antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 9:22 am on June 7, 2022

Demystifying systems change – practical action for social change Tuesday, 28 June, 2022 4pm UK time (via Microsoft Teams)

Academy for Social Justice

Academy Online Seminar

How do we instigate, nurture, and achieve systems change? How do we build momentum and shift systems that were previously thought to be too fixed or too big? What systems change methods can be used to achieve better outcomes for those experiencing multiple and complex needs (MCN)?

Join the Fulfilling Lives South East team as they unpack these questions and demonstrate the impact and legacy of the programme’s systems change work over the last 8 years, whilst highlighting the importance of working together in partnership.

In this free seminar, the team will share key highlights from their recently published Ripple Effect reports that take a deep dive into pragmatic approaches for nurturing systems change and shares their perspective on the foundations for systems thinking.

The speakers will also share how they put systems change into practice and draw attention to where they feel support systems still need to change to improve outcomes for people experiencing multiple disadvantage.

This event will be held online via Microsoft Teams from 16.00 to 17.15. For further details or to request your free seminar place please click here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/demystifying-systems-change-practical-action-for-social-change-registration-352859110097

PLEASE NOTE that places are limited so please be sure you can attend before booking. You must also be an Academy member in order to attend any events. If you are not yet a member you will be prompted to join when registering to attend this event.

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 3:58 am on June 7, 2022

Systems convening, systems thinking, systems practice – Monday 13 June 2022, 12:30pm UK time

chosen path

As I’m sending reminders to the 80 people (!) who have signed up for this short session, I thought I would remind people here, too.

So, this is the final reminder here that the session takes place next Monday, 13 June at 12:30pm UK time.

The signup link is athttps://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEudeGprD0vH9JKdOCaj7utfGUoM5AGVu-r

When you sign up you will get a personal link direct from Zoom – I don’t have access to this link (which may go to your spam), but if you have any problems joining, you can go direct to the signup page and sign up again – doing so after the start time should take you directly in to the zoom.

The session will be recorded and transcribed, and both will be shared with participants and publicly, please do not join if you aren’t comfortable with this.

We will use two tools during the session which are open now…

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antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:56 am on June 5, 2022

Improvisation Blog: The Cybernetics of the Trimtab Society

Saturday, 4 June 2022The Cybernetics of the Trimtab SocietyOver the last seven years, I’ve been heavily involved in a medical diagnostic project which unites human and machine judgement. This has always been cybernetic in my mind (and it was cybernetic insights which led to some pretty cool machine learning that sits behind it). It’s about to be commercialised which is very exciting, not least because the technology is applicable to fields far beyond medical diagnostics – education, management, organisational risk and public health are all within scope of potential application.
Continues in source: Improvisation Blog: The Cybernetics of the Trimtab Society

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 5:40 pm on June 3, 2022

The emergence of polarization in coevolving networks

Complexity Digest

Jiazhen Liu, Shengda Huang, Nathan Aden, Neil Johnson, Chaoming Song
Polarization is a ubiquitous phenomenon in social systems. Empirical studies show substantial evidence for opinion polarization across social media. Recent modeling works show qualitatively that polarization emerges in coevolving networks by integrating reinforcing mechanisms and network evolution. However, a quantitative and comprehensive theoretical framework capturing generic mechanisms governing polarization remains unaddressed. In this paper, we discover a universal scaling law for opinion distributions, characterized by a set of scaling exponents. These exponents classify social systems into polarization and depolarization phases. We find two generic mechanisms governing the polarization dynamics, and propose a coevolving framework that counts for opinion dynamics and network evolution simultaneously. We show analytically three different phases including polarization, partial polarization, and depolarization, and the corresponding phase diagram. In the polarized phase, our theory predicts that a bi-polarized community structure emerges naturally from the coevolving dynamics. These theoretical…

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antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 4:52 pm on May 31, 2022

