Planning for Life's Crises

HOW SCIENCE CAN HELP US TO PREDICT AND CONTROL OUR PERSONAL AND GLOBAL FUTURES

Working Towards a More Humanistic Society

Very excited to have been invited to speak at the Eighth International Conference on Humanistic Buddhism. I am not a Buddhist per se, but I have great sympathy with many of its aims, and especially with the all-permeating idea of interconnectedness. I will be talking...

The Future of Food: An Integrated Global Challenge

A talk delivered at the meeting "Food Futures in the Anthropocene" (University of Tasmania, November 7-10 (2020)). One of a number of talks and articles where I have been trying to bring people's attention to the importance of interconnectedness between the many...

Self-interest is blocking progress on global problems

The natural environment is a web of connected systems. Change one element and you impact on other elements. The human impact on earth systems is becoming increasingly obvious. In my latest programme for Australian ABC Radio National's Science Show...

The World Needs Complexity Thinking

I was proud to be a finalist (14 finalists out of 2702 entrants from 122 countries; https://globalchallenges.org/en/our-work/the-new-shape-prize/finalists) in the recent Global Challenges New Shape competition , which sought suggestions for new approaches to the...

Systemic Risk: What it Means and What we can Do

Some basic references for a talk that I delivered to the Aon Benfield conference “Risk Re-imagined” (Gold Coast, Australia, September 18-20 (2017)) IRGC Concept Note “Preparing for Future Catastrophes”...

Making the best decisions

Several years ago I was invited to write a book chapter on how we can make the best decisions in our complex, interconnected world. I wrote the chapter, aimed at a general audience and containing some interesting stories about how Benjamin Franklin, Charles Darwin,...

Superbowl for politicians

Op-ed submitted to Boston Globe after Patriots' Superbowl LI win. Pity they didn't take it, but here it is anyway. The message that it contains is rather important; like footballers, politicians need to adapt quickly to circumstances! When wide receiver Julian Edelman...

127. How can we cooperate? A new lesson from the bees

The world is rapidly going down the road of competition rather than cooperation. In doing so, as I have shown in previous posts and in my book Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life, its citizens face the deadly dilemmas exposed by game theory – in...

119. Science in the real world: predicting society

If you think that science, and scientific thinking, have little to do with the rough-and-tumble of the real world, think again – and take a look at this wonderful paper by a group of psychologists and mathematicians from the Cornell-Princeton-Yale triangle...

What Nepal really needs to do about landslip disasters

July, 2016 After hearing a well-informed talk by the experienced Nepal road engineer Bleddyn Griffiths about his experience of the Nepal earthquake disaster, I suggested that we write a joint letter about both the science and the realities, which are linked in a more...

The Great Barrier Reef is in great danger

Here is the self-explanatory text of a letter sent to the Sydney Morning Herald, but not accepted for publication. Perhaps I should have been rougher, because the original draft referred to the exposed backside as being in need of a thorough kicking. "The Government...

117. Global Governance of Slowly Developing Catastrophic Risks

Early in 2015 I was invited, together with co-authors from the International Risk Governance Council, to write a review on the above topic for a special issue of the journal Ecological Economics. The referees liked the writing, but wanted us to add more economics...

114. Mastering complexity – I’m going to give it a try

In story fourteen I argued that science, like sex, thrives on diversity. I quoted from Peter Medawar, and the quote is worth repeating: There is no such thing as a Scientific Mind. Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very...

Avoid major disasters by welcoming minor change

November 4, 2015 My World View article “Avoid major disasters by welcoming minor change” has now been published in Nature (Vol.527, p.9). Here is the link: http://www.nature.com/news/avoid-major-disasters-by-welcoming-minor-change-1.18718 The full article cannot be...

What scientists need to know about talking to politicians

My article in Physics World (August 2015) with John Tesh, formerly of the UK Cabinet Office, giving 12 tips for scientists to have effective dialogue with politicians. Here is the original draft: How Do Politicians Think? Practical Tips for Communicating Science...

Share This