The Colour of Safety It’s been a while since I bought a set of colouring pencils, but I bought a set this week. Oh, you say, that’s not unusual, you probably bought them for your grandchildren? Actually, I bought them, for myself. You will see at the end of this blog what is unique about the … [Read more...] about The Colour of Safety
arational
The Sully Effect
The Sully Effect I wrote recently about the Bradbury Effect that is, the delusion that there is no chance, luck, randomness and fundamental attribution error. A critical part of the Bradbury effect is the attribution of value to denial in the light of hindsight bias. It’s amazing how smart we … [Read more...] about The Sully Effect
Unconscious Codes, Ecological Thinking in Risk
Biosemiotics is the idea that life is based on semiosis, i.e., on signs, symbols and codes. Biosemiotics is the study of signs in living systems. In ecological life there is a ’thinking’ dynamic or ‘force’ that drives everything from the construction of a snowflake to the formation of a hurricane. … [Read more...] about Unconscious Codes, Ecological Thinking in Risk
How Groupthink Works
How Groupthink Works In light of the binary discourse that is floating about my last blog, Like A Collective Brain Snap, this may serve as a follow up. People often scratch their heads wondering why people do things and in exasperation and dismissal come up with the traditional stupidity/idiot … [Read more...] about How Groupthink Works
The Rational, aRational and Irrational in Safety
Safety seems to avoid the most important things when thinking about tackling risk. There seems to be no interest in safety in the nature of the human unconscious nor any interest in anything outside of a narrow worldview that constructs humans-as-brains-on-bodies and cognition as brain-work. The … [Read more...] about The Rational, aRational and Irrational in Safety
Predictably Arational, Safety as a Superstition
Predictably Arational, Safety as a Superstition One of the most annoying things about Daniel Ariely's book Predictably Irrational is that it allows risk and safety people to dismiss aspects of human decision making as stupid when they are not. The framing of the word ‘irrational’ is simply … [Read more...] about Predictably Arational, Safety as a Superstition