Interesting article

I think the ideas in it are valuable and have application to more than just science policy.

Good government is not so only about identifying the most likely or desirable future and then adapting to it or trying to engineer it into being. It’s about building resilience and flexibility to adapt to whatever the future brings, recognising that we have limited capacity to predict, let alone influence, what that future might be

I heard part of the parliamentary debate today on university funding. The subject of research funding was canvased in the predictable manner and your organisation (FEAST) got mentioned in dispatches.

It seems a shame to me that our current government is far more interested in directing funding toward its cronies (eg the Tiwi Island "mob") and the whims of its grand North American ally its unpopular foreign policies and energy preferences.

My opinion is that there is a place for guaranteed funding of basic research, but likewise, there ought to be far better developed checks and balances on what gets developed and "Xeroxed" for scaling up to global industries or impacts.

My guess is that Market influences on our lives (I hate the term "market forces")are mindless, like environmental influences on population genetics and organic evolution.

It may be there are hierarchic types of patterns which have been (or could be) identified, in the "marketplace", which would help clarify the relationship between the market and our social wellbeing.

Gregory Bateson, in his interesting book "Mind and Nature, a Necessary Unity" analysed organic evolution in such terms.

Particularly germane is Bateson's distinction between Darwinian and Lamarckian evolution, the latter of which more accurately describes what goes on in a cultural domain, where information is not sequestered so as to be subject to randomising influences of DNA reproduction.

The point I am interested in is how we progress. Plainly, we accrete information, and our lives change as a result. Good luck with your battle for funding.