Dr. Richard Pretorius

I'm looking forward to attending Michał's talk online! The idea that consensus begins with dissent is so great, and is something I've considered quite a lot when exploring coordination in social systems. wolfson.cam.ac.uk/about/events/c…

Today @NevinClimenhaga and I discuss his theory of probability! In our next video, he'll draw on his theory to give a cumulative case for theism. Buckle up for some juicy philosophy! 👇 youtu.be/L4pdun89bvI

Most people can’t apply non-linear thinking. But you can’t face today’s complexity without thinking in systems. What’s coming is the Fourth Systemic-Risk driven global crisis. Greater in impact than GFC, Covid and Russia’s war. Every day of the war in Iran adds months of crisis.

And if you try 200 times you have 200% chance of success, no?

This is how modern football looks like: -2 or 3 wide players - make space for a winger for inswinger cross - wide combinations mostly to be able to cross or shoot -overload far-post -forcing def - 6s or Ws to drop deep to participate in box def Not creative but effective.

"Technology can degrade (and endanger) every aspect of a sucker’s life while convincing him that it is becoming more “efficient.”" - Nassim Nicholas Taleb in The Bed of Procrustes

Some person at the Vatican: “Go Cubs” Pope Leo XIV: “They lost” 😂Pope Leo XIV: “They lost”

I would give anything not to have to write this but I am compelled to convey the truth as best we see it now regarding the very latest climate change findings out now. (h/t John Scheve) There is no reasonable hope left that we can stop runaway warming. The problems are that natural greenhouse gas sinks are rapidly converting to sources, marine heatwaves likely keep escalating along with atmospheric ones, the sea ice is rapidly vanishing, cloud reduction is likely to continue accelerating, methane releases from frozen sea floor hydrates, tundra, and warming wetlands will inevitably be massive sooner rather than later, and other feedbacks even undiscovered ones likely continue to kick in increasingly. As I see it now only Stratospheric Aerosol Injection(and other Cooling Interventions) can buy us time and it is fraught with risks some of which are unknowable till we commit to what could be a perpetual program which also adds more greenhouse gases. We then even if all other anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are reduced to zero still have to get miracles in new atmospheric greenhouse gas sequestration methods. My guess is barring those two we have only two more decades tops before massive heatwaves kill most of us, and then just a few more years till human extinction. Good luck and godspeed to all. My foremost wish is that the human race in its last years can be more loving of each other and of the planet Earth, that pale blue dot in an unremarkable stretch of the Milky Way galaxy that may be the only home and harbinger of life in the cosmos. I thank many for their help and solidarity and especially Jan Umsonst for his brilliance and ever gracious sharing and help understanding the ever faster developments in Earth Systems science. 🙏 (John Scheve) “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions" - Hamlet (Act IV, Scene 5), spoken by King Claudius, by William Shakespeare ca. 1599-1601.

When programmes disagree about programmes: join @fratribus and me for an exploration of code poetry and the paradoxes of programme–programme communication @CRASSHlive @Cambridge_Uni derroth.com/2026/03/19/eve…

The Need For A Sound Philosophy Of Logic Logic, in the classical and scholastic view, is not just a system of symbols; it is a tool for knowing reality. Concepts, propositions, and arguments come from the natural acts of the mind: understanding, judging, and reasoning. When you form a concept like “man,” you are not inventing something arbitrary; you are grasping a real nature that exists in the world, though in a different way. That same nature exists in things individually, and in the mind universally. This is the key insight of Thomas Aquinas: thought is grounded in reality, not cut off from it. If this foundation is removed, logic loses its power. If concepts do not refer to real features of things, then propositions are no longer true or false about the world, and arguments no longer lead to knowledge. Everything becomes just symbols pointing to other symbols. The classical tradition, going back to Aristotle, avoids this by holding that the mind is naturally ordered to reality: our thinking works because reality itself is intelligible. So logic cannot stand alone; it depends on a deeper philosophy of mind and being. Without that, it becomes empty; with it, it becomes a genuine path to truth.

Jürgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96. apnews.com/article/juerge…

[Mind & world] are not two things, but they are one and the same thing and what you call the objective world is merely one pole of what is a unitary process and what we call subjective experience is the other pole, but they are not really divided from each other. – Owen Barfield

"What they call “play” (gym, travel, sports) looks like work; the harder they try, the more captive they are." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb in The Bed of Procrustes

The Prime Number Bomb One of the most casually accepted dogmas in modern philosophy is this: existential truths must be discovered empirically. If something exists, you must go out and find it. Reason can clarify concepts, but only experience can deliver reality. But consider Euclid’s theorem: there exist infinitely many prime numbers. This is an existential claim. It uses the language of existence. It asserts that something is the case rather than merely possible. So it is existential at least in some sense. Yet it is not empirical. No observation establishes it. No measurement confirms it. No amount of experience could even in principle verify infinitely many primes. The claim is necessary and a priori. The structure of number itself forces it. The denial is not empirically false; it is impossible. That single fact debunks the empiricist slogan. Existential truths can be known without observation. The universal claim collapses immediately.

Hayek’s greatest insight was that abstract epistemic structures built up by the efforts of countless individuals – such as the price mechanism, traditional moral rules, and law – are typically “smarter” than the innovator who rashly thinks he knows better than them and can simply replace them wholesale. It is a deeply conservative insight, which should not be ignored by those who (rightly, in my view) reject the broadly classical liberal project he deployed it in service of.

⚖The latest work from @ExceliaGroup and @KSUniversitetas by first author Prof. @derrothdotcom is now featured in MRev! Article 👉: imrpress.com/journal/MRev/3… 💡Can #ContainerMetaphor align with #SocialSystemsTheory in #OrganizationTheory? #LawsOfForm #Luhmann #theory #Management

Do A and B change colors? Does the *appearance* of B change?

A lot of folks on here could do with watching this

📢 Joint work with Vaibhav Mishra and @Solonmoreira1 published in #TFSC We examine how firms' reliance on contract development and manufacturing organization affects their capacity to generate destablizing inventions sciencedirect.com/science/articl…