When we learn things by studying or doing research, we perceive understanding as coming to us in step-like a-ha moments. I will argue that these moments happen more likely when we recognize (or map our observations to) specific patterns of explanation. The snag is, of course, that reality doesn’t always follow human-preferred patterns, so they […]
Category: Psychology
The eureka fallacy of symmetry
This post continues the theme of how quirks of the human psyche limit our advancement of knowledge—quirks that are very much avoidable if you are aware of them, but if you aren’t, they move the goalposts for scoring that Eureka feeling. I’ll entertain the hypothesis that if we are presented with a symmetrical, neatly structured […]
Salon des refusés: Foundational papers in complexity science
The Santa Fe Institute has launched an ambitious project in which leading complexity scientists comment on “foundational” papers. However, many of them are not foundational in the sense that they started a line of research that led to the complexity science of today; some of them are even foundational for lines of research that are rather distinct from complexity science. I […]
Signs ‘O’ the times
A double-bill blog post with snarky comments about two trending ideas that I’m not much of an expert on. The state of disruption In a much-discussed paper from the beginning of the year, Park, Leahey, and Funk proclaimed that science is becoming decreasingly disruptive. This was somehow seen as a worrying trend, but imagine the […]
Intro video to the history and ideas of complexity science and networks
I needed a video presenting the historical development of ideas behind the complexity and network science in 20 minutes—an impossible task of course (especially since I couldn’t spend too much time on prepping it). Anyway, someone out there could be interested, so here it is: Some credits not stated in the video: The starling murmuration […]
The ability to unfocus
(I’m sure there are tonnes of literature and science on this topic that I don’t know of, so the purpose of this blog post is to reveal my ignorance by thinking out loud 😊.) The ability to focus is such a universally esteemed virtue that there must be some catch. I came to believe it […]
Petter Holme 