Welcome

Using science & reason to understand human nature & society.

“Humanity is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your life unravelling it, don’t say you’ve wasted your time.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Most of humanity’s problems, such as war, poverty, and climate change, are self-inflicted. Sustainable, long-term solutions can only be found by unravelling Dostoevsky’s mystery of humanity. But this can only be done through an honest, rational, objective, and scientific understanding of human nature. I will post one article a week on a Wednesday morning (GMT). These articles will discuss human nature from the ground floor up. They include, therefore, articles on evolution and systems science. The topics that I have covered to date, and will cover in the future, are listed on the Index page. I would recommend reading them in the order listed, as each article builds on those previously published. You can also see the articles in my Quora space at rational-understanding.quora.com.  If you would like to receive articles by email, please click the subscribe button. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, I will be pleased to hear from you. My email address is email@johnachalloner.com.

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Most Recent Posts

Agency, Causal Leverage and Social Power

One of the most intriguing features of living and social systems is that tiny actions often have enormous effects. A neuron fires and a limb moves. A policy is announced and an institution reorganises itself. A symbolic message spreads and a social movement begins. Why does this happen? A growing line of work, including a…

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Introducing the Extended Framework for a General Systems Theory (EFGST)

The “Extended Framework for a General Systems Theory” (EFGST) builds upon the original “Framework for a General Systems Theory” that I first released several months ago. The original framework provided a structured, cross-disciplinary approach to understanding systems, their properties, and the causal processes that drive them. This new Extended Framework expands this foundation with several…

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Here are five simple questions for you to meditate upon:

  1. How confident are you that you know the problems of humanity?
  2. To what extent do you care about those problems?
  3. How confident are you that you understand why these problems exist?
  4. How confident are you that you know the solutions to these problems?
  5. How empowered do you feel to make a difference?

If you would like to reply to these questions (and only these questions) in a 90 second, anonymous questionnaire, click here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/S2CQBGL.

When sufficient people have responded I will publish the results here.