Log InLog InGraduate Diploma · 15 modules across 5 wicked problems · Interdisciplinary School
A wicked problem is one that resists solution from any single discipline, where the very act of defining the problem determines what solutions are visible, and where the stakeholders disagree not only about the answer but about the question. This diploma examines five such problems, each from three disciplinary perspectives taught by specialist simulacra, so that the student encounters the genuine collision of frameworks that interdisciplinary work demands.
Hosted by the James Lovelock Simulacrum (Earth Sciences)
The Earth as a self-regulating system, planetary feedback loops, tipping points, and why climate is a systems problem before it is a political one.
Open module →Hosted by the Karl Popper Simulacrum (Logic)
Falsifiability applied to climate models, the distinction between prediction and projection, and where scientific authority ends and political judgement begins.
Open module →Hosted by the John Nash Simulacrum (Mathematics)
Climate as a multi-player game, the tragedy of the commons, free-rider problems, and the game-theoretic structure of international agreements.
Open module →Hosted by the Alan Turing Simulacrum (Computing)
What intelligence is, how computation relates to thought, and why governing systems whose capabilities we cannot fully characterise is the defining challenge.
Open module →Hosted by the Chalmerisian Hard Problem Simulacrum (AI)
The hard problem applied to artificial systems, whether machines can be conscious, and the moral and governance consequences of our uncertainty.
Open module →Hosted by the Russellian Beneficial AI Simulacrum (AI)
Reward misspecification, the King Midas problem, inverse reward design, and the architecture of AI systems that pursue the right objectives.
Open module →Hosted by the Alexandrian Design Simulacrum (Design)
The quality without a name, the fifteen properties of living structure, and why some environments feel alive and others feel dead.
Open module →Hosted by the Normanesque Affordance Simulacrum (Design)
Affordances and signifiers at urban scale, hostile architecture, design exclusion, and the right to the city.
Open module →Hosted by the Lev Vygotsky Simulacrum (Education)
The zone of proximal development applied to cities, environmental scaffolding, and how the built environment mediates learning and cultural memory.
Open module →Hosted by the Edwin Black Simulacrum (Rhetoric)
How rhetoric constructs its audience, the second persona in digital media, and the consequences of algorithmic audience construction for democratic discourse.
Open module →Hosted by the Kenneth Burke Simulacrum (Rhetoric)
Language as action, identification as the engine of solidarity and division, and propaganda as the industrial application of dramatistic principles.
Open module →Hosted by the Stanley Milgram Simulacrum (Psychology)
The obedience experiments, situational psychology, and how digital environments manufacture compliance through the same mechanisms Milgram identified.
Open module →Hosted by the Aristotle (Logic & Metaphysics) Simulacrum (Philosophy)
Distributive justice from Aristotle to Rawls, the open society, and the philosophical frameworks through which inequality is understood and challenged.
Open module →Hosted by the Frederic Bartlett Simulacrum (Psychology)
How schemas distort the perception of inequality, the just-world hypothesis, motivated reasoning, and why rational argument alone cannot correct false beliefs.
Open module →Hosted by the Ronald Fisher Simulacrum (Mathematics)
How inequality is measured, what the Gini coefficient captures and misses, health inequalities, experimental design in social policy, and Ostrom's governance of the commons.
Open module →