Archives for category: alternative ways of acquring knowledge
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“I don’t know!”

January 11, 2025 //
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Total BS. ISS distance from Earth is 408 km.
So, the Moon should be…
I don’t know. You do the math.
In this picture, it looks like ISS is orbiting the Moon, not the Earth.”
Somebody on the Internet

“I don’t know. You do the math!”
But you do have the right to express your opinion, right?
Me

„I disapprove of what you say,
but I will defend to the death your right to say it”
Voltaire

Oui maître, mais…
‘I will defend to the death your right to make a fool of yourself. To demonstrate your ignorance…’
OK, I get it. Only your attitude stems from your conviction that everybody who is able to read is also able to understand the meaning of what they read…
Which is no longer valid!

What do we need to do?
Educate? The readers…
Censor? The aberrant? And who will ‘put the stamp’?!? Who will be the trusted arbiter playing God?
Wait till the consequences of our laisez-faire will rattle their skulls against our crossed bones?

Or simply wake up?
Remember that mutual respect is paramount for our collective survival.
And that asking before sentencing is the smart thing to do….

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, Trust

Alie-Nation

December 19, 2024 //
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OK, I can give you this.
God may have done all this.
But is He aware of His creation?

‘But He loves us!
Otherwise why make us in the first place?!?’

What if it was us who had come up with this notion?
The way I see it, we may very well be an unintended consequence of His activity. So unintended that He isn’t even aware of our existence…

‘But He knows everything…‘

That’s what we think… about Him. And about the relation between Him and His Creation.
Take us for example.
Do we know everything? About our body. About what’s going on inside us.

‘No, of course we don’t!’

Think again.
For an outside observer – specially one that lives significantly less than we do – our bodies are ‘perfection in motion’. They work ‘perfectly’. As if minutely controlled by somebody who perfectly knows what they’re doing. Right?
We know this isn’t the case… because we are the ones who ignore what’s going on inside our bodies…
Well, ignore is too strong. Not fully aware, at least for as long as things go on in an acceptable manner, would be a more accurate description.
Same might be happening with God.
And this is a far more sensible explanation for what’s going on. We’re the ones responsible for our behavior, not an inscrutable God.
Who, despite being our Creator, allows us to defile His Creation.

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, Trust

Building Alternative Facts

December 19, 2024 //
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‘Somewhat’ true, right?
Nietzsche did say it. And he is dead…

On the other hand, what Nietzsche had actually said was “we killed God”.
Quite a difference, don’t you think?

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

‘We killed God and we now have to face the consequences’.
That’s what Nietzsche told us. And then died. Like everybody else.
Is this consistent with the notion of an all-powerfull and omni-scient God? As suggested by the second image?

The only God we know is the one we talk about. Among ourselves.
During the ‘Middle Ages’ some of our ancestors killed each-other over their particular interpretations of the Bible. But they all agreed about one thing. For them, there was only one God.
And they killed a lot of unbelievers attempting to convince them.
At some point, and Nietzsche witnessed that, people had stopped believing there was only one God.
God was no longer seen as an unifying principle and had become a mere representation.

I don’t know whether there is a god. A ‘real’ one.
But is has become obvious that the one we talk about has stopped playing its role.
It no longer unites us. We’re no longer children of the same father.

We have splintered ourselves into clans.
Each wielding their own representation of God.
Each wielding their own ‘hand made’ idol.

And we have been warned about this…

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, religion, Trust

“peut on rire de Dieu?”

November 22, 2024 //
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“Dans tous les cas,
la seule « condition » est de le faire
dans les limites de ce que permet la loi”
Aurel, dessinateur de presse au Canard enchaîné

Would you poke fun at a volcano?
No? Because it doesn’t make any sense?
But would you poke fun at people who, 800 years ago, prayed to a ‘volcanic god’ asking for ‘mercy’?
Why? Only because (we currently know that) ‘it doesn’t work like that’?!?

OK, forget about the volcano.
Would you make fun of Shoah? Also known as the Holocaust.
No, because it’s illegal? Otherwise you would have mocked a tragedy?!?

