
“Getting Started” Guide to Cybernetics - _qc3o
http://www.pangaro.com/definition-cybernetics.html
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sevensor
I was ready to jump in here with a dismissive comment, but then he mentioned
Wiener close to the top, and I was disarmed. It's a pretty good collection of
links. Unfortunately, the prefix "cyber" has rather jumped the shark, but the
whole idea of biological and even social systems as exhibiting the same
communication and control mechanisms we're familiar with from engineering is
worth contemplating.

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carapace
See also W. Ross Ashby (1956): "An Introduction to Cybernetics"

(PDF available from
[http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASHBBOOK.html](http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASHBBOOK.html))

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fdupoo
This is great. I haven't delved into AI much yet, but what I've seen through
10 years as a language-learning specialist is that information and
computational approaches to learning fail miserably in ESL, as does most
schooling.

The brain is wetware. It's organic and grows into abilities through practice
and use with proper modelling from an expert.

I get an itch to correct when I read AI discussions, as they usually assume
information theory as fundamental to intelligence and mind.

Go try to learn something really hard, and pay attention to your internal
process as youre doing it, then go and teach someone else that same skill and
pay close attention to their process, while comparing it to what yoh went
through to learn the skill you are now teaching. Then you'll have the
substance necessary to theorize about the learning mind. Then again, me
telling people who only deal in abstractions to go out and learn through
concrete experiences is probably barking up the wrong tree.

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glennji
Certainly interesting, but (just me?) reads like some kind of
optimised/feedback-tested meme-vehicle for the authors’ ideas — repetition,
restatement, phrasing means I feel like I’ve been “actively” programmed
(rather than my normal experience of contemplation, integration, learning,
etc.). Not necessarily a bad thing, mind.

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FractalNerve
My Bachelor Thesis on applying Sociocybernetics using Web-Technology. I
should've really read this "Getting Started Guide" before :)

It's really a very interesting field and the most modern term I know
describing it maybe a conflation of Mathematical Sociology & Psychology.

