not to Solve the Violence in the Middle East: A fascinating article in today’s NYT invites 7 ‘experts’ to suggest first steps to resolve the exploding violence in Lebanon. The result is seven completely unworkable recommendations — and the bigger the name, the more incompetent the proposal. This article should be required reading for (a) anyone studying Lakoff’s theory of irreconcilable frames, (b) anyone seriously interested in learning why the endless Mideast war is so intractable, (c) advocates of employing The Wisdom of Crowds instead of useless ‘experts’ and (d) anyone who wants to understand why simple solutions never, ever work to resolve complex problems. Complexity theorists will immediately understand that both sides in the escalation are doing precisely what they must. They have no alternative, and these ‘experts’ are asking them to do something utterly different. They might as well ask them to fly to the moon. Spare us from ‘experts’ of all stripes, please. Cutting Through the Bush Bafflegab: Two articles from Salon decipher the latest Orwellian newspeak from the Bushies. Brad DeLong explains that the ‘surprise’ deficit reduction is neither a surprise nor a significant or real reduction, with virtually no impact on the skyrocketing overall debt. And Andrew Leonard explains that the headlines fed to the hapless MSM about ‘slowing consumer borrowing‘ disguised an alarming shift from mortgage to even riskier credit card debt as the housing bubble teeters and consumers run out of home collateral. Chronicling Iraq’s Slide into Civil War: The first of an enlightening three part insider report from Phillip Robertson, also via Salon, describes the collapse of civil order and what was left of trust in public and security institutions in Iraq. Satire from a ‘Reasonable Conservative’: Jon Swift’s deadpan satire is even better than Colbert’s. Thanks to Dale Asberry for the link. Bill McKibben on Cuba’s Agricultural Transformation: McKibben, writing in Harper’s, provides a detailed and very even-handedanalysis of how Cuba, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, rediscovered community-based, largely organic agriculture because it had no other choice. Lots of useful lessons here. Thanks to Eric Lilius for the link. |
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--- My Best 100 Posts --
Preparing for Civilization's End:
What Would Net-Zero Emissions Look Like?
Why Economic Collapse Will Precede Climate Collapse
Being Adaptable: A Reminder List
A Culture of Fear
What Will It Take?
A Future Without Us
Dean Walker Interview (video)
The Mushroom at the End of the World
What Would It Take To Live Sustainably?
The New Political Map (Poster)
Beyond Belief
Complexity and Collapse
Save the World Reading List
Civilization Disease
What a Desolated Earth Looks Like
Giving Up on Environmentalism
Going Vegan
The Dark & Gathering Sameness of the World
The End of Philosophy
The Boiling Frog
Our Culture:
What to Believe Now?
Rogue Primate
Conversation & Silence
The Language of Our Eyes
True Story
Cultural Acedia: When We Can No Longer Care
Useless Advice
Several Short Sentences About Learning
Why I Don't Want to Hear Your Story
A Harvest of Myths
The Qualities of a Great Story
The Trouble With Stories
A Model of Identity & Community
Not Ready to Do What's Needed
A Culture of Dependence
So What's Next
Ten Things to Do When You're Feeling Hopeless
No Use to the World Broken
Living in Another World
Does Language Restrict What We Can Think?
The Value of Conversation Manifesto Nobody Knows Anything
If I Only Had 37 Days
The Only Life We Know
A Long Way Down
No Noble Savages
Figments of Reality
Too Far Ahead
The Rogue Animal
How the World Really Works:
If You Wanted to Sabotage the Elections
Collective Intelligence & Complexity
Ten Things I Wish I'd Learned Earlier
The Problem With Systems
Against Hope (Video)
The Admission of Necessary Ignorance
Several Short Sentences About Jellyfish
A Synopsis of 'Finding the Sweet Spot'
Learning from Indigenous Cultures
The Gift Economy
The Job of the Media
The Wal-Mart Dilemma
The Illusion of the Separate Self:
Happy Now?
This Creature
Did Early Humans Have Selves?
Nothing On Offer Here
Even Simpler and More Hopeless Than That
Glimpses
Fragments
What Happens in Vagus
We Have No Choice
Never Comfortable in the Skin of Self
Letting Go of the Story of Me
All There Is, Is This
A Theory of No Mind
Creative Works:
The Ever-Stranger (Poem)
The Fortune Teller (Short Story)
Non-Duality Dude (Play)
Your Self: An Owner's Manual (Satire)
All the Things I Thought I Knew (Short Story)
On the Shoulders of Giants (Short Story)
Calling the Cage Freedom (Short Story)
Rune (Poem)
Only This (Poem)
The Other Extinction (Short Story)
Invisible (Poem)
Disruption (Short Story)
A Thought-Less Experiment (Poem)
Speaking Grosbeak (Short Story)
The Only Way There (Short Story)
The Wild Man (Short Story)
Flywheel (Short Story)
The Opposite of Presence (Satire)
How to Make Love Last (Poem)
The Horses' Bodies (Poem)
Distracted (Short Story)
Worse, Still (Poem)
Conjurer (Satire)
A Conversation (Short Story)
Farewell to Albion (Poem)
My Other Sites
How would you (practically) use the wisdom of crowds to “solve” flu pandemic preparedness? Or is it just a silly question?I guess fluwikie.com (wiki) and fluwikie2.com (forum) just don’t cut it. We need something else. What would that “something else” look like?
(I wrote lugon off-line to say how much I admire fluwikie.com, and what an important informational role it provides. If you haven’t discovered it yet, check it out.)