It’s not illegal to fall down.
And impossible to ‘ignore’ gravity. Just as impossible as it is to ignore a volcano!
We laugh our eyes out when clowns pretend to fall.
Nobody laughs at a volcano.
Hence it is us who choose what is funny and what isn’t. Just as it is still us who choose whether to obey the law or not. We’re talking about the human laws here, not about the natural ones…

Which brings us closer to the gist of this post.

For the believers, God is everything. Both the entire world and their reference point. Without their God, the world loses its meaning. Without their God, the believers lose their bearings.
Making fun of God, of any god, is no different from making fun of a volcano.

‘You’re making absolutely no sense. No sense whatsoever.
A volcano is a real thing. Sometimes too real, even. While God, all gods, …
Nonsense. Absolute nonsense!’

Do you have faith in vaccines?
Why? Because they work? Because they save a lot of lives?
Despite vaccines being rather expensive and despite the fact that some guys have become obscenely rich as a consequence of people needing vaccines, and other medicines, in order to survive, right?
Have you ever made fun of vaccines? Of obscenely rich people, no matter how they got their money?

Do you understand how religion works?
How religion actually works… Psychologically, sociologically, etc.
No more than you understand vaccines?
Or you just consider religion to be a hoax while vaccines are a scientific fact?
Why? Because you have been told so by reputable people? By people in whom you have absolute trust?

So.
You trust doctors to the tune of allowing them to mess up with your immune system.
And you trust those thinkers who try to convince us not only that God doesn’t exist but also that religion is the “opiate of the masses“. “An ideological tool that legitimates and defends the interests of the dominant, wealthy classes in the population.” According to Marx, that was. Karl Marx. The guy advertising the advent of the communist happiness uber alles…

Let’s backpedal for a while.
You’re OK with vaccines and hate the fact that some people get way too much money for selling those vaccines. You’re OK with the idea of making fun of rich people but not of vaccines. Because vaccines save lives while obscenely rich people are… well… obscene!

Let’s get back to religion.
Making fun of vaccines doesn’t make sense. To you. To us, actually. Because they’re not funny. Because they are a scientific fact. And because they save lives.
Making fun of God also doesn’t make sense. For the believers. For those who truly believe in God.

For those who have a different understanding of the world than we do.

What would you think about people who dismiss vaccines?
The scientific concept of vaccination, not a specific vaccine.
You consider them…?
From your point of view, their reference point is way out of this world? That they have lost their bearings?
That they actually deny the reality? Your/our reality?

That’s exactly what also happens when people make fun of God. Of any god.
Those who believe in God – in the particular god which is the target of the joke but also in all other gods – feel queasy. ‘Sea-sick’. Their world and their bearings are being put into jeopardy. Which puts them into a very difficult position.
There are only two ways out of their conundrum.
To consider the jester as being clueless. As having no idea.
Or to consider the jester as an ‘agent provocateur’. To consider the whole thing as being an insult.

You have a concern and you want to express it? As the law allows you to do?
How about doing it in a considerate manner?
In an efficient manner! In such a way as to get through…
Insulting people, or being considered clueless, doesn’t help if you want to be heard by the other side.
If you want the other side to listen, carefully, to what you need to say.

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, teleology, Trust

Setting things right

November 17, 2024 //
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Or should I say “straight”?!?
After all, not everything that comes from the right is ‘right’.
Not everything that comes from the left is ‘wrong’. Or good…
And even ‘straight’ has always been complicated but nobody seemed to care!

Neither ignorance or education can do anything.
On their own. Education is a process and ignorance a mere situation.

It’s what the educated choose to do with their knowledge that makes the difference!

The key words in the statements above are “I always believed” and “It seems”.

It’s not ignorance that’s going to willingly destroy anything and it was the educated which had always ‘produced’. Moved things towards carefully chosen goals. ‘Rationally’ chosen goals, according to the latest fad.
Everything there is is the consequence of something initiated by educated people. The good, the bad and even the very ugly!

‘Another biased and inconsiderate post.
You completely dis-consider the ignorant. Assuming they are impotent and inconsequential.’

