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Christian Alden Jacobs
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A saved link is not an endorsement. It's just a thing I read or thought about reading.

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The Strategic Intelligence Implications of Circular Causality on JSTOR

Jordan R. Beauregard, The Strategic Intelligence Implications of Circular Causality, American Intelligence Journal, Vol. 37, No. 1, Intelligence Community Leadership: The Next Generation (2020), pp. 98-106

draft-newbold-at-architecture-00 - Authenticated Transfer: Architecture Overview

Authenticated Transfer (AT) is a collection of protocol components that together provide a generic framework for interoperable social web applications, using global aggregations of interlinked, self- certifying data records.

Liberating Cohesion: RDF - strategic structures

The Software Description Ontology

Thrownness

Ben Holliday » From product to a service mindset

s a set of values or principles, a product mindset is often described as putting user-centricity at the forefront of work, with decisions and agile development being driven by an understanding of users’ needs, behaviours, and pain points. However, in reality, it’s still all too common for teams to use user-centred approaches, but without truly thinking and acting in ways that question the effect decisions have beyond their immediate delivery focus

Research Slop - by Jess Holbrook - General Purpose

“The absolute epitome of AI slop,” then “change AI to Research,” from Gemini Nano Banana.

Mozilla Summary Portfolio Strategy

DARPA Agent Markup Language - Wikipedia

A major innovation of the languages was to use RDF and XML for a basis, and to use RDF namespaces to organize and assist with the integration of arbitrarily many different and incompatible ontologies.

Design & Engineering Methodology for Organizations

Language/action perspective - Wikipedia

Epistemology - Eigenbehavior as a Moral Idea

The Great Forgetting: Why Cybernetics Disappeared When We Needed It Most | by Christoforus Yoga Haryanto | Medium

The Strategic Intelligence Implications of Circular Causality on JSTOR

Jordan R. Beauregard, The Strategic Intelligence Implications of Circular Causality, American Intelligence Journal, Vol. 37, No. 1, Intelligence Community Leadership: The Next Generation (2020), pp. 98-106

Feedback, Circular Causality, and System Dynamics | SpringerLink

Chapter 7 is about feedback, circular causality, and system dynamics modeling. Circular causality due to positive or negative feedback is a major cause of complexity. When the causality between variables is not linear but...

In search of the optimal toolkit | Santa Fe Institute

In a new paper in Science Advances, SFI External Professor Marcus Hamilton and colleagues present a new model showing the trade-offs between the cost and utility of new tools in small-scale societies.

Füllsack M. & Riegler A. (2017) Thinking in Eigenbehaviors as a Transdisciplinary Approach. Constructivist Foundations 12(3): 239–245

Context: By proposing to regard objects as “tokens for eigenbehavior,” von Foerster’s seminal paper opposes the intuitive subject-object dualism of traditional philosophy, which considers objects to be instances of an external world Problem: We argue that this proposal has two implications, one for epistemology and one for the demarcation between the natural sciences and the humanities. Method: Our arguments are based on insights gained in computational models and from reviewing the contribution...

The Fractal Organization

Fractal Organisation Theory

Top-down hierarchies are typically characterised by command-and-control systems of authority that often create harmful stress and internal competition for advancement within organisations. The perv...

Summer of Protocols — Motivation & Rationale — Dorian Taylor

My thesis is essentially that people lose resolution as the pool of resources under their control increases: as the pile gets bigger, they just round off at bigger orders of magnitude. When individuals are in control of vast quantities of resources, even the smartest, most well-meaning person will make what are effectively targeting errors.

Satisficing

Past-Future of Cybernetics - von Foerster - BCL.doc

Powerful Ideas Need Love Too!

JaynesProbabilityTheory

Insights Aren’t Outcomes: Research Recommendation Breakage - NN/G

A3 Problem-Solving - A Resource Guide | Lean Enterprise Institute

Failure mode and effects analysis

Circular Causality: A Short History (with receipts) | by Maddy Muscari | Medium

Why? Because in nature, causes and effects often form circuits, not one-way streets

Gregory Bateson on deutero‐learning and double bind: A brief conceptual history - Visser - 2003 - Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences - Wiley Online Library

foti-on-economy-algorithmic-pluralism-report.pdf

Taxonomy and Definitions for Terms Related to Driving Automation Systems for On-Road Motor Vehicles J3016_202104

Sociocracy 3.0 | Effective Collaboration At Any Scale

Strategic Theory for the 21st Century: The Little Book on Big Strategy

Critical AI Literacy (CAIL) | Radboud University

Critical AI literacy is crucial for our world, as AI applications rapidly spread across society. In this project, we educate students, education professionals, and the public on how uncritical AI adoption causes harm and what steps can minimize it.

