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Trust and the competition delusion: A new frontier for political and economic...
The Griffith Review has just published a substantial essay of mine that I’ve been working on for some time. I reproduce the introductory section below after which you’ll have to hightail it to their...
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Intellectual authoritarianism: The Golden Age of Female Philosophy Edition
I do think that in normal times a lot of good female thinking is wasted because it simply doesn’t get heard. Mary Midgley I’ve written about the blokey intellectual authoritarianism of economics on...
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The ghost of Descartes: Economics, purposes, perspectives and practical...
Minds are not for thinking, traditionally conceived, but for doing, for getting things done in the world in real time Wilson and Foglia, “Embodied Cognition“, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I...
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Vale Dr Homer Rieith
Dr Homer Rieth, the subject of a marvellous profile by Earshot on Radio National has died. It’s an amazing story of a true philosopher, at least as suggested by the etymology of the word as a lover of...
View ArticleHierarchy and generative orders: Theorising the generative order: Part One
Part One To command nature, we must obey it Francis Bacon, 1624 (or thereabouts) Hierarchies and Generative orders A great theme running through economic and political theory is the distinction between...
View ArticleThe Generative Order: Part Two is up
Just letting folks know that Part Two of the Generative order is up now added to part one. One part to go. Comments welcome.
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Conservative, liberal, social democrat 2.0
Hats off to Joseph Walker who’s podcasting up a storm at The Jolly Swagman (Yes, the title gave me the wrong idea too.) Anyway, I often find long-form podcasts rather tedious (except where I’m being...
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Getting the right decision democratically – by John Burnheim
In many areas of policy, particularly where relatively homogeneous communities deliberate about matters within their everyday experience, the informal processes of discussion in the community can, and...
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The Corona Dilemma.
Consider the shown picture where you are the decision maker who can pull the lever of the train tracks to avoid the coming train from going straight. If you do not divert the train, one person, John,...
View ArticleThe journalist as courtier: COVID19 edition
Well, certainly wearing a mask walking down the streets of Melbourne makes no sense at all Brendan Murphy, Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, March 9. The philosopher Mary Midgley styles her own...
View ArticleAltruism comes from a model – the virtues from life
Models, windows, reductionism and pluralism We’re familiar with the idea that thought creates ‘models’ of reality. So it’s easy to slip into thinking that our task is then to just make our models...
View ArticleOur countries need us.
Humanity is at a high point. What our ancestors dreamed of is slowly becoming a reality: a world without hunger in which the vast majority of mankind live peaceful and long lives. We are not there yet,...
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What kind of crowd are we now seeing? The 5 surprises in this pandemic.
There are 5 aspects of the covid-19 pandemic I really did not see coming, all pointing to a phenomenon that European sociologists of a century ago spent their whole lives describing, coming up with...
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From being to seeming: why empirical scientists failed in times of Covid.
There have long been scientists who were celebrities in their own time. Galileo, Keppler, Goodall, Linneus, Cousteau, Darwin, Smith, Leeuwenhoek, Da Vinci, Ibn Khaldhun, Curie, and many others in the...
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Markets as ‘causal spread’: How the early neoliberals anticipated embodied...
My essay on the Ghost of Descartes was written by cannibalising a longer, not quite finished essay entitled “Cartesian vices, Copernican moments”. In writing something else, I find myself wanting to...
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What works: getting to the land of ‘how’: Part One
Cross posted from The Mandarin Premium. Government leaders understanding what they need to do when faced with impending issues is one thing. But here, in the first of a three-part series, Nicholas...
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What works: getting to the land of ‘how’: Part Two
Cross-posted from The Mandarin In this second instalment of his three-part series, economist and forward thinker Nicholas Gruen explains more of why it is so important to understand the ‘how’ of...
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What works: getting to the land of ‘how’: Complete essay
Note, this essay was published in three parts in the Mandarin and is published in consolidated form (complete with its footnotes) here. It is impossible to remember, until one gets in the country …...
View ArticleThinking: Keep It ADAPTIVE Stupid
Here’s the transcript of my talk to Nudgestock which was held a few weeks ago. I was hoping to do it in London where it’s normally held, but in the world of COVID it migrated online and acquired for...
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The Road to Political Reform Based on Sortition: Guest Post by John Burnheim
Scrap attempts to reforming politics as a whole. From a practical point of view attempts to do so by legal constitutional change have no possibility of succeeding from a theoretical point of view, it...
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