Brains working towards machine consciousness

I have held off posting about this, as I wanted to make sure I wasn't being too 'hot headed', but the more I see, the more I am sure there is something wrong.

On the simple side, the recent 'upgrade' to U. Manitoba's Moodle site leaves something to be desired. Gone are the nested thread forum views, which makes following a conversation nigh on impossible. Worse, the 'new post' highlighting has gone too. And the (pre-existing) issue of the unread post count of a forum thread decreasing over time when you don't read them still exists. It is almost as if there is has been a policy decision to make the Moodle site useless for discussions - which could be the case, given one of the course tutor's apparent dislike of the discussions on the Moodle and, indeed, of a central place for them to exist in the first place.

More of a worry, though, is the tone of many of Stephen Downes' recent posts. Whilst I occasionally dip into his blog and find what I read there to be intellectually stimulating, I have often wondered about the clarity of what he writes. Several people on the CCK08 course seem to have trouble interpreting what he writes too - but his response to this seems to be increasingly along the lines of 'believe what I tell you' (despite his position that 'belief' doesn't exist - although I would argue that is mainly down to a somewhat bizarre and specific definition of 'belief'), and to make comments along the lines of 'I wrote something about this before, so if you don't understand it you must be stupid' (that appears to be the meaning, but it isn't the wording). There is also a tendency to 'explain' by means of examples which often seem to suggest the opposite of his line of argument, or which are at least vague in interpretation, which doesn't help the issue.

Now, I am used to that line of argument from people in the pub and petulant children, but by and large I am comforted by the fact that I seldom encounter it elsewhere. Interestingly the Definition Tsarina (as she is described by Om Design) seems to have more or less disappeared around the same time Stephen became particularly irritable. Perhaps there was a hidden transaction which caused the behavioural change.

Fortunately, George Siemens provides clear (to my mind) definitions and descriptions. Sometimes the concepts seem a little woolly, but, to be honest, Connectivism is a fairly young theory and deals with ideas which are very hard to define. George's take on Connectivism is the more practical of the two (as opposed to theoretical, not as opposed to impractical) - and it surprises me that I am more drawn to it, as I tend to prefer the theoretical.

I have a bit of a problem with the definitions of 'Group' and 'Collective' - I sometimes wonder if I need a fuzzy ontology in order to be able to work out what I am supposed to understand by the terms.

Despite the perceived problems though, I have to say that the course is still interesting and enlightening.