Critical AI

On this page are some resources for Critical AI Literacy (CAIL) from my perspective.

Open space technology - Wikipedia

Home | SCiO - Systems and Complexity in Organisation

When Groups Get Stuck on the Wrong Problem – Jeremy R. Winget, PhD

Many coordination failures stem from misaligned problem definitions. Before debate, define what “good” looks like and who holds which pieces of information.

Benefit corporation - Wikipedia

Historically, U.S. corporate law has not been structured or tailored to address the situation of for-profit companies that wish to pursue a social or environmental mission.[29] While corporations generally have the ability to pursue a broad range of activities, corporate decision-making is usually justified in terms of creating long-term shareholder value. The idea that a corporation has as its purpose to maximize financial gain for its shareholders was first articulated in Dodge v. Ford Motor ...

The Viable System Model and the Taxonomy of Organizational Pathologies in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Retrospective: Modelling Overleaf with the Viable System Model - Overleaf, Online-LaTeX-Editor

Looking at Overleaf through the lens of the Viable System Model, as part of our regular retrospective programme for continuous improvement.

Acting with the World: Agency in the Anthropocene

[2510.19894] The Risks of Industry Influence in Tech Research

Abstract page for arXiv paper 2510.19894: The Risks of Industry Influence in Tech Research

What is Discourse? | Discourse - Civilized Discussion

Discourse is the 100% open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.

Seven basic tools of quality - Wikipedia

Strategic Assumptions Surfacing and Testing

Each issue and key assumption is subjected to further analysis to adduce the data and warrants

From Description to Correspondence: Anthropology in Real Time | 11 | D

Anthropology’s critical examination of its own founding conception of the human—as a being that, by its own nature, transcends nature—inevitably entailed a

Trauma and Recovery | A Working Library

Herman’s canonical work focuses on the necessity of understanding trauma within a social and political context.

Deming's 14 points

Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of an overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.

Mintzberg's 5 Ps for Strategy

Mintzberg's 5 Ps for Strategy

Generative AI has access to a small slice of human knowledge | Aeon Essays

Huge swathes of human knowledge are missing from the internet. By definition, generative AI is shockingly ignorant too

Strategy is Structure. A Systems Theory-Based Definition of Strategy

Hardly any other management concept sounds as hackneyed as strategy, and at the same time hardly any other concept in organizational science is as vaguely defined. As a means of escaping the conceptual tangle, this article suggests a systems theory-based definition which allows us to sort out the various threads of the strategy discussion. Strategy, according to this interpretation, entails programs that search for the means to achieve previously defined goals. This makes it possible to systemat...

Pacing Changes, Appreciating Approaches to Systems and Designing | RSD14 – Coevolving Innovations

Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh (27 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Learning-based complex work: how to reframe learning and development – Sadki (2023)

Other Cybernetics for Other AIs – loriemerson

Elinor Ostrom’s 8 rules for managing the commons

Design-Principles-and-Threats-to-Sustainable-Organizations-That-Manage-Commons

Flounder Mode - Colossus

Kevin Kelly on a different way to do great work

The Transformative Potential of Asian Philosophies

A free online philosophy magazine, delivered monthly

Road and Gravel Bikes From Rodriguez Custom Bicycles

Obligation to possibility

“We have witnessed transformation too often to dismiss its possibility, and we have an obligation to that possibility.”

Designing Freedom: Allende, Pinochet, and the twin experiments in cyber-socialism and neoliberalism

Honjo S. (2025) Brand Management as Cybernetic Practices. Constructivist Foundations 20(2): 102–115

Context: The importance of brands has increased and structured management methods have been established. However, new proposals go beyond conventional brand management, including stakeholders other than customers, treating brand identity as a variable, and taking the development of the concept of brand activism over the past twenty years into account. Problem: The new proposals for brand management are not addressed within the conventional theory of brand management and require a more comprehens...

bateson-mead-1976

Opinion | The Seductions of A.I. for the Writer’s Mind - The New York Times

Historical Tech Tree

Interactive visualization of technological history

Tanuki

Taste Is the New Intelligence

Datasette: An open source multi-tool for exploring and publishing data

Cybernetics of Language - From Naming to Naming the Self - Kauffman L. H., 2025

Context: I aim to show how the act of naming, in our activity as interpretants/observers is formally and fundamentally related to both our being, and to the Gödelian structure of understanding of …

Language Machines

How generative AI systems capture a core function of language Looking at the emergence of generative AI, Language Machines presents a new theory of meaning i...