Searching for Life, Mindful of Lyfe’s Possibilities

Complexity Digest

Searching for Life, Mindful of Lyfe’s Possibilities

by Michael L. Wong, Stuart Bartlett, Sihe Chen, and Louisa Tierney

We are embarking on a new age of astrobiology, one in which numerous interplanetary missions and telescopes will be designed, built, and launched with the explicit goal of finding evidence for life beyond Earth. Such a profound aim warrants caution and responsibility when interpreting and disseminating results. Scientists must take care not to overstate (or over-imply) confidence in life detection when evidence is lacking, or only incremental advances have been made. Recently, there has been a call for the community to create standards of evidence for the detection and reporting of biosignatures. In this perspective, we wish to highlight a critical but often understated element to the discussion of biosignatures: Life detection studies are deeply entwined with and rely upon our (often preconceived) notions of what life is, the origins of life…

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antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:14 pm on May 31, 2022

PRE-LAUNCH: Reclaiming Our Freedom and Accountability with Peter Block | The Great Community Collaborative Tomorrow, June 14:00pm – 5:30pm BST

PRE-LAUNCH: Reclaiming Our Freedom and Accountability with Peter BlockTomorrow, June 14:00pm – 5:30pm BSTZoom MeetingAdd to CalendarGoingMaybeNot Going31 members are goingThe last two years have put many of us in touch with our world differently. Many of us have been given a fresh opportunity to revisit the ways in which, and from where, we work. We are reconsidering the social contract. We are in touch newly with people from around the world. New movements are shaking up old norms. Reconciliation, restoration, and the common good are calling out for our attention.We can reclaim our capacity to produce our own wellbeing in our communities, workplaces, in our faith, schools, journalism, art, and architecture. Peter Block, author and convenor, suggests that most activists believe a change in leadership will change things. He doesn’t agree. Just as he believes the reader writes the book, so do the people create their leaders.Beginning this coming September, Peter will be alongside us for a year-long exploration of the world we live in now, what we don’t understand, and the philosophic insights that can guide us in producing together the world we wish to live in. For two hours on the first Wednesday of the month, we’ll put Peter on the Spot with what’s alive in our worlds and so catalyze lively reflection and dialogue amongst us.There is nothing as practical as a good theory. During our series, we will make visible where the common good is occurring right now, where the theory is in practice. All of this aids us in moving towards what is possible.Join us for this, the first of three FREE pre-launch conversations to hear more about our plans, reflect on possibilities, and to shape the conversations to come. Simply click on the ‘Going’ button above to RSVP, you will then have access the meeting link.
PRE-LAUNCH: Reclaiming Our Freedom and Accountability with Peter Block | The Great Community Collaborative

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 11:49 am on May 31, 2022

How the Brain ‘Constructs’ the Outside World – György Buzsáki

How the Brain ‘Constructs’ the Outside WorldNeural activity probes your physical surroundings to select just the information needed to survive and flourishBy György Buzsáki on June 1, 2022Scientific American June 2022 Issue
How the Brain ‘Constructs’ the Outside World – Scientific American

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 8:14 pm on May 30, 2022

The Purpose of Purposeful Entities in Purposive Systems:

Harish's Notebook - My notes... Lean, Cybernetics, Quality & Data Science.

In today’s post, I am looking at the idea of “purposeful” versus “purposive” in Systems Thinking. The two words are based on “purpose”. “Purposeful” means that the entity is autonomous and has freedom of choice. The entity is free to make their own rules, as the term “auto-nomous” means. “Purposive” on the other hand implies that the entity’s purpose is chosen by somebody else, and they do not have the freedom to make choices. I am very interested in the differences between purposeful and purposive, and very fascinated by the implication of purposeful entities in a “system”. If the purposeful entities are able to be autonomous, then the traditional viewpoints of systems thinking must be reevaluated. By “traditional systems thinking”, I am referring to the hard systems approach. This is the notion that there are real systems out there in the world that can be objectively modeled or designed where…

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antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 1:12 pm on May 30, 2022

Being a scholar-practitioner, humble inquiry, human and non-human systems – David Ing

Being a scholar-practitioner, humble inquiry, human and non-human systems May 30, 2022 daviding
Being a scholar-practitioner, humble inquiry, human and non-human systems – Coevolving Innovations

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 5:18 am on May 30, 2022

Business Value, Soccer Canteens, Engineer Retention, and the Bricklayer Fallacy

zwischenzugs

Having the privilege of working in software in the 2020s, I hear variations on the following ideas expressed frequently:

‘There must be some direct relationship between your work and customer value!’
‘The results of your actions must be measurable!’

