Context Changes Everything: How Constraints Create Coherence

by Alicia Juarrero
2023, MIT Press

open access:
https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5600/Context-Changes-EverythingHow-Constraints-Create

/HT @PessoaBrain
/CC @complexsystems@a.gup.pe

#constraints #Juarrero #context

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To make interesting stuff discoverable in the Fediverse, you have to boost much more generously than on the birdsite.

@chriscorrigan Actively working with #constraints is helpful and necessary. It's the effect on participant agency and participant power that decide (for me).

Maybe referring to specific examples helps: contrast e.g. how the five principles and one law of #OpenSpace increase agency and power; or how the three principles and three practices of #TheCircleWay foster individual participation; vs. how the process of #RitualDissent takes away agency and power & brutalizes the #facilitator (IMO).

Growth-at-all-costs
A true crime #podcast about why we ignore/d 'The Limits to Growth'
Tipping Point: The True Story of "The Limits to Growth"
https://tippingpoint-podcast.com/

About 'The Limits to Growth' report, 1972
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth

MIT report, pdf
https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/the-limits-to-growth/

Safe and just Earth system boundaries, Johan Rockström et al.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06083-8

But then - If the Aussie tank is full and the fridge is full - Why worry? “She’ll be right mate..."

#Podcast #Growth #Constraints #Boundaries #Culture #Unsustainable #Resource #Extraction #Consumption #Climate #Extinction #FossilFuel

Adaptive Decision-Making for Optimization of Safety-Critical Systems: The ARTEO Algorithm

https://openreview.net/forum?id=MuKcAr8b19

#optimization #safety #constraints

@chriscorrigan
"Instead, we must provide them with the necessary tools, conditions, #constraints, and challenges to stimulate collaborative creation and achieve desired outcomes." For quite some time now, I sense a growing unease within me. It's been starting to feel as if constraints were slowly turning into the new "control" (albeit without the "command"). #Coherence as a topic is fading away - analogous to "you can't manage what you can't measure". Can't pin it down any better, at the moment.

Possible features of excellent texts that we discussed in the 111 Words class yesterday. #111Words #ViktorShklovsky #Constraints #WordPlay #Rhetoric #Rhythm #Variations #Excellence #Writing https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2023/04/possible-features-of-excellent-texts.html

Paraphrased #HH_Pattee from the same source:

This “#error_duality” (error in the #descriptions or error in the #operation) can be identified at all organizational levels:

➡️ Computer programs may have either an error in the program itself (#software error) or an error may happen because of the machine (#hardware error) that executes an otherwise correct program.

➡️ At higher levels it is possible to make an error in the choice of algorithm which is being programmed or even make a mistake in the choice of problem that the developed algorithm is supposed to solve.

➡️ Similarly in social and political organizations we distinguish between a faulty policy and the failure to execute a policy properly.

In other words, we try to distinguish between the error in our #models of reality which leads to incorrect policies (#predictions and descriptions), and the error in #control #constraints which leads to a failure of a (good) policy implementation.

Tracking this…the beginning of capitalist contraction around growth…don’t know…Google's 80-acre San Jose campus is on hold as the company reckons with the economic slowdown and new leadership. The company doesn’t have plans to resume the project in the near future, impacting when the community will see millions of $ in benefits. #GoogleNews #resourcebasedeconomy #constraints https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/21/googles-80-acre-san-jose-mega-campus-on-hold-amid-economic-slowdown-.html?__source=sharebar%7Ctwitter&par=sharebar

Tracking this…the beginning of capitalist contraction around growth…don’t know…Google's 80-acre San Jose campus is on hold as the company reckons with the economic slowdown and new leadership. The company doesn’t have plans to resume the project in the near future, impacting when the community will see millions of $ in benefits. #GoogleNews #resourcebasedeconomy #constraints https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/21/googles-80-acre-san-jose-mega-campus-on-hold-amid-economic-slowdown-.html?__source=sharebar%7Ctwitter&par=sharebar

Robust Constrained Reinforcement Learning

https://openreview.net/forum?id=tfTPNZd48H

#constraints #constraint #robust

Yeah, with the 1:9 balun in the 20m HWDP, we gathered 14 spots in one hour. They were all the same 5 or 6 spotters; average around 800 miles distant.

That's about 4 spots fewer than than Friday's peak performance. Also about 400 miles shorter on average.

#constraints #condx

Do constraints promote or stymy creativity? 🚧 🎨

Constraints make it harder to produce ideas, but also push people to think creatively in a sentence production task ~ according to new research.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10400419.2023.2182038

#Constraints #Creativity #Psychology

I just published "Retro Painter" 0.0.13. It's a tool, currently for MacOS, with which you can paint like in the heydays of 8 bit and 16 bit computing.

The main idea is to encourage creativity by restricting yourself to e.g. 320x200 Pixels or just 4 colors.

The tool is for free, you may donate, if you like. But please comment and report bugs ...

https://foodsnacker.itch.io/retro-painter

#retro #retrocomputing #tool #paint #gamedev #gamedesign #creativity #constraints #cga #ega #mcga #pixelart

I just published "Retro Painter" 0.0.13. It's a tool, currently for MacOS (Intel + Apple Silicon) with which you can paint like in the heydays of 8 bit and 16 bit computing.

The main idea is to encourage creativity by restricting yourself to e.g. 320x200 Pixels or just 4 colors.

The tool is for free, you may donate, if you like. But please comment and report bugs ...

https://foodsnacker.itch.io/retro-painter

#retro #retrocomputing #tool #paint #gamedev #gamedesign #creativity #constraints #cga #ega #mcga

Great presentation by @andreasgrv on low-rank #constraints in #neural #networks today in our #APRIL weekly seminar!

Lots of food for thought on which are the "bitter lessons" in #ML and #AI

Have you ever gotten the feeling that you're way in over your head or how the saying goes.

I don't know if I'm way in over my head.

#Wikidata is a very hard thing to understand if you try to understand it on a "machine level". The #Constraints system is amazing, it makes stuff just work, me as a user I don't usually see the complexity of the system.

Now that I'm doing tests I'm beginning to have doubts whether, I'll be forced to copy thousands of kilobytes of data and still not succeed.

"We all have our limitations, but when we listen to our critics, we also have theirs." — Robert Brault — — — #RobertBrault #quote #quotes #limitations #critics #limits #constraints

I thought this was a thoughtful exploration of a seemingly-obvious idea that has big ramifications. Sources of #Complexity: #Constraints.
https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/complexity-constraints/ #SoftwareDevelopment

The trade-offs of software development between simplicity and associated constraints...

Sources of Complexity: Constraints
https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/complexity-constraints/

Complexity is bad. Simple software is better than complex software.

"But software is complex for a reason. While people like coming up with grand theories of complexity (Simple Made Easy, No Silver Bullet) there’s very little info out there on the nitty-gritty specific sources of complexity. Without that, all the theories feel to me like the four elements theory. We just don’t have the data needed to come up with something more predictive."

#software #development #constraints #complexity

What class labels do we give to #schema #constraints that allow us to distinguish between "x is greater than 10" versus "x must exist"? They're different /types/ of constraint -- existence vs value -- and I need to find a term for their overarching classes 🤔 🤔 🤔 #data #validation