Archives for category: Bounded rationality

Awareness 3.0

October 26, 2025 //

You’re handed a pot.
So heavy, you need to hold it with both hands.
So hot, you want to let go of it.
On your feet?!?

I’ve argued sometime ago that all living organisms act as if they were ‘aware’.
All of them are adept at keeping their insides in, most of the outside out and, most importantly, they are the ones deciding what from the outside goes in and what from their inside goes out. And when!
I call this awareness 1.0. Or life…

We congratulate ourselves over being the only creature wielding ‘self-awareness’. The ‘full fledged’ variety… according to our way of understanding it, of course. “Consciousness”, we call it.
How about ‘awareness 2.0’?

Some of us are involved, heavily, into ‘faking’ things. From building something called ‘artificial intelligence’ to using ‘technology’ to mess up other people’s minds.
They are ‘delving’ in the ‘next’ level. Knowingly but unwittingly playing god.

Life is driven by ‘natural selection’. Or ‘evolution’… as Darwin called them.
‘Happenstance’, if you look at it from another angle.
The process of life/natural selection/evolution depends on it taking place ‘individually’. While evolution is a matter regarding ‘species’ – as Darwin itself had put it – the whole process depends on the fact that each individual organism which belongs to each species is distinct/different from all other members of the same species.

‘Self-awareness’ depends on the existence of other self-aware individuals. Willing to cooperate with the ones developing it. Just as no living organism has been observed, yet, while putting itself together starting from innanimate matter, no individual has ever been observed developing self-awareness with no outside help.
Mind you, while the process involves ‘mature’ individuals helping ‘fledglings’ to ‘fly’, the process isn’t entirely ‘voluntary’. The outcome, the emerging individual consciousness, depends on the actions performed by those helping it but only inasmuch as the result of the natural evolution depends on the actions performed by the previous generation. Achieving ‘self-awareness’ is a ‘natural’ process, not a ‘deus ex machina’ machination!

Awareness 3.0, on the other hand… the ‘artificial’ kind…
In this context, I wish to remind you of what happened when we, willingly but unwittingly, have reduced the natural bio-diversity in certain areas. According to our needs and understandings…

“The Green Revolution’s success also brought serious costs: intensive farming drained groundwater, degraded soil and contaminated fields with pesticides, while wheat and rice monocultures eroded biodiversity and heightened climate vulnerability, especially in Punjab and Haryana.
Swaminathan acknowledged these risks and, in the 1990s, called for an “Evergreen Revolution” – high productivity without ecological harm. He warned that future progress would rely not on fertiliser, but on conserving water, soil, and seeds.
A rare public figure, he paired data with empathy – donating much of his 1971 Ramon Magsaysay Award amount to rural scholarships and later promoting gender equality and digital literacy for farmers long before “agri-tech” was a buzzword.
Reflecting on his impact, Naveen Patnaik, former chief minister of Odisha, says: “His legacy reminds us that freedom from hunger is the greatest freedom of all.”
In Swaminathan’s life, science and compassion combined to give millions that very freedom. He died in 2023, aged 98, leaving a lasting legacy in sustainable, farmer-focused agriculture.“

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn7eln1pm4ro

Tags evolution, freedom, hunger, self-awareness

Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, evolution, fail better, Frames of mind, In English, skin in the game

Depth

October 21, 2025 //

God blessed them and said to them:
“Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.
Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky
and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Genesis 1:28

Engineers are trained to think first. And ‘shoot’ only after they have figured out what was going on. What was going to happen as a consequence of their enacted decision…
Handymen, the hard working people who actually prevent the ‘wheels’ from halting screechingly, are trained – self trained, mostly – to repeat what has worked in the past.

Both engineers and handymen are convinced that they know better. That each of their Weltanschauungs are more appropriate.
Both are right.
The distance between them can be construed as (one of) the depths we need to fathom. If we wish to understand ‘reality’…

An engineer myself, MSc level, I had my midlife crises rather early. Went back to school. BA in Sociology. Trying to understand ‘decision making’. Figure out what reality really is…
How to make a wise decision if you don’t know what’s going on?!?

Almost 20 years later – and a few entries in my blog – I found out that I was not alone. That more than a century ago, another guy – a former mathematician, had already broken the ‘glass-ceiling’.
While ‘process philosophy‘ is as old as philosophy itself – traceable back to Heraclitus, Panta Rhei – it was Alfred N. Whitehead who had introduced enough epistemological order into the matter to make it a ‘real’ issue.

What’s the meaning of all this?
Why haven’t we changed tack since Whitehead gave us such a powerful heads-up?
Why most of us continue as ‘handymen’?!?