These ideas manifest in statements like this, which sound very sensible and plausible:

‘This does not benefit the customer. This is not a feature to the customer. So we should not do it.’
‘We are not in the business of doing X, so should not focus on it. We are in the business of serving the customer’
‘This does not improve any of the key metrics we identified’

I want to challenge these ideas. In fact, I want to turn them on their head:

Many peoples’ work generate value by focussing on things that appear to have no measurable or apparently justifiable customer benefit.
Moreover, judgements on these matters are what…

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antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 6:35 pm on May 29, 2022

‘Through Her Eyes’ by CWiST ~ Jun 10 at 7 am PT, with Helen Sanson

‘Through Her Eyes’ by CWiST ~ Jun 10 at 7 am PT. Join Us!
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIpceuoqzotGN3MFzb5rFmHz7rK8nYBWoTZ

Message from CWIST:
We are pleased to invite you to our second in our series ‘Through Her Eyes’ (a CWiST Offering), in dialogue with Helen Sanson. Join us as we learn from Helen’s journey into Awareness Based Systems Thinking and gain an insight into her work with generative conversations.

About Helen
Helen is the founder of Forcera CIC, a consultancy that aims for change by using her passion for learning, systems and complexity thinking to build capacity and foster agency for social transformation and impact whilst appreciating the practical challenges. She believes in exploring ways to make power inclusive, so people’s voices are part of the decision-making process and they belong. Her interests lie in how societal structures and systems exacerbate existing inequalities by conceptualising how they occur to create social change. She brings various skills and experiences, including lived, to empower organisations and individuals through awareness-based systems thinking based on social science, active learning and participatory approaches. She enjoys facilitating space for engaging in generative conversations that explore the complexities of wicked problems that create uncertainties by reframing frustrations and disrupting issues to realise new ways of thinking, seeing, doing and being and reaching the root cause.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-sanson-874374150/)
www.forcera.org

You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: Jun 10, 2022 07:00 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada)Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIpceuoqzotGN3MFzb5rFmHz7rK8nYBWoTZ

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 2:02 pm on May 28, 2022

Roche – human biochemical pathways

Biochemical Pathways
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antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 11:04 am on May 25, 2022

Systemic Steering and Governance – Pino Villa

Systemic Steering and Governance
Systemic Steering and Governance – A viable system is any system organized in such a way as to meet the demands of surviving in a changing environment

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 5:01 pm on May 24, 2022

The games we play: critical complexity improves machine learning

Complexity Digest

Abeba Birhane, David J. T. Sumpter
When mathematical modelling is applied to capture a complex system, multiple models are often created that characterize different aspects of that system. Often, a model at one level will produce a prediction which is contradictory at another level but both models are accepted because they are both useful. Rather than aiming to build a single unified model of a complex system, the modeller acknowledges the infinity of ways of capturing the system of interest, while offering their own specific insight. We refer to this pragmatic applied approach to complex systems — one which acknowledges that they are incompressible, dynamic, nonlinear, historical, contextual, and value-laden — as Open Machine Learning (Open ML). In this paper we define Open ML and contrast it with some of the grand narratives of ML of two forms: 1) Closed ML, ML which emphasizes learning with minimal human input (e.g…

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antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 12:40 pm on May 24, 2022

Systems thinking for civil servants – GOV.UK

link:
Systems thinking for civil servants – GOV.UK

Clearly a lot of work has gone into this. No comment from me, for now.

Guidance
Systems thinking for civil servantsHow to use systems thinking to drive improved outcomes in complex situations.
From:Government Office for Science
Published 24 May 2022
Systems thinking for civil servants – GOV.UK