I’m afraid somebody else is assuming things.
First of all, there are no ignorant. Only the actual idiots are ignorant and they cannot do much. We, all the rest, start learning from the first minute of our life. Each according to how lucky we are.
Secondly, even the highest educated ignore most of the existing knowledge. But that doesn’t make them ignorant. The most important thing a person must learn before calling itself ‘educated’ is that nobody, that person included, will ever know enough.
Thirdly, all action is initiated from a piece of information. One starts to look for food after realizing they are hungry. After transforming a feeling into a resolution and making a plan to fulfill that resolution. A reaction – like pulling back your hand from a hot stove – doesn’t need much thinking indeed. But that’s only a reaction. Not at all a carefully, supposedly rationally, chosen goal.

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, teleology, Trust

On the ‘hows’ of the matter

November 14, 2024 //
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“I mean by a “fact” something which is there, whether anybody thinks so or not.“
“Facts are what make statements true or false.”
Bertrand Russell

What do you see here?
A ‘fact’ or ‘gravity in action’?
Bertrand Russell? Isaac Newton?

Or both?
After all, Earth pulling down yet another apple is (nothing but) a fact.

Yeah, but ‘Earth pulling down apples’ had become a fact only after Newton had figured it out.
And received this name, “fact”, only after Russell had coined the concept.

My point being that some things happen in the special place we call ‘conscious mind’.

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident:”

The United States, currently the most powerful country on Earth, exists because some people had put it in their minds to make it.
Gravity exists, as we know it, because Isaac Newton had noticed it and described it to us.
Facts exist, as we think of them, because Bertrand Russell had introduced them into our thinking process.

‘Do you imply that apples did not fall down before Newton noticed the process? That people didn’t think before Russell told them how? That the US would have remained a colony if not for the Boston Tea Party?’

I believe you’re fully aware that the question above had sprung up in a mind before being put down on paper… before being tapped on a keyboard, actually…

Of course gravity existed before Newton had described it. Of course people had been thinking for a while before Russell let us in on his thoughts on this subject. And of course I have no idea about what would have happened if those guys in Boston had brewed the tea instead of throwing it in the harbor.

But it is very clear for me, “self-evident” as the Founding Fathers had put it, that some things do happen in a certain manner.
That not all of us think in the same way – god forbid, that would be against our very nature – but all of us think according to some ‘rules’. Hence the results of our thinking are not exactly ‘haphazard’.

The point of today’s post being that my method is ‘thinking’.
I use my ‘conscious mind’ as an instrument. As a scalpel-cum-microscope with which I attempt to study how my mind works.

Being fully aware (?!?) that this process takes place ‘inside my head’. Inside my ‘limited’ head. Limited in both space and time.
That ‘that’ head is made of the same matter – atoms – as the rest of the Universe. Hence some of its limitations.
And that ‘that’ head works ‘inside’ the cultural universe created by the aggregated effort of every human that has ever lived on Earth. Hence another set of limitations.

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, Bounded rationality, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

Trust, fear, respect

November 13, 2024 //
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He was my friend. We trusted each-other.

He was huge. 150 pounds of muscle. Pitch black.
Some people feared him. Specially when seeing him for the first time.

He had earned the respect of many. Canine friends in the park. People who had come in contact with him.

Respect is a tricky thing.

Fear is simple. Not that different from love. Somewhat contrary…
Trust is simplish. After enough time spent together, you learn whether you can trust the other.
Respect, on the other hand….

You cannot respect something/somebody which/whom you find repulsive.

You can ‘trust’ a bully to make your life miserable but you cannot respect them.

Do you fear a bully?
Not necessarily. You don’t need fear to avoid a danger. You only need to understand what’s going on.

Then what is ‘respect’?
Something you learn about. While trust is something you learn to.
Trust is something to be rather felt while respect is something you experience with your mind. First and foremost.

Furthermore, nobody fakes trust. Unless presented as ‘respect’.

Why have I chosen an animal to illustrate this post?
Because ‘fear’ is what drives awareness. Fuels conscience. And, as far as evidence suggests, it is widely felt in the animal kingdom.
Our family. Our only home in this world!

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, effective communication, In English, Mutual Respect, teleology, Trust

Trifecta?!?

