Participatory Inquiry, episode 7: Chaos, Trust & Flow
Card: Me
In a network, your intuition is a dynamic,
mostly self-organising handshake protocol
between conscious and subconscious.
Our conscious minds can process ten bits per second. Our whole mind can process ten million bits per second. Our handshake protocol is hard at work translating back and forth every moment. Or, when not hard at work, constellated, configured differently, enacting a different place — playing, flowing…
Card: Cards
Use the cards to explore new perspectives
and gain insight around a chosen question.
Card: Cards
Cards are affordances. Play, insight, solving for
adjacent possible, understanding, story, narrative
(shared understanding), problem space turned
possibility space exploration and collaborative
meaning-making affordances.
Card: Card Deck
A deck of 500 cards, with
120k two-card and 21M
three-card combinations.
Card: We
In a network, chaos,
trust and flow.
… use the cards to explore new perspectives
and gain insight around a chosen question …
Card: Possibility Space
A problem space turned possibility space through
the recursive interaction of genuine possibility and
transiently actualized order in light of emergent
and unfolding paths to preferable outcomes.
… observe how insights, your own and
others, help illumine a different path …
Card: Trust
Trust your insight.
Move differently.
… play at individual generativity, small group genius scope, relational meaning-making connectivity, social machine scale and social social media reach beyond personal ken comfort zone grasp …
Card: Intuition
Our minds performing pattern
matching, combining future
worries and past experiences
in light of present mindfulness.
Card: UPOODDEAU
Understand, Perceive, Observe, Orient,
Design, Decide, Enact, Act and Unfold.
Enact and Perceive
“We are prone to overestimate how much
we understand about the world and to
underestimate the role of chance in events.”
— Daniel Kahneman
Perceive and Observe
“This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with
a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead,
usually without noticing the substitution.”
— Daniel Kahneman
Observe and Orient
“The confidence that individuals have in their beliefs
depends mostly on the quality of the story they can
tell about what they see, even if they see little.”
— Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
Social challenges like reading pose intractable conflicts amidst a growing diversity, incommensurability and conflict between tribal, institutional, market-swayed and networks of interest and practice, beliefs and behavior.
Reading books, articles and the situation, can be pursued in ways conducive to leveling up our social games, from OODA, Observe, Orient, Decide and Act (two fighters in a dog-fight), to UPOODDEAU, Understand, Perceive, Observe, Orient, Design, Decide, Enact, Act and Unfold, a generative sequence and convivial superset to OODA.
With both the premise and our re-orienting ourselves, co-evolving.
Orient and Decide
“Our comforting conviction that the world
makes sense rests on a secure foundation:
our almost unlimited ability to ignore
our ignorance.”
― Daniel Kahneman
Forces & Building Blocks
Data
“We build and maintain an open repository of web crawl data that can be accessed and analyzed by anyone.”
http://commoncrawl.org/
This turned out to form part of what is now known as LLM’s.
Information
“A difference which makes a difference, and it is able to make a difference because the neural pathways along which it travels and is continually transformed are themselves provided with energy. The pathways are ready to be triggered. We may even say that the question is already implicit in them.”
— Gregory Bateson
The Shortcut, The 21C Challenge: Power
“But the myth of power is, of course, a very powerful myth, and probably most people in this world more or less believe in it. It is a myth, which, if everybody believes in it, becomes to that extent self-validating. But it is still epistemological lunacy and leads inevitably to various sorts of disaster.”
“What is true is that the idea of power corrupts. Power corrupts most rapidly those who believe in it, and it is they who will want it most. Obviously, our democratic system tends to give power to those who hunger for it and gives every opportunity to those who don’t want power to avoid getting it. Not a very satisfactory arrangement if power corrupts those who believe in it and want it.”
“Perhaps there is no such thing as unilateral power. After all, the man “in power” depends on receiving information all the time from outside. He responds to that information just as much as he “causes” things to happen…it is an interaction, and not a lineal situation.”
— Gregory Bateson
Knowledge
“We are most of us governed
by epistemologies that we
know to be wrong.”
— Gregory Bateson
Dynamic Story/Narrative Re-alignment
How network dynamics co-evolve with platform (knowledge) flows and design synthesis, are three literacies still in their infancy.
Cramming living things into boxes
- An overemphasis on design synthesis risks doing away with depth.
- An overemphasis on network dynamics risks amplifying competitive strategies and red queen scenarios.
- An overemphasis on platform flows risks getting too dependent on (too) big data. (Warm Data to the rescue?)
Paths I’m exploring: semiosphere slingshots, navigating our Scylla, Charybdis & Caliban of networks, platforms and design through select, choice use of abductive sensemaking, participatory inquiry, generativity, and story/narrative (re)alignment.
