"I think it's a matter of communication, and the problem that the listener reading their own questions into whatever they hear, making it quite hard for useful knowledge to spread from culture to culture, or level to level, or group to group.…"

"Yea, definitely, the emotional inertia created as any school of thought gets reality arranged just as it likes is truly tremendous.   Finding pleasure in moving from one point of view to another, looking at the world in…"

"OK, so if you're able to think about how one thing in your world affects everything else, you're much less likely to overstep your bounds and you make fewer mistakes.   Sensing that you are unaware of your bounds is more difficult,…"

"I agree it is often a matter of having people immersed in the complexities of a system, so they can appreciate how it works as a whole.  To me that's an issue of whether one's model ends up being faithful to nature or not, otherwise…"

"Well, it's somewhat a matter of technique, whether our words refer to realities of the natural world or not.   That's what I've spent my life as a scientist clarifying how to do, actually.   The problem has to do with the…"

"Of course I notice that complex systems model people are quite positive about the ability of computer models to become able to understand our natural world full of independently animated living systems that all individually organized from the inside…"

"John,   Well, yes, it is seductive that computer models create computer economies that are "aesthetically" similar to what natural systems do.   They are far from being models of any natural system, is the catch.  Brian…"

"Well one reason I keep suggesting that the modelers study how real systems work is that most environmental systems have actively learning parts, exploring their environments as a wilderness of possibilities.   Such systems develop unpredictable…"

"John, I'd agree on both counts, that programmers don't know how to interpret data to imitate complex systems with equations, and that anthropologists (and other observational sciences who study the natural subjects),…"

"John and Kathryn, Geoff suggested I comment briefly, to pass along a comment I sent him, also about the Complexity Economics session at the INET conference.     The problem with complex systems in nature, is that they actively evolve…"

"John, That seems well put.   Improving productivity has been humanity's "secret trick" for moving the limits so we can use more and more resources and invent better and better stuff, but that doesn't remove the need at some…"

"I too see that demonstrations from nature provide examples of what human culture could do, if we only had the imagination. Then I also see how common it is that trying to replicate nature's continuities in our minds is beyond our imagination.…"

"John,  There is certainly a moral quandary, if taking away a hopeful but mistaken belief causes people to give up and quit! That's the kind of dilemma that get's worse if you don't acknowledge and find the right response…"

"Well, the fox we're trying to "out fox" in this case is ourselves, of course, which rules out using many of the common motivational narratives, as you nicely point out.   One friend recently suggested a way look at the problem as…"

"But what's the narrative for people finding that to reduce our impacts with elegant efficiency (like William McDonough's town plan) is a mirage??   I don't see an easy way to convert a "celebrated…"