at the Royal College of Physicians

Busy day at work, so many different things to do. Ah well. I did go to a very interesting talk by Prof Karen O´Brien on the human dimension of climate change and transformation of society. She clarified many ideas I've had for a while. In particular that we need to consider what world we want to aim for and that the current discussions try to maintain the status quo which will not work. I was particularly interested in the distinction between technological change and adaptive change. The former tends to be short term focusing on implementations and getting on with stuff. The latter is a change of attitude, worldview and acts more slowly. It brings transformation which can be either for the better or worse. I was also very much intrigued by the fact that the speaker viewed a lot of social science as Newtonian or Cartesian, ie humans are rational and can be predicted (as in Newtonian physics). She is looking into using the mathematics of quantum physics to describe society. This is the first time I came across this idea. The other very interesting idea was the society is transformed suddenly after a tipping point has been reached. I was immediately reminded of the whole Brexit thing. 

So more details are on the cchange website.