The statistician's guide to Utopia: The future of growth

In this article I paint a concise portrait of world economic and population history. Key factors include the world population and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The role of technology in relation to the environmental impact of economic activity is represented by an Environmental Efficiency Factor (EEF). It is asserted that any modern political theory aspiring to comprehensiveness should deal with four subject matters: The legitimate level of human interference with the rest of nature; the level of the human population; the nature and extent of the economy and technology. Past GDP growth rates combined with UN population projections result in a number of scenarios of future real GDP to the year 2300. In the course of inquiry, three measures of all time economic activity are introduced: All time world GDP per capita, accumulated world GDP and the annual growth rate of accumulated world GDP. In conclusion, I describe under what circumstances it is conceivable that the growth economy can persist for at least 300 more years. Directions of inquiry are offered to three groups: Those who want to maintain the growth economy for as long as possible; those who want world population to stay, in the long run, at a level comparable to that of today; and those who want to minimize environmental pressure.economic growth; environment; future studies; politics; population; technology; Utopia

Creativity in Remote and Hybrid Work Environments

Workplace creativity is crucial for innovation and navigation in a dynamic technology-driven world. This dissertation sheds light on individual and group creativity within flexible work arrangements (FWA), an expanding yet understudied field. Specifically, the four appended research papers explore creativity in two remote work settings – work from home (WFH) and corporate coworking (working remotely from coworking spaces), as well as within hybrid work combining remote and office work. The overarching research objective is to understand how creativity unfolds in remote and hybrid work environments. The papers include a systematic literature review on corporate coworking and creativity, a quantitative study of creative performance in an enforced WFH setting, a phenomenological study of collective creativity, and a case study investigating creative processes in a hybrid work environment. All the papers are intertwined with the profound shifts in work practices occurring before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings emphasize the importance of social interaction and knowledge sharing for workplace creativity. In remote work settings, challenges due to digital communication barriers and complexities of building social ties and trust are identified. Extensive use of digital platforms during the initial pandemic lockdown was found to promote creative performance. In contrast, information technology (IT) professionals working from home experienced that the absence of informal face-to-face (FTF) interaction hindered creativity. However, well-facilitated digital sessions triggered collective creativity. Analysis of creative processes in a multinational technology company suggested that in-person interaction was favorable for problem identification, whereas idea generation should be conducted either entirely remotely or FTF. Hybrid work in real time was perceived beneficial for idea evaluation only. By combining the two research fields of creativity and FWA, this dissertation expands both literatures. Utilizing social capital theory and social information processing theory deepens our understanding of the social dynamics of creativity in remote and hybrid work. Organizations should design physical and digital work environments that promote informal social interaction, knowledge sharing, and a creative climate. To facilitate creativity, this dissertation recommends hybrid models that balance employee and employer needs, and optimize the benefits of both FTF interaction and remote work.publishedVersio

Abstraction, cruelty and other aspects of animal play (exemplified by the playfulness of Muki and Maluca)

Play behaviour is notorious for constituting a much debated, yet little clarified field of research. In this article, attempts are made to reach conclusions on the relation between human play and the play of other animals (especially cat play), as well as on the very character of play. The concept of Umwelt is reviewed, as are definitions of animal play, categorization of animal play and the role of meta-communication in playful behaviour. For some, play is a symbol of everything that is good. The author of the current article does not deny that social morality may have originated from play behaviour, but stresses the existence of cruelty play, which leads to additional assumptions. Another notion that is treated in some detail is perceptual play, which proves to demonstrate complex semiotic play that is related first of all to signification. At the end of the article an alternative categorization of animal play is suggested, in which the fundamental role of mind games is emphasized. Throughout the text, examples of play behaviour are offered by the two domestic cats Muki and Maluca

Enemies of the State: Curbing Women Activists Advocating Rape Reform in Sudan

Sudanese women activists launched a legal campaign in 2009 calling attention to how the country’s Sharia-based Criminal Act of 1991 produced impunity for sexual assault in the Darfur conflict. After years of mobilization, Sudan enacted rape reform in 2015. While on the surface a success story, extensive interviews conducted in Khartoum suggest that this regime-controlled rape reform is more about the struggle of an authoritarian state to keep an emerging independent women’s movement under control, rather than the protection of rape victims in Darfur. By situating the reform within the broader political dynamics of the International Criminal Courts’ (ICC) arrest order against Sudan’s president for the use of rape as a war tactic in Darfur, it becomes clear that this pushed an already pressured head of state to clamp down on independent women’s groups advocating rape reform. Women activists were framed as collaborators of the ICC and an enemy of the Sudanese state. The immediate implication of targeting women activists is that the regime has silenced critical voices pointing to the limitations of the rape reform as well as those actors most likely to watchdog its implementation. The long-term implication is that it weakens the foundation for generating further policy changes on violence against women

