[Best I have found for a good discussoin of how ‘affordances’ were intended compared to the common use]

BI 223 Vicente Raja: Ecological Psychology Motifs in Neuroscience

BI 223 Vicente Raja: Ecological Psychology Motifs in Neuroscience | Brain Inspired

Here is a ChatGPT summary of the content and core points

Podcast summary

Vicente Raja is arguing for an ecological neuroscience: a neuroscience that takes body, movement, and environment as constitutive, not decorative. The brain shouldn’t be studied as if cognition happens in a skull-bound computer, then gets applied to the world. Cognition happens through organism-environment coupling.

His orthodox Gibsonian claim is that affordances are perceived through ecological information. An affordance isn’t just ‘a possible behaviour’. It’s a property of the environment relative to an organism, specified by information in stimulation. Perceiving it means detecting that information.

He accepts that ‘affordance’ has escaped ecological psychology. In design, robotics, and neuroscience, it now often just means ‘opportunity for interaction’. Don Norman’s door example is the clean case: don’t put a pull-handle on a door that should be pushed. But Raja says that’s already no longer Gibsonian in the strict sense.

A large chunk is about ‘motifs’. Raja’s idea is that scientific fields rely on vague but productive core concepts: ‘representation’, ‘encoding’, ‘affordance’, ‘algorithm’, and so on. They aren’t precise definitions. They are flexible explanatory patterns. Their vagueness is partly why they survive and travel between fields. Annoying, but useful.

He contrasts mainstream cognitive neuroscience with ecological psychology. Mainstream models often assume poor stimulation plus internal inference: the brain adds prior knowledge to make perception work. Ecological psychology starts from the opposite bet: the stimulus is rich, and the task is to identify the information already available in the organism-environment relation.

His radio metaphor matters. The radio doesn’t reconstruct the song from scratch; the information is in the signal. The organism still does work, but not the same kind of work. The brain doesn’t have to rebuild the world internally every moment. It helps couple movement to meaningful information.

He pushes neuroscientists to take the stimulus seriously. Don’t just stick people in fMRI scanners and show them pictures, then assume you’ve studied perception. Real objects, real movement, and naturalistic environments matter. He cites work where real objects and pictures produce different effects.

Resonance is his preferred bridge concept. Ecological information constrains organism-environment dynamics, and may also constrain neural dynamics. So the brain is not representing the world in the usual computational sense; it is resonating with, or being tuned to, meaningful environmental structure.

He doesn’t think ecological psychology explains everything. It’s strong for perception-action in natural environments. Scaling it up to reading, language, social cognition, and richer mental life is still a problem. He’s wary of ecological psychology becoming a theory of everything. Good. The world has enough imperial theories wearing a borrowed hat.

The plant behaviour section extends the argument. Plants move. Climbing plants change their movement patterns when a support pole is nearby, even before touching it. Raja’s lab is studying whether this resembles goal-directed behaviour, and whether plants are detecting environmental possibilities for action in a minimal sense.

Affordances in brief

Colloquially, ‘affordance’ usually means ‘what something lets you do’. A handle affords pulling. A button affords pressing. A website affords sharing. This is the Norman/design use. Useful, but flattened.

Properly, in the ecological sense Raja defends, an affordance is not just a feature or option. It is an organism-relative possibility for action, specified by ecological information. The key triad is:

environment,
organism,
information specifying possible action.

So: a pole affords climbing for a climbing plant, not for a toaster. A chair affords sitting for some bodies, not all bodies. A handle may afford pulling, but only within a learned, embodied, practical world.

The mistake is to treat affordances as object properties. Better: affordances are relational, embodied, and perceptible action-possibilities in a structured environment.

Neuroboros podcast – Episode 1

Sean Manion

Apr 07, 2025

Welcome to the Neuroboros Podcast!

Ami Elliott and I recorded this last year as a first installment of a podcast for our Neuroboros Society. I’m consolidating and sharing some past content from elsewhere (and unpublished) under this account to help align a foundation for new aspects of the Unjournaling that are underway.

Thanks for your patience, pardon our dust, etc.

Our conversation in this episode covers the beginnings of cybernetics in the US, from Norbert Wiener in WWII through the Macy Conferences (pictured below in slightly tongue-in-cheek style. There was a running thread of curiosity about mysticism and unexplained phenomenon in both US and British cybernetics origins – though we haven’t delved into this much yet) in the late 40s and early 50s. This period of cybernetics was one of the primary precursors to modern AI engineering which kicked off later in the mid 1950s.

