integrity – Page 26 – ORGANIZING CREATIVITY

What’s in a name?

2019-10-18

One of the easiest and ugliest tricks movements do is to give themselves positively sounding names, like …4future.
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Recommendation: Steven Pinker: “An Unnecessary Defense of Reason and a Necessary Defense of the University’s Role in Advancing It”

2019-10-16

Steven Pinker's Keynote talk at the 2nd Heterodox Academy Annual Conference in June 2019 is well worth listening to.

Image: Half Hour of Heterodoxy Logo
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Climate Change Activism

2019-10-15

Some thoughts on Fridays4Future, Students4Future, and Scientist4Future -- and strikes at schools and universities.

Image: Pale Blue Dot.
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False Dichotomies (Presentation Slides, German)

2019-10-04

Slides (in German) about false dichotomies (a rhetorical fallacy), expanded to cover false moral dichotomies (going back to Haidt and referring Boghossian's and Lindsay's book «How to have impossible conversations»).
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DEVONthink 3 — Where the heck is DEVONthink going?

2019-09-17

DEVONthink 3 looks sleek (if colorless) and comes with new features. More important is what they ditched, and possibly whom.
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Idealistic Youth and (Social) Power

2019-08-10

A short passage from a graphic novel struck a chord — there is a danger when idealistic youth get power beyond their years.
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Why Creativity is Incompatible with Collectivism/Socialism

2019-07-30

A short comment on creativity and collectivism/socialism with a few (longer) quotations.
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The Right Kind of Wrong. Or: Using bad practice just because it’s industry standard.

2019-07-30

What do you do when something is "industry standard", but clearly inferior. Yet, you get into trouble when you do it better, because people don't recognize it as better?
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Oxford Unions Debate about No Platforming

2019-07-14

Oxford Union recently had a debate about no platforming. Given many students and universities like the idea (hey, it's not censorship, just ... you know ... something different), it might be worth a watch.
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Legal Side Effects of Logging User Behavior (esp. when driving)

2019-06-15

A group of master students presented their app to help people drive more energy efficiently. It raised an interesting legal aspect when you turn a drivers smartphone into a black box.

(And yeah, the image is actually an external hard drive, but, hey, it's black.)
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This is a private blog showing my opinions. If you have an issue with what I write here, either don’t read it or talk to me directly. Don’t waste your time — or mine — dragging my employer into matters where they hold no authority.

The institution I work for, or rather the people officially representing it, have already distanced themselves from this blog. I find this unnecessary, as I’ve clearly stated in the «About this Blog» section that this is a personal blog.

Frankly, I have nothing but contempt for those who lack the backbone to address their concerns directly and instead resort to passive-aggressive tattling to others. Such behavior strikes me as not only cowardly, but also spineless, gutless, and wholly unprincipled. Moreover, these efforts are as pathetic as they are futile.

That said, I might listen if you present compelling arguments and evidence, as constructive feedback is always welcome. Who knows? We might even both gain something valuable from the interaction.

A comment for those seeking to use this site for personal gain: Given the increase in requests, let me be clear. I write on this blog because I want to. It’s my hobby, my playground. Sometimes people point me to interesting products/services and I write about them. But any request regarding ads or sponsored placements ends up the trash without a reply. And if you think something would be of interest, differentiate yourself from the spammers by referring to a posting — in an intelligent way. (I get enough auto-generated mails to identify them immediately.)

BTW, posts can get updated after I published them if I spot spelling errors (not a native speaker) or think a different wording might improve precision and clarity.

This blog is not focused on a single topic, or method. As long as it is relevant to improving creativity (or allowing it in the first place), it's fair game.
Some postings on this blog deal with freedom, as I think that we need freedom of thought, of speech, of association, etc. pp. to solve mankind's problems. Thus, some postings may seem a bit remote when it comes to organizing creativity. Freedom is, however, the bedrock of creativity.
The heterogeneity of the postings can make reading this blog a bit cumbersome, at least if you are only interested in one topic. You can either use the search function (above), or use the categories or the tags to narrow down the postings you see.