We use words to build narratives. Which, supposedly, help us in our quest for meaning. Yet everything does nothing more than alleviate our fear.
At some point in my life, some 6 years after Ceausescu had been chased from his presidential palace, I discovered the Stock Exchange. I had read about it, was under the impression that I knew how it worked but never had the opportunity to trade on in. Living in a communist country prevents you from trading on the free market, you know. To cut a long story short, I had a lot of beginner’s luck. And I wanted more. So I started to learn about it. Fundamental analysis, technical analysis, accounting… investor’s psychology, decision making theory…
But it wasn’t enough. So I went back to school. Sociology this time. I was no longer trying to beat the market, I only wanted to understand what was going on. Not only in the market but in our minds. By that time, I had already learned that investors were – and still are – torn apart by greed and fear.
Being able to ‘see the difference’ is what makes us able to considerate. The result of our considerations…
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to spot the difference between a spot and a curve. You don’t even need to be able to read…
Every adolescent steps out of the straight and narrow. Time and time again. And is told by his elders to toe the line. Until they learn that stepping back into the fold is easier than remaining an outlier for the rest of their natural life. Only the fold is no longer were it used to be… It has reached its current position because those who had the guts to explore have done that for the rest of us. Experimented being outliers. So that we, all of us, did not have to experience every possibility before choosing where to go next. They, the outliers, found out what was ‘out there’ and told us.
I’ve already made a few considerations about the two pictures above. About some of the differences between the top and the bottom ones. I’ve left the main one for today’s post.
We do have a certain bias towards conformity. We do, socially and statistically speaking, tend to follow the trend. Like all other social animals. After all, no society/herd can function – as a group, when all its members behave ‘outlierly’. So much outside the trend as to buck it. The difference between the top and the bottom ‘graph-s’ being the attitude towards the situation.
The top one comes with the ‘normal’ bias. Each normal individual does have a certain ‘something’ against the ‘outlier’ situation and a certain affinity for the comfort of being trendy. But we have learned to respect the outliers, for as long as they don’t hurt us. For as long as they don’t rock the boat so much as to get us seasick. The bottom graph states from the beginning that only the outlier opinion is valid. That no matter how many people continue to follow the trend, they are wrong. Even worse, they are insignificant. Hence disposable.
OK, there have been instances when the trend was leading in the wrong direction. Quite a few. Yet people have somehow managed to survive. They stuck together, realized the outliers who kept warning them were right and followed them out of the dire situation they found themselves in. But in each and every situation where an outlier had declared the rest of the ‘mob’ to be insignificant/disposable, and had enough traction to act upon their convictions, the situation had to become worse before people realized they had to change tack.
Before the people had realized they were following the wrong outlier!
Two things cannot exist simultaneously in the same place
Logic, ‘the correct way of thinking’, starts from the notion that no two things can exist, simultaneously, in the same ‘place’. Not even in our own head… Until they do, actually.
I’ll make a break here and tell you about Oscar Hoffman. A Romanian Teacher. Who kept telling us, those who had the privilege to hear him teaching, ‘It’s not enough for a proposition to be valid from the logical point of view. It also has to make sense. Epistemologically speaking.’
The bottom part of the picture describes a stance which does make some epistemological sense and is seriously deficient when examined logically. The top part is logically correct but also includes the meaning hidden in the bottom part. Let me elaborate.
“100% irrefutable study that is proof and absolutely statistically significant.” Absolute BS. No scientific study has ever proved anything. Other than the facts examined confirm, or contradict, the hypothesis being tested during that study. Hence the hypothesis is allowed to stand, temporarily, as a theory or declared to be wrong. A single study being claimed to be ‘absolutely statistically significant’ is so outrageous that it isn’t worth any comment. “100% paid studies with an agenda and of little to no value or significance whatsoever”… Nowadays 99.99% of the studies do involve money changing hands. Scientists have to eat and ‘money’ want to learn things. Hence ‘agendas’, on top of ‘money’. ‘Little to no value’ makes a lot less sense. If those studies yield results without any “value or significance whatsoever”, then why is any money involved and any time spent? To discuss about them, let alone to put them together…. To fit an agenda? The scientists involved – all of them?!?, “100%” – are frauds and all those paying the hefty sums of money are suckers? Then how can be explained the huge technological leap and the scientific breakthrough we currently witness?