Neuroboros is a podcast by Sean Manion and Ami Elliott, two neuroscientists working in tech. The focus is the limitations that have been created with the closed loop thinking of brain-as-computer and computer-as-brain, along with how we got here and how we can break out of this loop.

Episode 1: Cybernetics & Wiener Walks is a look at the early years of cybernetics and its primary founder, Norbert Wiener.

Cybernetics & Wiener Walks

Cybernetics & Wiener Walks – by Sean Manion

https://seanmanion.substack.com/p/cybernetics-and-wiener-walks

Neuroboros Podcast – Episode 2: The Ratio Club & British Cybernetics

https://seanmanion.substack.com/p/neuroboros-podcast-episode-2-the

Neuroboros, Episode 4: Using Blockchain and cybernetics to fix science

https://seanmanion.substack.com/p/world-of-warcraft-for-science

Warm Data

warm data | Information that is Alive

A very good implementation of LLMs – submit betwen a para and 75,000 words and get useful feedback.

SECOND ORDER SCIENCE FOUNDATION
How Would Lissack Respond?
Submit your writing and receive AI-powered intellectual feedback grounded in the frameworks of Professor Michael Lissack — complexity scientist, philosopher of science, and second-order cybernetician.

How Would Lissack Respond? — myresearchtool.com

Metaphorum

Wed 6 MayWebinar: ‘URUguay CIBernético: Successfully implementing Stafford Beer’s ideas’ by Victor GanonParticipate

Wed 13 MayWebinar: ‘Hands-on VSM: What Works – and What Doesn’t’, by Dr. Felix SchebSelect tickets

Wed 10 JunWebinar: ‘Elements of a reflexive turn’ by Luis KleinParticipate

Thu 17 Sep – Sat 19 SepMetaphorum 2026 Conference: ‘A 100 Years of Stafford Beer: Celebrating his life, his legacy and beyond’Buy tickets

IVO VELITCHKOV AND JOHN GRANT
MAY 03, 2026

In all socio-technical systems, there is a tension between autonomy and cohesion. Every system finds a way to deal with this tension, or it collapses if it fails to do so for long.

This essay is part of the Autonomy and Cohesion series, which includes an earlier one-dimensional version of the Cohesion Spectrum.

Cohesion Spectrum v.2 – by Ivo Velitchkov and John Grant

The modern western left’s relationship to cybernetics fits three buckets

(1) #Walerie on X: “Great Q. The modern western left’s relationship to cybernetics fits three buckets: 1. “what’s that? robot arms?” — by far the most common. I thought this too. Most people have simply never encountered the word outside of sci-fi. 2. “behaviourist 💥 , technocratic https://t.co/ajtFLVokNc” / X

[Spotted by Ian Glendinning – not yet available other than on the website and in ‘BBC Sounds’ app. Interesting, not perfect, intriguing reading list… always my favourite show, I had secretly hoped to replace Melvyn Bragg but he fooled me by retiring early 😉 ]

In Our Time

Radio 4,·
30 Apr 2026,·
52 mins
Cybernetics
In Our Time

Misha Glenny and guests discuss cybernetics – the field of study which gave us the prefix ‘cyber’ and helped lay the foundations for the information age. After the Second World War, cybernetics emerged as the study of communication, feedback, and control in both animals and machines. Cybernetics was first defined in 1948 by the American mathematician Norbert Wiener (1894-1964) and aimed to find a shared universal language which could be used across disciplines. The name drew on an Ancient Greek word for steersman, the person who stands at the helm of a ship to steer or govern its course. Cybernetics saw the world as systems which used loops of information and feedback to adjust their own course of action. Those ideas could be applied to anything from thermostats to the human brain, and arguably laid foundations for the information age.

With

Jacob Ward
Historian of science and technology at Maastricht University

Jon Agar
Professor of Science and Technology Studies at University College London

And

Orit Halpern
Lighthouse Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures at Technische Universität Dresden

Producer: Martha Owen

Reading list:

Peter Galison, ‘The ontology of the enemy: Norbert Wiener and the cybernetic vision’ (Critical Inquiry 21, 1994)

Slava Gerovitch, From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics (MIT Press, 2004)

Orit Halpern, Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason (Duke University Press, 2015)

Orit Halpern, Robert Mitchell and Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan, The Smartness Mandate: Notes toward a Critique (Grey Room 68, 2017)

Orit Halpern, Financializing Intelligence: On the Integration of Machines and Markets (e-flux, March 2023)

