Uncertainty Archives - Page 2 of 2

September 28, 2018October 11, 2018

msb ~043 Palliative curation

Palliative curation

I value my memory of the blistering critique I received when speaking to environmental experts about sometimes having to ‘let go’ of loved sites of natural or cultural heritage as the contradictions of trying to ‘hold back’ historic climate change become starker: “Wooly-minded fudge!” Particular scorn came when I mentioned ‘palliative curation’. Many of the ideas we’re going to have to explore are contentious, even provocative, so my only complaint is that I’d done a poor job explaining the possibilities. Continue reading “msb ~043 Palliative curation”

September 25, 2018October 11, 2018

msb ~040 Making sense of weak signals

Making sense of weak signals

In this 2009 article, Paul Schoemaker and George Day identify biases we unconsciously apply to our worldviews, blinding us to important but weak signals of change. Once we “lock in on a certain picture [we] often reshape reality to fit into that particular frame. Humans tend to judge too quickly when presented with ambiguous data; we have to work extra hard to consider less familiar scenarios.”

Such biases render reality as familiar, expected: reducing the scope to consider different perspectives. We become overconfident in our way of seeing: filtering what we see according to our mental model; rationalising it to sustain our belief in the model as reality; seeking evidence to bolster this. Continue reading “msb ~040 Making sense of weak signals”

September 24, 2018October 11, 2018

msb ~039 The truth? Dream on

The truth? Dream on

Following Philip Dick, here’s another favourite speculative writer: Christopher Priest. I just finished the Ordnance Survey ‘Britain’s islands’ quiz after rereading Anticipatory History‘s Dream-map entry, so it’s no surprise that Priest’s Dream Archipelago came to mind. There’s a slipperiness to his decades-long project of stories set on these fictional-but-familiar islands on a world (un)like ours. In a 2011 interview ahead of The Islanders he’s asked, “Creating the climate, topography and various customs of the islands must have been quite challenging … Did you use a map or some other technique?” Priest: “No map is allowed. Not even to me … Living in the islands, or trying to travel through them, you almost always get lost. No one knows the way, everyone is a bit muddled.” Continue reading “msb ~039 The truth? Dream on”

September 13, 2018October 11, 2018

msb ~032 Mutually Assured Destruction

Mutually Assured Destruction

Scratching around the loft’s eaves today — on hands and knees, in torchlight, insulation dust and ancient spider webs as I hunted the cable to a dodgy switch in the bathroom below, I wasn’t thinking of the ‘good old days’ of Cold War claustrophobia. But reading just now about the network of nuclear bunkers that crisscrossed the UK between the 1950s and 1990s, I was almost taken in by the nostalgic tone of Kate Ravilious’ piece for Atlas Obscura. She visited abandoned, decayed outposts restored as visitor attractions: small spaces of uncanny normality projected into the most abnormal of all futures: post-thermonuclear meltdown. What they really represented, of course, was the seemingly infinitely extendable insanity of their present: planned-for Mutually Assured Destruction. Continue reading “msb ~032 Mutually Assured Destruction”

September 5, 2018October 11, 2018

msb ~026 Negative Capability

Negative Capability

John Keats life mask, by Benjamin Robert Haydon (1816)

In Why we believe in magic, novelist Philip Pullman discusses Negative Capability, poet John Keats’ famous recipe for creative approaches to “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” For Pullman, “everything that touches human life is surrounded by a penumbra of associations, memories, echoes and correspondences that extend far into the unknown.” This ‘shadow world’ of human life is where Negative Capability is at play. Continue reading “msb ~026 Negative Capability”