Global Strategy - blog

Associated with some themes of this blog, I just came across this video...

Consider LSE's slogan: rerum cognoscere causas ("to know the causes of things", ripped from Virgil, I suppose). It makes a direct claim favouring causal explanation. Another matter, however, more rooted in the Anglo-American tradition is the tendency to embrace methodological individualism (individuals matter).

Auguste Comte memorial lecture was given today by Prof. Philippe Van Parijs. The topic was interestingly ‘European Democracy and the Language Question'. Despite democracy being interesting and all, what appeared to me to be the most striking insight of his talk was the whole discussion around European Union, unified (political) decision-making bodies and the apparent question of lingua franca. Van Parijs is also originally from Belgium, a country struggling with severe problems of identity, language and governance, so he also has some additional weight in his words.

Manuel Castells gave his public lecture at LSE already some time ago. Nevertheless, his message was topical then, is today and will be in the coming year as well. He concentrated on the growth and importance of the Internet as the infrastructure of the information society and its implications to the personal freedom people that have the access to it enjoy. Only the emergence of mobile telecommunication has grown faster than the availability of the world-wide network. Despite the prevalence of the ‘net' (or because of), human fears are common in the every-day discussions of the matter. He pointed out some facts about it.

An interesting question to GloStra is how firms can or should adapt their strategies according to the societies in which they operate.

On Monday, a workshop took place at the LSE CPNSS as a part of project called ‘Contingency and Dissent in Science'. The day was loaded with four speakers, all hovering around the topic matter. All the presenters provided interesting insights to the general matter; due to the limitations of this account, I am going to concentrate on one of them.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb agreed to give ‘a boring philosophy lecture' at LSE approximately six months ago, discussing mainly epistemology. Retrospectively not surprisingly, the focus of his attention was shifted to our contemporary financial turmoil (which also resulted in a flood of spectators and a spillover room). Hence the name of his lecture, ‘Decisions, Probability and Beliefs: beware Mickey Mouse probability'. The details of his argument are available and discussed elsewhere .