Altered States Of Conversation E142| Are We Running Out Of Time as a Species? | Dave Snowden
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Mar 24, 2026 
Dave Snowden, polymathic complexity practitioner and creator of the Cynefin framework, explores anthro-complexity and what makes humans distinct. He discusses entanglement over simple relationships, why workshops fail and immersion works, the rise of deme structures and new cultural roles, and the urgent risks pushing societies to reinvent decision-making and shared living.
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Stop Making Workshops The Default
- Avoid workshops that reify facilitator authority; embed interpretive structures so participants tag their own ethnographic data.
- Snowden shifted from text labels to semiotics and triangles to let meaning emerge without imposing theory from researchers.
The Falcon Versus Pigeon Story
- Snowden tells the Mullah Nasruddin pigeon/falcon story to warn against over-simplification that destroys essential properties.
- He used it to respond to pressure from IBM and others asking to make complex things simpler at the cost of meaning.
Shift The Substrate Not Just The Story
- Change substrate by altering micro-interactions at scale rather than prescribing grand narratives; seed small experiments and let emergent regularities guide policy.
- Examples include transgenerational trios, school-based story collection, and anonymous panopticon roles for micro-spending.