Rafe Furst - The Emergent Fool

The Emergent Fool

Help Wanted: Social Capital Uncontractor...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Adjacent Possible, Management, Social Capital, Social Entrepreneurship on 03 12th, 2010 | 3 Comments

Are you struggling to pay for your food/home/whatever, or do you know someone who is? If you can convince someone you are a superstar, there’s a way out. But if you are having trouble making that case, then maybe you’d consider becoming a Social Capital Uncontractor. What’s that, you...

The Innovation Summit...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Alternative Institutions, Education on 03 12th, 2010 | 1 Comment

My new favorite worldchanger is the Spirit of Innovation Awards. In short, high school students from around the country solve real-world problems and compete for awards and opportunities (like access to venture capital and mentorship). Here’s an example: I am working with founder Nancy Conrad...

Troubling Statistics...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Adjacent Possible, Interconnectedness, Science 2.0 on 03 12th, 2010 | No Comments

In his eloquent article, Breaking the Galilean Spell (worth reading in its entirety), Stuart Kauffman has given me the words to finally be able to articulate the uneasiness I feel about statistical reasoning in an increasingly interconnected world: …[Can] we make probability statements about the...

The Adjacent Possible...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Asymmetry, Autocatalysis, Causality, Cognition, Cooperation, Creativity, Interconnectedness, Non-linearity, Scarcity / Abundance, Self-Fullfilling Prophecy, Visualization on 03 11th, 2010 | No Comments

Stuart Kauffman has a concept called the Adjacent Possible which I find incredibly useful in understanding the world. Simply put, if you think of the space of possibilities from the present moment forward and just concentrate on those that are achievable today — adjacent to the present moment...

Overcoming Bias...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Science 2.0 on 03 10th, 2010 | 5 Comments

The title of this post is ironic. What is science/truth/knowledge if not picking one story over another, in other words, the creation of bias? Hopefully the bias we create is useful and allows us to predict and create a future that is better (in some agreed upon sense) than the past. To get to...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Cognition, Creativity, Dualism, Epistemology, Invisible Etiology, Language, Science, Science 2.0 on 03 7th, 2010 | 6 Comments

I liken cognition to a hill-climbing search on the landscape of theories/models/maps that explain/predict reality. It’s easy to get stuck on peaks of local maximality. Injecting randomness creates a sort of Boltzmann machine of the mind and increases my chances of finding higher peaks. But I have...

$100,000 Reward: Y Prize...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Alternative Institutions, Crowdsourcing, Incentives, Innovation, Investing, Social Entrepreneurship on 03 3rd, 2010 | 2 Comments

Inspired by the X Prize, Y Combinator’s “Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund” and Kickstarter, I am offering a $100K prize in three parts: $10K for Crowdsourced X Prizes Platform Allows anyone to offer a cash prize for achieving a goal they want achieved Allows anyone to pledge...

Why Falsifiability is Insufficient for S...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Cognition, Creativity, Dualism, Epistemology, Evolution, Limits of Knowledge, Models, Science on 02 26th, 2010 | 11 Comments

In my post about The Process it turns out that I stepped on a pedagogical minefield when using describing the Anthropic Principle (AP). Two preeminent physicists had a very public argument a while ago in which one called the AP unscientific because it’s unfalsifiable. I will return to that in a...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Asymmetry, Causality, Complexity, Computation, Cooperation, Dualism, Emergence, Epistemology, Infinity, Interconnectedness, Invisible Etiology, Limits of Knowledge, Mathematics, Models, Networks, Science, Symmetry on 02 24th, 2010 | 12 Comments

Imagine a multiverse, infinitely infinite. There’s just infinity. Or if you prefer, nothing. There’s no space, no time, no matter, no energy. There’s no structure whatsoever, and nothing “in” any of the universes that make up the multiverse. it’s not even clear...

The Technium...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Autocatalysis, Complexity, Emergence, Invisible Etiology, Singularity, Socio-technical systems, Superorganism, TED, Technology on 02 23rd, 2010 | No Comments

Here are the slides from his talk. My favorites are 3, 4, 8, 10, 15, 19, 21, 23, 26, 28, 29, 35, 37, 38, 53, 66, 68. Kevin Kelly View more presentations from...

TED Prize Wish: Teach Every Child About ...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Education, Epidemiology, Health, Interventions, Nutrition, Obesity, Scarcity / Abundance, Society on 02 22nd, 2010 | No Comments

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Four Ways to Fix a Broken Legal System (...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Alternative Institutions, Government, Incentives, Socio-technical systems, TED on 02 22nd, 2010 | No Comments

This was one of my favorites of the...