Process philosophy, as I understand it – with my engineering mind, is mostly about responsibility.
Marx’s was about ‘taking charge’. Shoot first, ask questions later – if ever, was how communism had been translated into reality. Like all other dictatorial processes…
Whitehead’s – if I read him correctly – is about understanding responsibility. Not about ‘merely’ assuming it but about accepting it. About accepting the fact that it will be us – or our children – at the receiving end of the processes we initiate.

‘Uncomfortable position’ is a very lame expression for feeling alone. When trying to decide ‘what next’…
‘Maybe we should just proceed as we used to?’

Tags Alfred Whitehead, alone, process philosophy, responsibility

Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, In English, skin in the game, teleology

Tripping

October 17, 2025 //

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, following ideas put forward by Wilhelm von Humboldt, posits that the kind of language used by various categories of people have a meaningful impact upon the ways each of those categories of people think. And see the world.
The last iteration of the above hypothesis being the advent of AI. We train it using various languages. Those trained using precise languages – chess, go, ‘mathematics’ – work more or less as intended – aka ‘perfectly’ – while those trained using everyday English end up hallucinating…

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43102168: Sapir-Whorf
https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/ai-hallucinations
Moloch’s Bargain: Emergent Misalignment When LLMs Compete for Audiences:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06105

Tags AI, Humboldt, Language, Sapir Whorf

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

Real Politik

September 1, 2025 //

Probably the most important of the ‘solved‘ wars…

Xi needs Putin to remain in power. To keep the Western Europe focused on something else but China.
Trump needs Putin to remain in power. Otherwise the Western Union would stop begging for protection. And stop buying American built ‘defense hardware’…
Meanwhile, various ‘fragments of the world’ pursue their own interests… as perceived by their respective leaders, of course!

Tags arms dealing, begging for protection, Real politik, solved wars

Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, collective identity, effective communication, In English, skin in the game

Health

August 25, 2025 //

Evolution is not about ‘survival of the fittest’.
Evolution is about the demise of the unfit.
Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is, 2001

Well, it actually makes a lot of sense.

Being healthy is relative.
On having a diagnostic hanging over your head.

Here’s another way of looking at things.

Functional versus dysfunctional.
For as long as one is functional, that person is not a burden for anybody. Regardless of any diagnostic.
Even a dysfunctional person can be useful for those around them. Even if that person is completely dependent on those taking care of them. A good word spoken at the right moment makes wonders.

So yes, I would also love to die ‘healthy’. As in trying to do my best to be useful.
At least, to be as light a burden as possible.

On the other hand, health is yet another virtual thing. ‘Virtual’ as in man made…
Until not so long ago, ’cause of death’ for people over a certain age was always ‘old age’.
No longer. No matter how old the deceased, the body is transported to a medical facility and the particular cause of death is forensically determined.
It makes perfect sense. Scientifically speaking. There is no such thing as too much data, specially when it comes to something as precious to us as human life.
And it raises a ‘somewhat’ unreasonable kind of hope. That sometime, somehow, all causes of death will be mitigated. Diagnosed and treated.
That life will become ‘longer’. That we, humans, will live if not forever… then until an accident will happen to shorten our destiny.

Can you imagine something like that?
People living for 3 or 4 hundreds of years?

No retirement.
No risk taken.
No change…

Tags evolution, health, immortality

Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

The Starting Point

August 23, 2025 //

“Our measures do not tell us whether philosophy majors
go on to apply their newfound abilities in the service of truth and justice
or, conversely, for personal gain and glory.
Settling that question would require gathering a different kind of evidence.”

Reading it, https://theconversation.com/studying-philosophy-does-make-people-better-thinkers-according-to-new-research-on-more-than-600-000-college-grads-262681, brought back to memory another research subject. Linking a ‘reasonable consumption of alcohol’ to various health benefits.
A quick google search produced this:

The paper I found now, https://www.phcc.org.nz/briefing/glass-half-full-alcohols-health-benefits-cardiovascular-disease-still-controversial-and, is quite thorough.
More importantly, for me, it raises the points which bothered me when I first found out about the claim. On FB, more than five years ago.
I’ll put it in my own words.

Being able to drink for a relatively long time means one had a fairly strong health at the start of the whole process. And at least some degree of self-control.
Otherwise the drinker would have very soon become ill, an alcoholic, suffered some accidents… or any combination thereof.

Same thing regarding the findings of the first study.
Take a number of smart people. One has to be smart in order to be interested in philosophy! And able to graduate…
Train those people’s abilities. Help them develop whatever they’re good at. And like doing…
Then wonder about the good results you’ve achieved!

Writing this post made me realize that it goes far deeper than this.
No, this is not a self-congratulatory study. Far from it.
It’s stark warning!

“Public trust in higher education has hit record lows in recent years, according to polling by the Lumina Foundation and Gallup. Meanwhile, the rapid advance of generative AI has threatened the perceived value of a traditional college degree, as many previously vaunted white-collar skills are at risk of being automated.
Yet now more than ever, students must learn to think clearly and critically. AI promises efficiency, but its algorithms are only as good as the people who steer them and scrutinize their output.
The stakes are more than personal. Without citizens who can reason through complex issues and discern good information from bad, democracy and civic life are at risk.”