‘Outlier’ versus ‘General trend’, is a far more ‘logically sound’. But also a lot more vague… The first proposition/picture, when examined with an open mind, does include everything claimed by the science deniers and the conspiracy speculationists. An outlier can be right, all change starts with one, and trends can be wrong. As all of them end up being…
So. What will it be? Are we going to let ourselves be divided into warring camps? Or understand ‘superposition’? Accept that having an agenda is not necessarily bad and that money is an excellent servant but a horrible master? Or continue the current trend? Until we will have killed each-other along the line of divide et impera while repeating at nauseam ‘greed is good’?
And it thus becomes obvious that Nietzsche has been falsely accused. It wasn’t he who had murdered God! He was simply the first who had the guts to write His death certificate…
My point being that what we call ‘God’ is a man made image. A concept. It doesn’t matter, for this analysis, whether there is an actual god or not. What we call God is nothing more than our image of one.
And it had been enough. For a while. For as long as we have followed the rules we ourselves had established to guide our own behavior – as in written them down – the God we’d imagined worked as intended. ‘Religion’ did what it was supposed to do. People had a ‘spiritual environment’ in which they behaved both coherently and cohesively. Coherently and cohesively enough to evolve from slaves – owned and/or owners – to equal rights owning/yielding citizens. Coherently and cohesively enough to evolve from horse driven war chariots to the M1A3 Abrams tank. Coherently and cohesively enough to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ to the tune of 8 billion. Give or take. Not all of them following ‘the rules’ but all of them benefiting from the results of those rules having been followed for a while.
Yet, when things were unfolding so smoothly, why have we given up following those rules?
Have we outgrown the need for a shepherdly Father? For a Ghost to frighten us unto doing the right thing? Or have we become so infatuated with our own ability to think, to reason, that we have turned it into an idol? Against all odds… Despite having been warned about it!
Pascal’s wager is about turning the tables on ‘God’. The image we made for ourselves about God, the ‘Holy Gost who frightened us unto staying on the straight and narrow’, convinced us to behave in a constructive manner. Benefiting the entire community. The argument made by Pascal was made to convince us, individually, that we – each of us – should believe in God for their own sake. For their own benefit! Effectively transforming each individual belief into an idol… ‘Graven’ by each individual, upon their own soul, in the likeness of things in heaven, for their individual use… Transforming the community creating God into an individual tool designed and believed to ‘give’ each of us ‘everything’. Individually. As opposed to making it possible for everybody to exist.
As Nietzsche observed, by making Pascal’s wager – by transforming faith into a rational thing – we have collectively killed God. The same God which has made us possible. Against everything we have been warned about, by our wise ancestors, we have replaced God with ourselves. So that we “gain all”. Individually. Each of those who had made the rational decision…
Theoretically, we do have a certain understanding regarding the thing we call ‘intelligence’. After all, there are some dictionary entries discussing the matter. But when it comes to measuring the said intelligence… nothing is straightforward anymore. So we still have a lot to learn about the thing. About our ability to understand, after all… About our ability to understand, period, including our own intelligence.
Click the picture above and read the article. It is interesting. The most interesting part being what it misses.
The first really intelligent computer application put together by man was the one who defeated Garry Kasparov. Has anyone been invited to play chess by an application? Is anybody aware of any chess or go application who had any initiative? Meaningful initiative? Other than making this or that move only AFTER a human had initiated the game?
What are we discussing here? The intelligence level of any of the many, present or future, artificial intelligence applications or their ability to become aware? Aware of anything…
Furthermore, when we discuss whether AI, ANI, AGI or even ASI would erase humankind from the face of the Earth… nobody has yet mentioned us. After all, we are the ones building the applications. The computers on which we run the applications… Instead of worrying whether any of the AI versions would do anything to us, we should worry about what some of us will do after they will have laid their hands on a really powerful AI application!
For a group of autonomous agents to coexist in a limited space, they need to behave in a coherent manner. For that coexistence to survive in the long run, those agents need to behave cohesively. To maintain their autonomy while bearing in mind the limited nature of the space in which they need to do their thing.
Riding bumper cars is great fun! But have you tried to get anywhere driving like that on a real road?
Apa caldă – pentru spălat – este o realitate 1,0. Simțită de noi. Nu atât ‘organoleptic’ cât în ceea ce privește evoluția noastră.
