The philosophy of blockchain technology is concerned, among other things, with blockchain ontology, how it might be characterised, how it is being created, implemented, and adopted, how it operates in the world, and how it evolves over time. This paper concentrates on whether Bitcoin/blockchain can be considered a complex system and, if so, whether it is a chaotic one. Beyond mere academic curiosity, a positive response would raise concerns about the likelihood of Bitcoin/blockchain entering a 2010‐Flash‐Crash‐type of chaotic regime, with catastrophic consequences for financial systems based on it. The paper starts by highlighting the relevant details of the Bitcoin/blockchain ecosystem formed by the blockchain itself, bitcoin end users (payers and payees), capital gains seekers, miners, full nodes maintainers, and developers, and their interactions. Then the Information Theory of Complex Systems is briefly discussed for later use. Finally, the blockchain is investigated with the help of Crutchfield's Statistical Complexity measure. The low non‐null statistical complexity value obtained suggests that the blockchain may be considered algorithmically complicated but hardly a complex system and unlikely to enter a chaotic regime.

This study investigates the potential of ChatGPT and Bing Chat, advanced conversational AIs, as “objects-to-think-with,” resources that foster reflective and critical thinking, and concept comprehension in enhancing STEM education, using a constructionist theoretical framework. A single-case study methodology was used to analyze extensive interaction logs between students and both AI systems in simulated STEM learning experiences. The results highlight the ability of ChatGPT and Bing Chat to help learners develop reflective and critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving skills, and concept comprehension. However, integrating AIs with collaborative learning and other educational activities is crucial, as is addressing potential limitations like concerns about AI information accuracy and reliability of the AIs’ information and diminished human interaction. The study concludes that ChatGPT and Bing Chat as objects-to-think-with offer promising avenues to revolutionize STEM education through a constructionist lens, fostering engagement in inclusive and accessible learning environments.

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Science teaching detached itself from Reality and became restricted to the classrooms and textbooks with their abundance of standardized and repetitive exercises, while students keep their own alternative conceptions. Papert, displeased with this inefficient learning process, as early as 1980 championed physics microworlds, where students could experience a variety of laws of motion, from Aristotle to Newton and Einstein or even “new” laws invented by the students themselves. While often mistakenly seen as a game, Second Life (SL), the online 3D virtual world hosted by Linden Lab, imposes essentially no rules on the residents beyond reasonable restrictions on improper behavior and the physical rules that guarantee its similitude to the real world. As a consequence SL qualifies itself as an environment for personal discovery and exploration as proposed by constructivist theories. The physical laws are implemented through the well-known physics engine Havok, whose design aims to provide game-players a consistent, “realistic” environment. Going beyond Reality limits, however, the Havok User Guide explicitly encourages developers to use several tricks to cheat the simulator in order to make games funnier or easier to play. As it is shown in this study, SL Physics is unexpectedly neither the Galilean/Newtonian “idealized” Physics nor a real world Physics virtualization, intentionally diverging from reality in such a way that it could be called hyper-real. As a matter of fact, if some of its features make objects behave “more realistically than real” ones, certain quantities, e.g. energy, have a totally different meaning in SL as compared to Physics. Far from considering it as a problem, however, the author argues that its hyper-reality may be a golden teaching opportunity, allowing surreal Physics simulations and epistemologically rich classroom discussions around the “what is a physical law?” issue, in good accordance with Papert’s never-implemented proposal.