The Evolutionary Origin(s) of the Umwelt

Although Jakob von Uexküll´s Umwelt theory is not mentioned in Jablonka and Ginsburg´s Target article, von Uexküll´s theory is clearly relevant in the context of the article, with the authors´ emphasis on the origin of “subjective experiencing”. I relate some of Jablonka and Ginsburg´s main claims to an evolutionary perspective on Umwelt theory. As it turns out, the Umwelt has multiple evolutionary origins depending on our exact definition(s) of Umwelt.publishedVersio

Creating art from research:a theatre play based on research interviews with senior therapists

The growing scope and influence of qualitative research methodologies has generated an interest in the use of art-informed approaches to disseminating research findings. In the present article, our aim is to present a methodological case study of the development of a theatre play based on a qualitative study of senior therapists' life and work. Lessons learned from this project are presented in relation to ethical issues, the process through which qualitative data are transformed into a theatre performance, and the distinctive perspective afforded by a dramaturgical approach. Implications for research practice are discussed

The ontogeny of the embryonic, foetal and infant human umwelt

This article, which envelops a case study and development of umwelt theory, addresses four research questions: At what point does the human umwelt emerge? What umwelt transitions can be identified in the ontogenesis of the early human umwelt? What is characteristic of the umwelt trajectory of human embryos/ foetuses/infants? How are umwelt objects established/crystallized/fixated in the human umwelt?The early human umwelt is characterized by rapid change, radical transformations, and gradual establishment of the first and most basic umwelt objects by way of exploration and learning. While the human umwelt arguably emerges already at the embryonic stage, the sense-saturated umwelt emerges at the foetal stage. Unlike an adult human’s umwelt, but like other altricial umwelten, the umwelt of the human foetus and infant is not fully functional from the perspective of the organism itself. In other words, their basic functioning directly depends on others. Our human sociality is further stimulated by shared undertakings early on in our terrestrial lives which effectively make us part of some specific social system

Parallel Community Detection in Incremental Graphs

The problem of community detection in large, expanding real-world networks presents significant challenges due to the scale and complexity of these networks. Traditional algorithms struggle to provide optimal solutions or require unviable computational resources. In this thesis, we address these challenges by exploring, designing and evaluating parallel computing strategies for community detection in incremental graphs. We provide a novel parallel implementation of the NCLiC algorithm by dividing its phases into parallel tasks using a shared memory approach. The algorithm has been extensively tested on various graphs. The results demonstrate promising performance improvements and scalability while retaining the quality of the partitions. The parallel implementation of the Leiden algorithm used for pre-clustering shows virtually no loss in modularity and obtained speedups up to a factor of 10.3. The refinement and merging phases of the parallel NCLiC algorithm obtained speedups up to 18.42 and 10.36, respectively, resulting in a total speedup of up to a factor of 6.73.Masteroppgave i informatikkINF399MAMN-INFMAMN-PRO

Wasted GDP in the USA

Whether or to what extent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) can measure human development is disputed. This article develops a notion of “wasted GDP”, with a case study on the performance of the USA based on analysis of Human Development Index (HDI) data. Like Herman Daly’s notion of ‘uneconomic growth’, the perspective of wasted GDP addresses the benefits and costs of economic growth and favors prioritization of policies that promote genuinely sustainable wellbeing. Over the last three decades, the USA has fallen behind several other highly developed countries in the HDI, despite solid economic growth. More than 20 countries, large and small, now outperform the USA on the Human Development Index, and 27 countries currently do better than the USA by nonincome HDI. 21 countries outperform the USA by this measure despite having a lower GDP per capita. The notion of “wasted GDP” implies that GDP is wasted if it does not support welfare. While a country´s welfare performance is measured by nonincome HDI, a comparison with better-performing countries that have a lower GDP indicates the share of GDP that is wasted from a human development perspective. The results, based on highly conservative estimates, show that the top 5 performers by lowest GDP per capita achieve better outcomes than the USA with an average GDP per capita that is 37.5% lower. All better performers achieve better outcomes with an average GDP per capita that is 26.9% lower. Without any wasted GDP, the annual US CO2 emissions could have been at least 1.268 million tonnes lower (all better performers estimate) and possibly as much as 1.767 million tonnes lower (top 5 performers estimate), accounting for 3.6–5.0% of global emissions. Similarly, the USA´s material footprint could have been between 2.625 million and 3.659 million tonnes lower, accounting for 2.7–3.8% of humanity´s global material footprint.publishedVersio