Perhaps our inability to understand groups is what gets us into trouble. Kellyn and I were talking about this on the way back from the Freedom Party: people seem to want desperately for there to be conspiracies and deities, because they see only meaninglessness in the complex dynamic systems that actually run the world. We see minds and intentions instead of chaos. But obviously many of us get along perfectly well as atheists, seeing the beautiful interlocking of systems and their emergent properties, studying their balancing points. As long as we don’t go so far into reductionism that we fail to see the functioning whole, I think we can definitely use what rationality we do possess to understand our own irrationality, and in turn the weirdness of groups. Between Gavin and the VBC, I’ve certainly heard a lot about community theory as of late, and it gives me hope that we can get somewhere with it!

Academician Prokhor Zakharov “The Feedback Principle”

Once a man has changed the relationship between himself and his environment, he cannot return to the blissful ignorance he left. Motion, of necessity, involves a change in perspective.

Commissioner Pravin Lal “A Social History of Planet”

Alpha Centauri is the reason I not only haven’t overcome the three-hour time difference, but am running on something approximating Hawaii time.

I do like the iterative concept: first you have to understand the world, then you have to understand the people who understand the world, then you have to understand… groups of people? Did I ever have you read Bellwether? Also, as me about monkeys next time we talk.