Catch up - lots of cognitive republic posts

Here’s a catch-up service for many prior Cognitive Republic (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre) posts, starting with the first, below.

There are also book reviews here for members only. (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)

and here’s the first in a new and urgent series on cognitive warfare:

I’ll be extending this cognitive warfare series over the coming months, as there is a lot of activity in this area. I will also be extending the cognitive republic mission much further here over the coming months.

If you’ve been sitting on the fence as a reader, perhaps you might now consider taking one of the very good value plans available here. (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)

This is my new home for a new mission: a book-length project written online, in public - a new and scary experience for me, and I hope an exhilarating experience for you - the reader.

Why this? Why now?

The alarm bells are ringing loudly and clearly: democracies everywhere are in polycrisis – simultaneous crises of trust, legitimacy, and governance; crises caused by political stasis in the face of rapid technological, financial, and other changes; crises of belief and confidence caused by the rise of new online media, tools, and techniques shaking the foundations of what we know.

I argue here we need a radically new democratic philosophy (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)– one appropriate to the complex and uncertain times we find ourselves in, and which, upfront, admits that many of the difficulties and problems we face do not admit of obvious and easy solutions, but solve them we must.

Redesigning our democracies as learning systems – capable of testing, adapting, evolving, learning, and delivering, can renew the faith and trust of the public, and surmount the complex challenges we will inevitably face.

This approach builds upon findings in psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. When our brains encounter surprising or unexpected inputs, they update their models of the world, learn, and adapt; when societies face unexpected crises, they too must learn, unlearn, and relearn.

I call this approach the ‘Cognitive Republic,’ where we all, together, build an experimenting, learning, evolving society. Cognitive Republic offers a radical reframing of democracy for the twenty‑first century as a thinking and learning system—an ecosystem of experiments, heuristics, and feedback loops, not just a system of checks and balances.

If you’ve received this by email, take a moment and send this onward to one or two other people who might appreciate the challenge and thinking here - this is the way a project like this grows - by trusted word of mouth.