The Ethics of Choice: Ackoff Meets von Foerster | Harish's Notebook - My notes... Lean, Cybernetics, Quality & Data Science.

Cybernetics of Kindness – 2 | Harish's Notebook - My notes... Lean, Cybernetics, Quality & Data Science.

The Recurring Cycle of 'Developer Replacement' Hype

AI isn't replacing developers, it's transforming them. Just as NoCode created specialists and cloud turned sysadmins into DevOps engineers, AI elevates engineers from code writers to system architects. The most valuable skill isn't writing code, it's designing coherent systems.

Introducing the commerce payments protocol (2025)

Learn how we partnered with Coinbase to bring payments onchain at scale with a new smart contract protocol to meet the complex requirements of commerce.

The collapse of complex societies

Matthew Butterick

[no title]

Joshua DiPaolo & Robert Mark Simpson, Indoctrination Anxiety and the Etiology of Belief - PhilArchive

People sometimes try to call others’ beliefs into question by pointing out the contingent causal origins of those beliefs. The significance of such ‘Etiological Challenges’ is a topic that has started ...

Trusting your own judgement on 'AI' is a huge risk

Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies

We help people and organisations imagine, work with, and shape their future. The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies is an independent, non-profit think tank established in 1969. By building the capabilities necessary to address potential futures we help create a society fit to meet the challenges and grasp the opportunities we face.

Futures Seminar #18: How to implement foresight in organisations - YouTube

Common_Agenda_Report_English.pdf

Systems thinking

Language game (philosophy) - Wikipedia

Language games and (hi)stories: Wittgenstein, Bateson and Schapp on the role of language in therapy | Emerald Insight

Deciphering Glyph :: I Think I’m Done Thinking About genAI For Now

Deciphering Glyph, the blog of Glyph Lefkowitz.

Grady Booch - Wikipedia

Oppressive Double Binds

Contraindication - Wikipedia

Beyond Project Cybersyn: Tracing the Influence of Stafford Beer Projects and Ideas in Latin America | Systemic Practice and Action Research

This paper explores Stafford Beer’s lesser-known journeys and collaborations in Latin America beyond the well-known Chilean project Cybersyn. It trac

Designing for Serial Task Switching

Serial task switching, or rapidly shifting attention between tasks, is a natural user behavior that lowers productivity and increases stress and the chance of errors.

Machines Cannot Feel or Think, but Humans Can, and Ought To

By attributing experiences and emotions to software systems, we pave the way for them to be perceived as having rights, writes Eryk Salvaggio.

What Lies Beneath

My goal in this paper is to bring about a cultural shift in how we make sense of our day to day interactions with one another, whether in the family, the organization, the community, or any of the other social systems of our lives. I draw a distinction between how our interactions are normally experienced and how they are viewed through a human systems framework. Using this framework, I demonstrate how, without awareness or choice, we regularly fall into scenarios that are unsatisfying, unproductive, and often destructive of our relationships and our systems. This framework also enables us⸺with awareness and choice along with determination and strategic thinking⸺to create satisfying, creative, and productive relationships in all the systems of our lives.

What I Learned Building Whole Earth AI - by Kasey Klimes

A project-based learning tool built on LLMs

Bateson's Cosmos Graphics - Enacting Ecological Aesthetics

Whole Earth Index | CoEvolution Quarterly, Summer 1976

Here lies a nearly-complete archive of Whole Earth publications, a series of journals and magazines descended from the Whole Earth Catalog, published by Stewart Brand and the POINT Foundation between 1968 and 2002.

Steps Around a Theory of Action: Notes on Seven Bateson Conferences Cosmos - Enacting Ecological Aesthetics Steps Around a Theory of Action: Notes on Seven Bateson Conferences Cosmos Steps Around a Theory of Action: Seven Bateson Conferences

Notes from seven Gregory Bateson conferences exploring systems theory and ecological aesthetics.

When ChatGPT Broke an Entire Field: An Oral History | Quanta Magazine

Children Archives - System Dynamics Society

Children’s books and learning fables are aimed at children, young adults, and educators to introduce concepts of systems thinking in a fun way through storytelling and fieldbooks with concrete strategies.

Pagination

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