N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (University of Chicago Press, 1999)

Steve J. Heims, John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death (MIT Press, 1980)

Ronald R. Kline, The Cybernetics Moment: Or Why We Call Our Age The Information Age (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015)

Eden Medina, Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile (MIT Press, 2011)

David A. Mindell, Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004)

Andrew Pickering, The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future (University of Chicago Press, 2010)

Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (first published 1950; Da Capo Press, 1988)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios production

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

In Our Time – Cybernetics – BBC Sounds

Vicky Chuqiao Yang https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6111-3699 vcyang@mit.edu, James Holehouse jamesholehouse1@gmail.com, Hyejin Youn https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6190-4412, +3 , and Christopher P. Kempes https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1622-9761Authors Info & Affiliations

Edited by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Northeastern University, Boston, MA; received April 21, 2025; accepted January 8, 2026

Scaling laws for function diversity and specialization across socioeconomic and biological complex systems
Vicky Chuqiao Yang https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6111-3699 vcyang@mit.edu, James Holehouse jamesholehouse1@gmail.com, Hyejin Youn https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6190-4412, +3 , and Christopher P. Kempes https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1622-9761Authors Info & Affiliations
Edited by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Northeastern University, Boston, MA; received April 21, 2025; accepted January 8, 2026

Scaling laws for function diversity and specialization across socioeconomic and biological complex systems | PNAS

Significance

Diversification and specialization are central to complex adaptive systems, yet overarching principles across domains remain elusive. We introduce a general theory that unifies diversity and specialization across disparate systems, including microbes, federal agencies, companies, universities, and cities, characterized by two key parameters. We show from extensive data that function diversity scales with system size as a sublinear power law-resembling Heaps’ law-in all but cities, where it is logarithmic. Our theory explains both behaviors and suggests that function creation depends on system goals and structure: federal agencies tend to ensure functional coverage; cities slow new function growth as old ones expand, and cells occupy an intermediate position. Once functions are introduced, their growth follows a remarkably universal pattern across all systems.

Abstract

Function diversity, the range of tasks individuals perform, and specialization, the distribution of function abundances, are fundamental to complex adaptive systems. In the absence of overarching principles, these properties have appeared domain-specific. Here, we introduce an empirical framework and a mathematical model for the diversification and specialization of functions across disparate systems, including bacteria, federal agencies, universities, corporations, and cities. We find that the number of functions grows sublinearly with system size, with exponents from 0.35 to 0.57, consistent with Heaps’ law. In contrast, cities exhibit logarithmic scaling. To explain these empirical findings, we generalize the Yule-Simon model by introducing two key parameters: a diversification parameter that characterizes how existing functions inhibit the creation of new ones and a specialization parameter that describes how a function’s attractiveness depends on its abundance. Our model enables cross-system comparisons, from microorganisms to metropolitan areas. The analysis suggests that what drives the creation of new functions depends on the system’s goals and structure: federal agencies tend to ensure comprehensive coverage of necessary functions; cities tend to slow the creation of new occupations as existing ones expand; and cells occupy an intermediate position. Once functions are introduced, their growth follows a remarkably universal pattern across all systems.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2509729123

From cells to companies: Study shows how diversity scales within complex systems

https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/new-study-helps-explain-how-complex-systems-grow

Donald has done a NotebookLM video:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/donaldidavies_cybernetics-and-complexity-revisited-conditions-ugcPost-7455210560146706432-aNEa?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAACuq-oBecVFDW6PCf3lkoG-peMeuLBeoho

LinkedIn post giving context:
📘 What does Cybernetics and Complexity Revisited offer the reader?

(1) Post | LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/donaldidavies_what-does-cybernetics-and-complexity-revisited-share-7455125087386599424-lzUU/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAASMiF4B058q_WYVs6PLwKLgGMSGgAHXBy4

the book:

1926 — 2026

The ConferenceThe DocumentaryThe Book

A CENTENARY CELEBRATION

100 YEARS OF
STAFFORD BEER
1926 — 2026
THE CONFERENCE
THE DOCUMENTARY
THE BOOK

Stafford Beer Centenary | Conference, Book and Documentary

discussion at

The Infrastructure of Jeffrey Epstein’s Power
The journalist Anand Giridharadas examines the power and influence that Jeffrey Epstein brokered and that the latest batch of Epstein files puts on display.
February 13, 2026

Opinion | The Infrastructure of Jeffrey Epstein’s Power – The New York Times