Având apă caldă pentru spălat, am reușit să ducem la maturitate un procentaj mult mai mare dintre copii noștri. Mult mai mulți dintre adulții spălați la fund au reușit să ajungă la senectute… Apa caldă pentru spălat a schimbat, profund, demografia.
Apa caldă o fi fost ‘imaginată’ de noi dar a fost, și a rămas, o realitate palpabilă.
Luxul, așa cum este el definit de marketeri și înțeles/acceptat de marele public, aduce beneficii doar celor care vând produse și servicii ‘de lux’.
Abia când cei care se ocupă cu ‘sensul vieții’ vor fi fost în stare să ne explice în ce lux ne scăldăm, atunci când ne spălăm cu apă caldă… abia atunci vom deveni capabili să înțelegem, cu toții, care este adevărata semnificație a acestui generos cuvânt!
“None other than Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric, has called shareholder-value ideology ” the dumbest idea in the world.” Yet business executives still pretend that maximizing shareholder value is their primary fiduciary obligation, which is nonsense except in few restricted cases, such as when a company is going to be sold.“
Value… What is that?!? Does it exist on its own?
Something must exist if anybody is to extract it, right? If that something may be created, then it would be a no brainer to make some before attempting to extract it… if you want to be involved in a sustainable process, right?
How do you make value? How does anybody establish that something is valuable in the first place?
– I declare this to be valuable. – Who owns it? – I do. – How much do you want for it? – xxx – OK
That ‘this’ had became ‘valuable’ only when ‘OK’. Before its value had been agreed upon, it being valuable was on the declarative level only. ‘Virtual’ versus ‘real’.
Only after two interested parties had negotiated about and agreed upon the value of something the value of that something has become established.
As an engineer, as down to Earth as it gets, I tend to agree with Jack Welch. A company should be managed as a long term project. It needs to satisfy the natural interests of the investors – profit – in a sustainable manner. Providing something useful to both parties involved. A useful ‘thing’ to the buyers and a satisfying profit to the investors. While creating little to no damage to the ‘environment’ in order to remain acceptable to those living on the same planet…
But who am I to judge… even if I have the blessing of Jack Welch… Who am I to tell anybody – any investor and/or any manager – how to run their business?!?
– Are they blind? Don’t they see this economic model doesn’t work?
Hm… “Share holder value is a result, not a strategy”, remember? Same with ‘inequality’. Let’s focus on sustainability. On the process. And notice that the process sputters! As a consequence of our own decisions!
We have told/allowed the investors and the managers to run the business – not their businesses, the entire business environment – in the current manner. And we are the ones bearing the brunt. Having to deal with, among other things, the current level of inequality. We, our decisions, have produced the current situation. Inequality is but one of the consequences. One, among many, of the consequences engendered by our own weltanschauung.
Cică „n-am fost în stare să zugrăvim blocurile pe care ni le-a lăsat Ceaușescu”!
Precum toate manipulările eficiente, și cea de mai sus conține o mare bucată de adevăr.
Prea multe dintre blocurile în care locuim arată ca dracu’! Prea multe dintre lucrurile din jurul nostru, nu doar blocurile, arată ca dracu’!
Doar că ăsta a fost tot! Tot adevărul…
Blocurile alea au fost făcute de noi. Nu le-a făcut Ceaușescu…
– Le-om fi făcut noi dar le-am făcut sub conducerea „celui mai iubit fiu al poporului”.
Da, din 1965 România a fost sub dictatura lui Ceaușescu. Și asta e adevărat. Doar că supușii lui Ceaușescu, adică noi, trăiam cel mai prost din tot Estul Europei. Poate albanezii să fi trăit și mai prost decât noi dar mă îndoiesc…
E adevărat că n-am fost în stare, de exemplu, să păstrăm în bună stare de funcționare sistemul de termoficare. Nici măcar pe cel din București! Capitala țării… Poza aia de sus este cât se poate de elocventă! Vorba lui Băsescu… „Aici sunt banii dumneavoastră” … transformați în abur și duși pe apa Sâmbetei…
Pentru cine nu recunoaște locul, fotografia a fost făcută, azi dimineață, pe bulevardul Victoria Socialismului împotriva poporului. Azi dimineață, la 35 de ani de când l-am alungat pe Ceaușescu de la putere. Azi dimineață, adică la vreo 40 de ani de când, sub „înțeleapta conducere a partidului, personal a tovarășului Nicolae Ceaușescu” au fost montate țevile de termoficare de-a lungul bulevardului. Țevi aflate într-o stare avansată de ciuruire… Țevi care ar fi trebuit, teoretic vorbind, să reziste spre 100 de ani…
Vă aduc aminte că bulevardul Victoria Socialismului împotriva poporului și Casa Republicii au fost cel mai important proiect al lui Ceaușescu… Dacă nici măcar aici nu au fost în stare să asigure materiale de calitate… să motiveze oamenii…
Da, neisprăvirea noastră, din ultimii 35 de ani, nu are nici o scuză. Da’ nici sub dictatură n-a fost bine! Că dacă ar fi fost bine, ar fi mers în continuare….
