In other words, the criterion of truth is reduced absolutely to the immediate validity of the application... Percy Bridgman's elaboration of Operationalism, the development of Pragmatism which says that a concept is not meaningful unless it can be reduced to a sequence of human actions. http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/p/r.htm#pragmatism (more)

Kevin Carson and Vinay Gupta hope that Cognitive Dissonance will bring down BigWorld. (more)

No, not "evil" or "bitchin'": each attempt to create a solution changes the understanding of the problem. (more)

Science Fiction Writer and Futurist Karl Schroeder on Digital Self-Sovereignty at OODAcon 2022. Find below a transcript of OODA CEO Matt Devost’s conversation with Schroeder about his book Stealing Worlds and how he integrated his ideas about self-sovereignty into his worldbuilding for the book (more)

Welcome to Viv Games -- Small but Mighty (more)

Culture-accepted cluster of Game Rules. Term often used by Robert Anton Wilson, incl (more)

A kakistocracy (/kækɪˈstɒkrəsi/, /kækɪsˈtɒ-/) is a government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens.[1]: 54 [2][3] The word was coined as early as the seventeenth century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy#Usage (more)

Ed Yourdon's new edition of Death March Projects has a chapter on Critical Chain Planning. Excellent ranting about Multi Tasking. (more)

another Christopher Alexander book

This will be the focal page for some linked excerpts of A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. The scope ranges from room details to Society Design. You can free the full-text by buying the book or going to his site. (Some excerpts are re-worded a bit to directly use WikiNames instead of making those pattern names as redundant labels in the text. So the wording here may be a bit less elegant at times...) There's a strong SmallWorld flavor here. (more)

Pathologies is synonymous with diseases. The suffix "path" is used to indicate a disease, e.g. psychopath. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological (more)

On Iterative and Incremental Development: A Brief History. We chose a chronology of IID projects and approaches rather than a deep comparative analysis. (more)

Money Is Like Gasoline During A Road Trip, Tim O'Reilly says. "You don't want to run out of gas on your trip, but you're not doing a tour of gas stations. You have to pay attention to money, but it shouldn't be about the money." (2010-05-01) Tim Oreilly The Oracle Of Silicon Valley (more)

Deming talk: Does anybody give a hoot about profit? On the afternoon of 11 July 1990, Dr W Edwards Deming gave a short presentation to some 25 executives from major European companies. This article provides an edited transcript of that presentation and the subsequent Question and Response Session. The presentation was structured around Dr Deming’s paper “A System of Profound Knowledge” (May 1990). (more)

Matt Southey: A Brief History of Accelerationism. “Accelerationism” is a deeply confused term. As a philosophical category, it dates to 2008, and yet it has already become overloaded with conflicting meanings. Depending on the context, it refers to a capitalist ideology, a communist theory of change, and a form of white-nationalist terrorism. (more)

Neo-Reactionary, aka NRx, Dark Enlightenment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? is a 2009 book by British philosopher Mark Fisher. It explores Fisher's concept of "capitalist realism", which he describes as "the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it."[1] The book investigates what Fisher describes as the widespread effects of neoliberal ideology on popular culture, work, education, and mental health in contemporary society. The subtitle refers to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's pro-market slogan "There is no alternative". Capitalist Realism was an unexpected success and has influenced a range of writers... The name itself is a play on the term "socialist realism"... "Capitalist realism as I understand it cannot be confined to art or to the quasi-propagandistic way in which advertising functions. It is more like a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action."... Fisher classifies the current state of capitalist realism in the neoliberal system in the following terms: "The only powerful agents influencing politicians and managers in education are business interests. It's become far too easy to ignore workers and, partly because of this, workers feel increasingly helpless and impotent. The concerted attack on labor unions by neoliberal interest groups, together with the shift from a Fordist to a post-Fordist organisation of the economy – the move towards casualisation, just-in-time production, globalization – has eroded the power base of unions [and thus the labor force]." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_Realism

Mark Fisher (11 July 1968 – 13 January 2017), also known under his blogging alias k-punk, was an English writer, music critic, political and cultural theorist, philosopher, and teacher based in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He initially achieved acclaim for his blogging as k-punk in the early 2000s, and was known for his writing on radical politics, music, and popular culture. Fisher published several books, including the unexpected success Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (2009), and contributed to publications such as The Wire, Fact, New Statesman and Sight & Sound. He was also the co-founder of Zero Books, and later Repeater Books. After years intermittently struggling with depression, Fisher died by suicide in January 2017, shortly before the publication of The Weird and the Eerie (2017). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fisher

The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) was an experimental cultural theorist collective formed in late 1995 at Warwick University, England[1] and gradually separated from academia until it dissolved in 2003. It garnered reputation for its idiosyncratic and surreal "theory-fiction" which incorporated cyberpunk and Gothic horror, and its work has since had an online cult following related to the rise in popularity of accelerationism. The CCRU are strongly associated with their former leading members, Sadie Plant, Mark Fisher and Nick Land.[2][3] The CCRU's work is characterized by loose, abstract theoretical writing combining elements of cyberpunk and Gothic horror with critical theory, esotericism, numerology and demonology, which often interplay in their deployment of occult systems and surreal narratives.[4] One of the CCRU's predominant ideas is hyperstition, which Nick Land referred to as "the experimental (techno-)science of self-fulfilling prophecies" where, by means of esoteric cybernetic principles, certain ideas and beliefs that are initially incomprehensible (akin to superstitions) can covertly circulate through reality and establish cultural feedback loops that then drastically meld society (meme magic?), which they also referred to in total as "cultural production".[5] The CCRU's esoteric numerological cybernetic system for comprehending hyperstition, the Numogram, often appears in their writings alongside its circulatory zones and their respective demons.[4] In addition to drawing inspiration from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, to which references can be found in the CCRU's writings, the collective drew inspiration from writers including H. P. Lovecraft, William Gibson, J. G. Ballard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Octavia Butler, William S. Burroughs, Carl Jung and various other sources related to critical theory, science fiction, anthropology and nanotechnology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetic_Culture_Research_Unit

Much of the study of memes focuses on groups of memes called meme complexes, or memeplexes. Like the gene complexes found in biology, memeplexes are groups of memes that are often found present in the same individual. Applying the theory of Universal Darwinism, memeplexes group together because memes will copy themselves more successfully when they are "teamed up". Examples include sets of memes like singing and guitar playing, or the Christmas tree and Christmas dinner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memeplex (more)