My long time friend David Rowe (who I learned thermodynamics with) read my post the other day on the election and political thermodynamics. After thinking about it for awhile he spurred me into extending my initial social thermodynamics property definitions. For additional context, these other reads are also helpful: understanding of mixing of social states and empathy, and insights on social reaction. Dave’s key statement came after thinking about the election and my property definitions:

“…how could one person prioritize anti-establishment concepts over overtly racial division? … As I’m writing, I’m thinking – what if heat capacity actually represents a person’s capacity to accept a certain … » More …

You know the story:

You hop on a plane to visit someplace nice. Upon arrival you’re greeted by some dignitaries and designated representatives with a relaxing meal, mostly smiles, small talk, and some jokes.

But then at some point in the discussion, you realize that you have something they want.

Before you know it you’re thrown in a van, driven somewhere, dumped off someplace you may have been before but are not really sure. The door slides shut as the van drives away and you’re ushered into a building with a long hallway full of nondescript marked doors. Eventually you reach the door your captors intend and … » More …

WSU clearly has a top 25 constituency for a public institution however is currently ranked 47th nationally. So what’s to blame and how do we fix it? In this post I’ll review the external and internal conditions for growth, then apply lean manufacturing and design philosophies with a sprinkling of social entropy to describe how we’ll fix it. Along the way you’ll likely see that top 25 is readily achievable… if we rally together as a community and get beyond some of our old ways (yes that’s an entropy pun!).
The external conditions are great:

 The conditions are prime for growth in our region … » More …

Rube Goldberg was an American engineering, inventor, and cartoonist infamous for his drawings of complex machines that perform simple tasks. In 1930, the Webster dictionary created a definition in his name:

Mr. Goldberg lives on in infamy with many competitions to engineer complex machines in his name.  Note that Rube Goldberg is a Trademark of Rube Goldberg Inc. founded by Rube’s children to preserve his name. The internet is rife with STEM educational projects and products related to Rube Goldberg machines. Purdue, the City of … » More …

A few months back I posted some initial thoughts on the thermodynamics of societal phase change. I opened that post with the need to hit the ‘reset’ button on psychology studies world-wide. Just last week a new study in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences found a bug in the fMRI brain scan data used at the heart of psychology — a bug that changes a 5% positive to a whopping problem of 70% — and affects over 40,000 journal papers. So in short, psychology is desperate for solid footing from the physical sciences and the initial thermodynamic thoughts I posted keep fruiting, … » More …

Welcome back to a new semester on campus!

Students, Faculty, and Staff have received several reminders and free copies of Kenneth Sufka’s book “The A Game.” If you’re a student, have looked at the book, and have some concerns and issues, IT’S OK TO HAVE THOSE CONCERNS! I read the book and attended Dr. Sufka’s original lecture on campus and had serious disagreements with the entire premise. But I’m not saying you shouldn’t read it! You should. Just be aware of the book’s intended audience and … » More …

Please, allow an upfront disclaimer: I’m not an Artificial Intelligence (AI) researcher — yet. This post focuses on the neurological pathways and memes for how humans design and construct knowledge. Which provide insight into how we will and are using AI.

I’ve posted about spiral memes frequently in the past. The key points to review here are that every major phase in human history had a dominant collection of memes, each of which had a dominant communication medium. For example, the advent of silicon wafers and binary data storage allowed all previous communications to be stored and decoded in a singular format (corresponding to the … » More …

DARPA recently released a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA-16-32) titled “Next Generation Social Sciences.”  The need to hit the reset button on psychology is partly due to a recent finding that less than half of the research findings are actually reproducible. As stated in the BAA, DARPA:

“is soliciting innovative research proposals to build a new capability (methods, models, tools, and a community of researchers) to perform rigorous, reproducible experimental research at scales necessary to understand emergent properties of human social systems.”

For many of you that read this blog, you’re aware that I regularly dabble in integral psychology through the application of historical meme transitions … » More …