O altă vorbă mult vehiculată de unii dintre contemporanii noștrii spune : „nu pleacă câinii de la măcelărie”. O altă jumătate de adevăr. Câinii stau în preajma măcelăriei doar atâta timp cât la măcelaria aia se vinde carne. Și cineva le mai aruncă și lor niște oase. La măcelăria lui Ceaușescu se găseau – se mai găseau – doar cârligele… De-asta l-am alungat acum 35 de ani!
„Analfabetism funcțional” este un oximoron. O expresie care sună bine. Care atrage. Nedumerește și stârnește atenția. Și cu ce rămâne cititorul? Fiecare cu ce poate, bineînțeles…
Teoretic, un analfabet funcțional știe să citească dar nu înțelege mare lucru din ce citește. – Hă?!? Ce te miri? Foarte multă lume știe să mute piesele pe tabla de șah dar foarte puțini știu cu adevărat să joace. Așa și cu scrisul… Una e să scrii pe limba celor cărora te adresezi și altceva iese dacă scrii să atragi atenția. Cu orice preț… Iar undeva între aceste două extreme este situația în care cel care scrie nu prea știe bine pe ce lume trăiește… Nu neapărat din vina lui!
35 de ani am fost nedumerit. Nu înțelegeam sensul expresiei „Aici s-a murit pentru libertate”. Cum adică „s-a murit”?!?
Poți să te speli. Poți să te trezești. La o adică, poți să te și omori. Singur.
Doar că cei care au murit în Piața Universității, pentru Libertate, au fost omorâți. Nu s-au omorât. Singuri… Ei doar cereau libertate. Pentru ei, pentru noi… Și atunci? Cum vine chestia asta cu „s-a murit?!?”
„Analfabetism funcțional” sună bine, nu? Atât de bine încât nu se înțelege nimic…
– Parcă nu-ți plăceau formulările trase de păr… Făcute să sune… Ce înseamnă aia „nu se înțelege”?!? Poate că ești tu greu de cap și nu pricepi! Atâta vreme cât expresia are o definiție general acceptată…
OK. Hai să spunem că eu fac parte dintre cei care știu doar să mute piesele pe tabla de șah. Și care n-au habar de subtilitățile jocului…
„Orb funcțional” este o expresie cât se poate de clară, nu? O persoană nevăzătoare care a învățat să se descurce de una singură. Nu e nevoie de vreo definiție general acceptată. Prin similitudine, analfabetul funcțional ar fi o persoană care nu știe să citească dar reușeste să se descurce în viață. Sunt destul de mulți. Unii au și carnet de conducere dar asta e altă discuție…
„Alfabetism disfuncțional” sună ca dracu? Și d-aia a fost preferată expresia devenită deja clasică? Analfabetism funcțional?!?
Până la urmă, care e scopul comunicărilor noastre? Să sune bine sau să transmită, clar, ce vrem să spunem? Să ne dăm mari, să ne arătăm talentul, sau să ne înțelegem între noi?
Dacă noi vorbim pe nas, ce ne mai mirăm că vin niște propagandiști pe Tik-Tok și ne iau fața? Răstălmăcind exact cuvintele pe care le-am golit noi de conținut? În condițiile în care publicul țintă, publicul vizat de propagandiști, este deja exasperat? Printre altele, și de faptul că în 35 de ani nu ne-am lămurit ce s-a întâmplat când cu schimbarea de regim politic!
Analfabetism funcțional… Copiii noștri văd reclame cu „bibliografia de la curs poate aștepta, până la urmă e Crăciunul” și „Filme explozive pentru zile reci”. După care noi ne așteptăm ca ei să mai înțeleagă ceva din ce citesc… Au renunțat cu totul la citit. Se uită doar la poze! La pozele cu care acoperim noi gardurile….
nicichiarasa 