This paper is not about the virtues of learning!
It’s about us.
So many of us still have so much more to learn about the virtues of learning…

One possible explanation for what’s going on is that not enough of the learned people “go on to apply their newfound abilities in the service of truth and justice“.
Me starting this post with the distinct feeling that this was a self-congratulatory study is yet another confirmation of the generalized distrust which permeates the whole society.
We’ve reached that stage where we primarily look for reasons to refute.
Some say a little paranoia is good for you. That it keeps you safe.
I’m afraid we’ve reached exactly where ‘they’ want us to be.
Distrusting, paranoiac people cannot do anything together.

Constantly looking over your shoulder will never lead you forward.
Will only make you, us, susceptible to manipulation.
Remember, in this context, how many reasonable posts we get from people supporting various horrendous ideas.
How many ‘think with your own head’ messages we get from those ‘also’ promoting MAGA. How many times Putin says he only makes ‘reasonable’ demands.

How can we build trust?
I don’t know how but I do know we don’t have any alternative.

We either learn to respect each-other, and build trust together, or become subjects.
And I’ve already been a subject. To a communist regime. Don’t want to repeat the experience.

Tags MAGA, personal gain and glory, philosophy, Putin

Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, collective identity, In English, skin in the game, Trust

Who Wants What

August 14, 2025 //

Mind what you wish for,
for it might happen…

Putin wants to survive while Trump wants the same thing.
Xi also wants Putin to survive…

Without Putin(ism), Europe wouldn’t spend a dime on weapons. On American weapons!
America would have to develop and maintain alone the hardware needed to keep Xi at bay.

Once Putin gone, the Russian people will completely turn their attention towards Europe.
Leaving the ‘Chinese model’ stranded. In limbo…

What do we want?!?
Who cares?!? But now, that you’ve asked…

We want America back!
The already great America…
The one wise enough to save Europe from itself. Twice!
The one wise enough to help Japan back on its feet after WWII.
The one wise, and brave, enough to defend South Korea.
The one wise enough to understand that behaving like a bull in a China shop might be fun. For a while… but inexorably produces a fine mess… Specially when the bull owns much of the china being traded in that shop!

America does have a huge responsibility in maintaining the world in a working state. For the simple reason that America’s wealth depends, directly and indirectly, on the smooth functioning of the increasingly integrated world market.
Forgetting this, and concentrating your attention on ‘particular interests’, vested or not, is nothing short of blinding yourself. Of shutting reality out!

And we want Europe back!
Europe has already done the same mistake America is about to commit.
Behaved like the bull in the China shop. Literally. Then, overwhelmed by the consequences, left out without clearing up the mess.

Finally, but equally important, we need China – along with all other ‘wishful thinkers’ – to learn.
To understand that behaving like a bull in the China shop, even if you do it at home, doesn’t help anybody. Not in the long run.
Everybody, including the bull, ends up in tatters…

Tags Anchorage, Putin, Trump, War

Categories 1989, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, skin in the game

What?

August 4, 2025 //

And God saw every thing that he had made,
and,
behold, it was very good.

Our fore-fore fathers believed that the birth of gods was what had transformed the primordial chaos into a more orderly cosmos. A place where man could live, as long as he didn’t fall on the bad side of the local gods.

Our fore fathers, those who had invented monotheism, had condensed the previous generation of gods into a single one. Thus unifying the space and the time. Transforming Cosmos into the Universe.

We’ve given up god altogether.
We no longer believe in a unifying God. Some of us have given up religious belief while others continue to have faith in a personal god. Often times shared with the other members of their particular religious community.

But even though we no longer believe in a unifying god, we still consider that we all share the same world. The same Universe. Even if some of us consider the Earth to be flat…

So.
Our fore-fore fathers used common sense and hired human-like gods to make sense of and to bring order in their particular portions of the world. In those times, each region – or each piece of the world – was a cosmos in itself. Governed by a specific set of arrangements between those who lived there and the gods they believed in. And the people who had to move to another cosmos, or were conquered by people coming from another cosmos, usually changed their belief accordingly. Simply because faith came with the territory.
Our fore – fathers used philosophy to understand there was, and continues to be, only one world. Only one Nature. And changed their belief accordingly. After all, and after learning enough, one world and one god makes more sense than a plethora of gods running wild and doing as they please… One world… one God… obvious enough… but which God to believe in? Particularly when ‘I’m a jealous God’.

Since then, God no longer comes with the territory… but comes with those who believe in him.

It’s no longer god who makes sense of the world.
It’s the believers who choose their belief. Choose what to make of their world.

Of the one, otherwise known as ‘single’, world we have at our disposal.
“Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”