I’m reading Susans Blackmores book “The Meme Machine”. It starts where Richard Dawkins left off at the end of his seminal book “The Selfish Gene”. Dawkins of course talked mostly about the gene as the “thing” that evolution revolves around but towards the end of his book he speculated about Continue Reading
Do the things we model exist?
When describing a metamodel it is often difficult to keep apart the description (model) of something and the thing itself. If I want to describe a metaclass representing a system function for instance I find it easy to slip and start talking about the real-world function when the intention was Continue Reading
Everything is model-based
Engineers tend to think in terms of mental models. To describe a problem in terms of a model to start with improves the consistency and quality of the mental models.
A false dichotomy
It is not so easy to divide a problem into the often used categories “what” and “how”.
What is the meaning of semantics?
“Semantics” is an abstract sounding word that is usually translated to “meaning”. But what is the meaning of “meaning”?
Going meta
Interpreting a meta-meta-model that is its own meta-model.
What’s a good tutorial?
A good tutorial is not written to demonstrate what the author knows but to change the behavior of the reader / user in the most effective manner by teaching new applicable skills.
The subjective business of risk assessment
We are very poor at assessing risk.
Climbing Mt Complexity
Everybody is looking for quick fixes to complex problems, especially if the problem initially doesn’t look all that complex and a fix is needed yesterday. Unfortunately quick fixes (with emphasis on the “fix” part) to complex problems are rare.
What can we learn from the world’s oldest culture?
The Nhunggabarra people of Australia created the first knowledge-based economy.