Knowledge
“Information that changes something or somebody — either
by becoming grounds for action, or by making an individual
(or an institution) capable of different or more effective action.”
— Peter Drucker
Card: Social Learning
In a network, we scale to thriving community
by putting knowledge to convivial use,
at the right time, in the right place.
Card: Applied Social Learning
In a network, the best place to store
knowledge is in other people.
How to enact applied social learning
Ichigo Ichie
One meeting, one opportunity. Don’t just meet people, be there. Problem space turned possibility space and possibility space turned opportunity space and opportunity space turned value space.
Structure
TIMN: Tribe, Institution, Market, Network
Process
Conversations: complex responsive processes
Generative Review
flow = structure x process
“x” = patterning in general and understanding, understanding understanding(multi-order (design) cybernetics) and shared understanding(taking thought with generative closure in mind), in particular
Roadmapping
Play^n, enact, sense and respond in light of mapping in service to play-spaces, media turned social social media, sensemaking and metalogue as a guiding principle, practice and process throughout online conversations in light of conversational intelligence turned (response)ability.
Strategic Outcome
Ideas co-evolving with Networks, Platforms & Connected Intelligence.
All Together Now: Applying the Above to Governance
In a network, in transition, we need protocols on at least three different meta-levels. One of the meta-levels would be between ritual and the flow of presence. Another protocol would be between metalogue and media. Having those two would make a difference, although there’s many more we could design and use.
A third one which is probably pivotal, simple enough to posit, but hell to design and even worse to implement: a realignment protocol between institutions, markets and commons. All three protocols operate and flow differently through time.
(addition 2024 Mar 16, part of a prompt and Gemini response thread)
John Kellden:
In a network, the more we become comfortable with thinking outside (however we define what is inside the box, inside our personal ken comfort zone) the better our thoughts will travel.
Careful though, you need to fine-tune your umwelt escape velocity, lest you provoke too much of a collective narrative immune reaction from others, aka, others trying to “correct” you for being “weird”.
We need to pursue individuation, and we eventually need to put our heart into it.
However, this always comes at a cost.
Others, not yet ready to become the fullest versions of themselves, will try to keep everyone “on the level” with whichever mix of social constructs currently make up the more or less prefab, more or less ordained sensegiving, whether its called vibe, zeitgeist, culture, values or society.
Gemini:
This is a great passage about the importance of independent thinking and the challenges that come with it within social groups. Here’s a breakdown of the key points:
Benefits of Thinking Outside the Box:
Improved Thought Flow:
The more comfortable you are challenging your assumptions (the “box”), the freer your ideas can travel and connect in new ways.
Challenges of Innovation:
Social Resistance:
When your ideas stray too far from the group’s current understanding (the “collective narrative”), people might try to “correct” you, fearing disruption to the social order. This can be discouraging.
The Importance of Individuality:
Individuation:
The passage emphasizes the need for personal growth (“becoming the fullest versions of ourselves”). This often involves independent thinking and exploring ideas outside the norm.
Passion and Commitment:
Putting your “heart” into your ideas suggests a strong personal connection and a willingness to see them through, even in the face of resistance.
The Cost of Innovation:
Social Friction:
People who challenge the status quo can be seen as disruptive or “weird.” This can lead to social friction and a sense of isolation.
Maintaining Balance:
Social Constructs:
The passage acknowledges the importance of social structures (“vibe, zeitgeist, culture, values, society”). These constructs provide a sense of belonging and shared understanding. However, blind adherence to them can stifle innovation.
Overall, the passage encourages a balance between independent thinking and social connection. It emphasizes the importance of embracing individuality while remaining mindful of the social context.
(continuing with the original generative closure)
We made it? What happened? We happened
Given our collective task is to hand over thriving, convivial, sustainable societies and communities to our children, seven generations to come, what learning do we need to embrace, in order to entrust a context that will ensure a necessary and sufficient mutuality and learning, informing our protocols, guiding our thinking, whether fast or slow?
Participatory Inquiry, episode 7: Chaos, Structure & Flow
This post, revised here and there, as well as adding the below,
2024 April 29
Cards for Insight: LLM’s
Cards, patterns of play and card-play conversations combine,
facilitating exploring paths between worthwhile dilemmas,
generative center questions and preferable outcomes.
There’s around 500 cards in the source deck, with more than 120k
two-card and 21M three-card combinations. With four-, five- and
six-card combinations mapping to LLM’s, Large Language Models, facilitating human associations(card-play) combining with
AI-assisted annotations(prompts and responses).
Think cards with an underlying pattern language and with an underlying Modular Process Onto-Epistemology forming part of an Online Commonplace, with a searchable Knowledge Repository.
