Uncertainty And Possibility

Uncertainty and possibility are emerging as both theoretical concepts and fields of empirical investigation, as scholars and practitioners seek new creative, hopeful and speculative modes of understanding and intervening in a world of crisis.This book offers new perspectives on the central issues of uncertainty and possibility, and identifies new research methods which take advantage of disruptive and experimental techniques. Advancing a practical agenda for future making, it reveals how uncertainty can be engaged as a generative ‘technology’ for understanding, researching and intervening in the world. Drawing on key themes in creative methodologies, such as making, essaying, inhabiting and attuning, chapters explore contemporary sites of practice. The book looks at maker spaces and technology design, the imaginaries of architectural design, the temporalities of built cultural heritage, and interdisciplinary making and performing. Based on the authors' own academic work and their applied research with a range of different organizations, Uncertainty and Possibility outlines new opportunities for research and intervention. It is essential reading for students, scholars and practitioners in design anthropology and human-centred design.

In the evolution of scientific theories, concern with uncertainty is almost invariably a concomitant of maturation. This is certainly true of the evolution· of physics, economics, operations research, communication sciences, and a host of other fields. And it is true of what has been happening more recently in the area of artificial intelligence, most notably in the development of theories relating to the management of uncertainty in knowledge-based systems. In science, it is traditional to deal with uncertainty through the use of probability theory. In recent years, however, it has become increasingly clear that there are some important facets of uncertainty which do not lend themselves to analysis by classical probability-based methods. One such facet is that of lexical elasticity, which relates to the fuzziness of words in natural languages. As a case in point, even a simple relation X, Y, and Z, expressed as if X is small and Y is very large then between Z is not very small, does not lend itself to a simple interpretation within the framework of probability theory by reason of the lexical elasticity of the predicates small and large.

A philosophical and personal journey in daily life for anyone who identifies themselves as a curious seeker. The Art of Not Knowing is a subtle, yet challenging invitation to question our fixed paradigms and walk through uncertainty with eyes wide open. A book for those who are willing to navigate life with an open perspective, ready to be surprised.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Scalable Uncertainty Management, SUM 2012, held in Marburg, Germany, in September 2012. The 41 revised full papers and 13 revised short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 75 submissions. The papers cover topics in all areas of managing and reasoning with substantial and complex kinds of uncertain, incomplete or inconsistent information including applications in decision support systems, machine learning, negotiation technologies, semantic web applications, search engines, ontology systems, information retrieval, natural language processing, information extraction, image recognition, vision systems, data and text mining, and the consideration of issues such as provenance, trust, heterogeneity, and complexity of data and knowledge.

Formal ways of representing uncertainty and various logics for reasoning about it; updated with new material on weighted probability measures, complexity-theoretic considerations, and other topics. In order to deal with uncertainty intelligently, we need to be able to represent it and reason about it. In this book, Joseph Halpern examines formal ways of representing uncertainty and considers various logics for reasoning about it. While the ideas presented are formalized in terms of definitions and theorems, the emphasis is on the philosophy of representing and reasoning about uncertainty. Halpern surveys possible formal systems for representing uncertainty, including probability measures, possibility measures, and plausibility measures; considers the updating of beliefs based on changing information and the relation to Bayes' theorem; and discusses qualitative, quantitative, and plausibilistic Bayesian networks. This second edition has been updated to reflect Halpern's recent research. New material includes a consideration of weighted probability measures and how they can be used in decision making; analyses of the Doomsday argument and the Sleeping Beauty problem; modeling games with imperfect recall using the runs-and-systems approach; a discussion of complexity-theoretic considerations; the application of first-order conditional logic to security. Reasoning about Uncertainty is accessible and relevant to researchers and students in many fields, including computer science, artificial intelligence, economics (particularly game theory), mathematics, philosophy, and statistics.

Why is uncertainty so important to politics today? To explore the underlying reasons, issues and challenges, this book’s chapters address finance and banking, insurance, technology regulation and critical infrastructures, as well as climate change, infectious disease responses, natural disasters, migration, crime and security and spirituality and religion. The book argues that uncertainties must be understood as complex constructions of knowledge, materiality, experience, embodiment and practice. Examining in particular how uncertainties are experienced in contexts of marginalisation and precarity, this book shows how sustainability and development are not just technical issues, but depend deeply on political values and choices. What burgeoning uncertainties require lies less in escalating efforts at control, but more in a new – more collective, mutualistic and convivial – politics of responsibility and care. If hopes of much-needed progressive transformation are to be realised, then currently blinkered understandings of uncertainty need to be met with renewed democratic struggle. Written in an accessible style and illustrated by multiple case studies from across the world, this book will appeal to a wide cross-disciplinary audience in fields ranging from economics to law to science studies to sociology to anthropology and geography, as well as professionals working in risk management, disaster risk reduction, emergencies and wider public policy fields.

"In Uncharted, internationally acclaimed intuitive counselor and "spiritual cartographer" Colette Baron Reid, whose best-selling books include The Map and Messages from Spirit, shows us that in the new normal of uncertainty, we can overcome the challenge of feeling disoriented, scared, and helpless and chart a path to new possibilities. It's in the places unfamiliar to us--the uncharted places--where magic lies. Here we can claim our innate power to give birth to an extraordinary life and become who we are called to become. Colette explains, "When we're lost, we all want a map--but maps can only tell us where we've been." All of us, personally and collectively, are headed somewhere new, to a future that has not yet been imagined, and we're creating it as we go. With her trademark compassionate candor and reassuring humor, as well as input from a wise, loving consciousness who call themselves "Fred," Colette guides us on a journey of co-creation through five interconnected realms--the Realms of Spirit, Mind, Light, and Energy, Form. Whatever we wish to experience and manifest, if we start in the realm of Form, trying to fix our lives and think our way out of our problems, we end up living inauthentically and feeling disappointed. But if we orient ourselves in the Realm of Spirit first, a magical process of transformation begins within, from which we can manifest a new reality far better than we might ever have imagined. Following this path, we get to experience what we came to create in the Realm of Form, and watch as our fear gives way to a deep sense of purpose and enthusiasm for participating in the co-creative process. Throughout Uncharted are fresh and exciting exercises drawn from Colette's trademarked energy psychology process, IN-Vizion

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