November 11, 2024 //
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“Adorno and Heidegger explores the conflictual history
of two important traditions of twentieth-century European thought:
the critical theory of Theodor W. Adorno and the ontology of Martin Heidegger.
As is well known, there has been little productive engagement between these two schools of thought,
in large measure due to Adorno’s sustained and unanswered critique of Heidegger.”

“Doubt everything” instead of ‘trust the scientist until proven wrong’.
‘Illiberal democracy’, whatever that might mean…
“Abolish capitalism”. As if there was any viable alternative!

What’s going on here?!?

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, Trust

Peeping from the other side of the looking glass

November 8, 2024 //
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Indeed, but only a clown has enough gumption to tell the king that ‘he’s got no clothes on’!

Furthermore, every respectable palace has both a king and a jester.
The jester overpowering the king doesn’t change the palace into a circus. Only refocuses the attention of those paying attention…

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, Trust

Freedom

November 5, 2024 //
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Abstract:

While there has been a plethora of analysis on diverse subjects within Holocaust studies,
there remains some reluctance to engage with women’s unique experiences,
which were largely subsumed under those of men in the decades following World War II.
This article examines how women’s specific experiences, both biological and social, are often denied
or suppressed in research and literature on the Holocaust, even in survivors’ own testimonies,
despite the fact that these are often clearly gendered experiences.
By revisiting key themes from the testimonies of female survivors,
such gendered analyses contribute to a fuller picture of the unprecedented
and relentless killing that the Final Solution’s anti-Semitism entailed.
Nicole Ephgrave
Journal of Women’s History Johns Hopkins University Press
Volume 28, Number 2, Summer 2016 pp. 12-32
10.1353/jowh.2016.0014

Those who had ordered what had happened at Auschwitz and many of those who had actually perpetrated the crimes considered themselves to be free. They did it on their own will.
Their freedom was intact!
And they had chosen, freely, not only to diminish the liberty of other people but to actually defile them…

Individual freedom is something which depends, largely, on each of us. On how each of us ‘digests’ their previous experiences and chooses to operationalize what they have learned.
Social freedom, on the other hand, depends on how we, as a group/community, aggregate our individual choices.

In this sense, the latter one, freedom becomes a space.
A place – THE place, actually – where each of us can put in practice our own individually free choices.

Now, places have rules.
Each place being defined by the rules governing that place. Some of those rules are specific for each space while others come from the ‘previous’ spaces.
For example, we – humans – are both animals and something ‘higher’. As such, we ‘obey’ both the rules governing the biological realm and the laws of each of the countries we happen to live in.
One of the most fundamental rules evident to man is “no good deed goes unpunished”. Otherwise known as the law of the consequence. “Do not be deceived… A man reaps as he sows” Gal 6:7

Everything we do leaves a trace. Influences the future. Creates karma.
How we, each of us, chooses to exert their freedom creates the circumstances in which we, and our children, will have to exercise theirs. Their freedom!
The manner in which the ‘free nazi’ had chosen to exert their freedom – to kill other people – has shaped the future of Europe. And of much of that of the world!

The manner in which we choose to ‘digest’, to interpret, what had happened shapes our future.

Which brings us back to ‘dehumanization’.

Many of us consider that the victims have been dehumanized. Made less human.
Had their humanness obliterated!
By the abusers. By those who had abused both their freedom and their power!
By those who had transformed other humans into victims….

I beg you to reconsider this:
Who had undergone the process of dehumanization?
The victims or the bullies?!?

We, as free thinkers, have the ability to poke fun at whatever happens to us.
To relativize our experiences.
Hence ‘no good deed goes unpunished’. When the utmost importance of the subject begged for a way more formal wording…
Poking fun at things we cannot control is a survival gimmick. By doing this we can, individually, survive in dire circumstances. Specially in situations where our inner values are questioned. When we have to quell what psychologists call ‘cognitive dissonance’. When we are forced – by ‘external factors’ – to do something we would not have done in ‘normal’ circumstances.

In this sense we can better understand the process of dehumanization.
The defiler actually needs to dehumanize the victim. To consider the victim something else but a human being. Otherwise, the defiler would no longer be able to defile the victim.
But what happens when a human being does not recognize (some of) their fellow humans as being their peers?

Who ceases to be human?

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game
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