Decision Education: A Call to Arms...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Cognition, Education on 01 27th, 2010 | 1 Comment

“Extensive research has shown that people tend to lead either from their head or their heart. Unless we make a conscious choice to achieve the appropriate balance, we tend to do what comes naturally and solve the problem from within our comfort zone” (from the Decision Education Foundation) Those...

Whom Should I Interview?...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Creativity, Education, Networks on 01 26th, 2010 | 4 Comments

I was just interviewed by International Mentoring Network and as a thank you for my time they asked if there was anyone I would like to interview. Anyone in their network, I asked ? No, anyone in the world. Whoever it is, they will try to make it happen. Now that’s an interesting...

Synthesis of Complexity Theory...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Asymmetry, Autocatalysis, Complexity, Cooperation, Emergence, Evolution, Levels, Networks on 01 11th, 2010 | 7 Comments

As careful readers of this blog will note, I’ve been obsessed with Alex Ryan’s visualization of the way new levels of organization come into being (e.g. atoms –> molecules –> cells, etc). In an attempt to complement and extend his model, here’s a visualization of how I...

Approaching a Cure for Cancer...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Cancer, Evolution, Health, Interventions, Invisible Etiology, Medical Breakthroughs, Science, Technology on 12 28th, 2009 | 3 Comments

James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA’s double-helix structure recently called for a back to basics approach in dealing with cancer. In previous post threads I’ve discussed cancer’s complexity and in particular the confounding and scary implications of somatic evolution, which underscores...

“Social Entrepreneurship has Compl...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Complex Links, Complex Quotes, Complexity, Cooperation, Social Entrepreneurship, Socio-technical systems on 12 15th, 2009 | 3 Comments

That’s the title and conclusion of this paper by Jeffrery Goldstein et al which was presented at this talk at the Skoll Foundation International Social Innovation Conference 2009. Here’s a slide from that talk that I like: If you like the theme of “Social Entrepreneurship, Systems...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Cognition, Creativity, Epistemology, Language, Limits of Knowledge, Science on 12 11th, 2009 | 11 Comments

How do we know what we know? If you grew up like me you were brought up in a culture based on a dualist metaphysics, one that asserts that there is an objective reality outside of ourselves (whatever “we” are) and that we know about it indirectly through our senses and conscious reasoning. This...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Agency, Artificial Intelligence, Cognition, Computation, Cooperation, Crowdsourcing, Emergence, Evolution, Levels, Networks, Singularity, Socio-technical systems, Superorganism on 12 5th, 2009 | 18 Comments

As readers of my blog posts know, I talk a lot about evolutionary systems, the formal structure of cooperation, the role of both in emergence of new levels of complexity, and I sometimes use cellular automata to make points about all these things and the reification of useful models (here’s a summary...

Welcome, Kim Scheinberg!...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Point of Order on 11 27th, 2009 | 1 Comment

Kim is one of my best friends and the single most self-aware friend I have. In terms of hearing a rational argument and seeing solid evidence, nobody updates their beliefs and practices to coincide quicker than Kim. And when the evidence shifts to suggest a deeper, more nuanced truth, so does Kim,...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Uncategorized on 11 27th, 2009 | 1 Comment

In learning the history of various religions, it becomes clear that all religions are created to redress human suffering in whatever forms are ubiquitous during the founding. They are spread at a rate directly proportional to the suffering and directly proportional to the simplicity of the message. Given...

How Many Calories for a Dollar?...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Cancer, Economics, Epidemiology, Health, Invisible Etiology, Nutrition, Pop!Tech, Scarcity / Abundance, Uncategorized on 11 20th, 2009 | No Comments

Michael Pollan, as always, making perfect sense: Now watch Will Allen on urban...

Cultural Relativity...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Uncategorized on 11 20th, 2009 | 10 Comments

When a person walks into a village and blows it up along with themselves we call it terrorism. But when a person drops bombs from a $100M fighter jet and blows up a village it’s somehow not terrorism. Why is that? This is an observation Laura made tonight that stopped me in my tracks. I don’t...

Egyptian Mummies Yield Ancient Secrets o...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Epidemiology, Health, Media, Nutrition, Scarcity / Abundance, Science on 11 18th, 2009 | 2 Comments

This is based on an LA Times article here What strikes me most is how athlerosclerotic the science itself is. Or perhaps it’s just the reportage? The opening line of the article is “CT scans of Egyptian mummies… show evidence of… hardening of the arteries, which is normally...

Investing in Superstars...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Alternative Institutions, Incentives, Innovation, Investing, Social Entrepreneurship, Trust on 10 30th, 2009 | 54 Comments

Imagine you are in your early twenties, out of college several years and your best friend, who recently came into an inheritance of $300K cash told you they could think of no better way to invest the money than to invest it in you. Not the company you started, not as a loan, but invest it in YOU, as if you...

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