Abstract:

Tas will deliver a paean to serendipity, obliquity and incongruity in a world obsessed with prediction, control, KPIs, metrics and 'tick-boxing'.

He will cover 3 broad areas:

• Why so serious? The arithmocracy, the obsessive workshop of data and facts and the industry's destructive and demoralizing tendency to want to message people into submission
• From haha to Aha: what can humour teach us about the identification and generation of insight?
• What do M Night Shyamalan's films and Penn and Teller tell us about insight? Not just what insight is but how it feels.

There may be incidental outbreaks of wit and what might pass for humour if you don't look too closely, including his favourite joke about homeopathy.