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Cultural and aesthetic ‘facts’ are as real as any ‘objective’ truths. They’re just centred on different kinds of meaning. Trivialising them because they ‘go against’ the evidence is failing to recognise what evidence they care about.

Aesthetics are facts too

Article

Facts are just a special kind of belief… Because there isn’t really anything tangible that distinguishes a belief from a fact. Cultural and aesthetic beliefs are facts too, in a certain light—we’re tracing the fuzzy boundaries of our religions, theories, and convictions to put certain meaningful aspects of the world at the centre. They’re just as true as the facts that are more stable, and objective. They’re just centring on something different.
Cultural and aesthetic ‘facts’ are as real as any ‘objective’ truths. They’re just centred on different kinds of meaning. Trivialising them because they ‘go against’ the evidence is failing to recognise what evidence they care about.
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collective-architecture gratification on-aesthetics on-being-fruitful on-culture thought-architecture

article

The ‘Great Man’ theory of history has the history of ideas moved forward by individuals. But by thinking of these as ‘Great Ideas’, or better ‘spirits’ of ideas, we’re encouraged to examine their motivations, which is surprisingly effective.

Great Spirits of History

Article

There’s this quote that floats around sometimes. It goes something like:‘If you don’t do the thinking, the thinking will be done for you’. This is usually presented like a bad thing, but really it’s often the only way to navigate the complexity of the world. Here’s one little tool for doing just that.
The ‘Great Man’ theory of history has the history of ideas moved forward by individuals. But by thinking of these as ‘Great Ideas’, or better ‘spirits’ of ideas, we’re encouraged to examine their motivations, which is surprisingly effective.
Read this article

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betterment gratification on-(un)happiness on-culture on-politics-and-power on-thinking-and-reasoning thought-architecture

article

Fringe theories always seem to cluster together. It seems weird, but mainstream theories also do, we just don’t often examine them. Examining why different theory stacks arise reveals much about our biases, ideologies, and the influence of community-based knowledge.

Ideologies stack

Article

There’s a fairly well known observation that fringe or conspiracy theories ‘stack’. If I’m the kind of person who suspects we never landed on the moon, then others are much more likely to assume I harbour doubts about who shot JFK, or concern myself over the ‘real’ motives around the public health response to the Covid-19 pandemic. But really, all theories ‘stack’ in a similar kind of way. Mainstream ones too. What I think makes these stacks interesting is looking at just what motivates these different stacks. When we compare those motivations to our own, we can learn something valuable about ourselves. Then we can learn more by asking why different stacks look different. Let me show you what I mean.
Fringe theories always seem to cluster together. It seems weird, but mainstream theories also do, we just don’t often examine them. Examining why different theory stacks arise reveals much about our biases, ideologies, and the influence of community-based knowledge.
Read this article

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betterment collective-architecture connection on-culture on-thinking-and-reasoning thought-architecture

article

The obsession over objectivity is a confusion of two things. There’s rationality, the desire to be less biased. Then there’s truth which is going to be necessarily biased toward whatever aspect of the world we’re trying to understand. In both cases objectivity is irrelevant.

The Trouble With Objectivity

Article

I reckon that in most cases we never really have access to the truth. We only have access to the stuff our bodies allow us to perceive. Instead, what we do is we map what we do know about the world based on what we need to achieve in the world. Facts are not really truths, but reflections of our worldly needs. Not everyone agrees with me though. In fact, there’s a lot of people who are rather obsessed with getting at the objective truth. I think that, for the most part, these people are confused about what they’re doing. Let me tell you why.
The obsession over objectivity is a confusion of two things. There’s rationality, the desire to be less biased. Then there’s truth which is going to be necessarily biased toward whatever aspect of the world we’re trying to understand. In both cases objectivity is irrelevant.
Read this article

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betterment collective-architecture connection gratification on-(un)happiness on-ethics on-the-nature-of-things on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture thought-architecture

article

Leadership consulting proposes to fix leaders, but because we can confuse ‘making leaders feel good’ with ‘making leaders better’ it usually fails. It doesn’t have to though: just take the extra step from ‘collective vision’ to ‘collective norms’.

Leadership consulting is usually more 'feel good' than 'do good'

Article

Leadership transformation is obviously where the best money is to be made. It’s very easy to maximise profit margin on “making executives less fucked somehow”. Let me show you how, drawing on my own three year adventure in sustainability leadership transformation. Then let me show you how you actually could have an impact, instead.
Leadership consulting proposes to fix leaders, but because we can confuse ‘making leaders feel good’ with ‘making leaders better’ it usually fails. It doesn’t have to though: just take the extra step from ‘collective vision’ to ‘collective norms’.
Read this article

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betterment collective-architecture connection on-being-fruitful on-leadership somatic-architecture wealth-architecture
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