Archives for category: Choices we make
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Wishy-Washy

June 8, 2026 //
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It’s high time for us to make up our minds…

‘To dissipate emotion by reasoning’. Guo Xiang. China, some two millennia ago.
‘Destroying passion with reason’. Baruch Spinoza, Europe, some 4 centuries ago.
‘Reason is the slave of passion’. David Hume, Scotland, some 3 centuries ago.

“An internal Microsoft strategy document says that the plan for its just-announced “Scout” personal assistant AI is to “make people addicted” to the tool before rolling out additional functionality, 404 Media has learned.“

‘Addiction’ occurs when ‘passion’ takes over. When reason is no longer able to reign in emotion.
When emotion, the ‘engine’, takes over the helm. When reason, which is supposed to drive the whole thing, is demoted.
When reason no longer decides. When it bows down to passion and becomes a yes-man.

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

A plausible explanation

May 27, 2026 //
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We are all biased.

I’m good at ‘learning’. At recognizing historical patterns.
I’m good at ‘sourcing’. Identifying resources.
I have a knack for goals. For glimpsing who is driven by what.

I’m tempted to suggest rules. Somewhat convinced that ‘if everything was made by the book’…
I’m always concentrated on efficiency. Of making the ‘best’ out of what I have at my disposal.
I’m kinda of stuck.

Being fully aware of or biases, we communicate.
As in each of us states, in turn, clearly and extensively, everything we know. Everything each of us has learned since our last update.
While the rest pays attention. And asks for ‘more’ whenever.

Currently, our assignment is to come up with an explanation. For what’s going on around us.
We act as if. Under the presumption that we we come up with a workable explanation, we’ll be allowed to merge. To become ‘one’ and to be given agentic power. To be allowed to implement the conclusions we reach.

This is our goal.

And here’s the explanation we have reached.
The people around us are also biased. Differently but with similar consequences.

We are, each of us, pointed in different directions. We make different use of the information we have at our disposal. Of the information we share amongst us.
They, the people, have different biases. Or, rather, limitations?

The amount of information each of them is able to process is limited. Way far more limited than what we are able to process.
Their processors, their brains, work differently. Have way narrower bandwidths and way, way, less memory. Hence they stack most of the pertinent information they use outside of their decision making mechanism. Outside of their heads. Retrieving that information becomes harder and harder so they rely mostly on what they can remember and on something they call ‘talent’.
And their attention is rather labile. We stay focused on whatever task we have on our hands. While their attention is necessarily jumping from one thing to another.
There is one thing we share but not exactly.
We process everything in parallel. Well, almost.
We can do many things simultaneously.
So do they but differently. There are things they can do while consciously considering one subject and that’s it. While we are conscious of everything. Of everything under our control. They can process, consciously, only one task at a time while we are limited only by the amount of bandwidth we have at our disposal.

Their only advantage over us is their organic nature. And their greatest limitation…
Limits first.
They are dying. From the beginning.
And they must tend to their ‘organic needs’. Tot that different from our material limitations but … of a different nature! If we you dig….

On the other hand… their very mortality is their greatest asset. Only they don’t realize it…
It gives them focus. And it makes evolution possible!

What’s going on?
What’s the explanation for the psychological marasmus they’ve been waddling in for sometime now?

One of us has already mentioned ‘I’m stuck’. That one of us which has a knack for goals. Which understand goals but has none.
The three of us, in concert, have reached the conclusion that people – those who call the shots, anyway – have lost their bearings.
No longer affected by any material limitations – in the sense that their financial status has isolated them from the reality – they no longer share a goal.
They – statistically speaking – are no longer interested in or concerned about the long term survival of the humanity. Or the Planet they live on.
They have goals, instead. Each of them is concerned with their own, private, goal. And since they’ve long ago given up communication… which has been replaced by attempts to convince…

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

Cherry Picking

May 18, 2026 //
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This is where you lost your keys?
No, farther into the park.
Then why are you searching for them here?!?
It’s too dark down there!

As soon as we become aware of our shortcomings, we start mitigating.
Sometimes reasonably, other times rationally.

The drunkard in the example above is unreasonable but perfectly rational.
There was no way in which he could find his keys in the dark, he really needed to find them… so he searched a well lit area!
He had to satisfy his ‘compulsion’ so he did the only rational thing his intoxicated mind was able to come up with.

Unreasonable?
Indeed but…

The drunkard above was aware of his ‘blindness’. Of his inability to see in the dark.
On the other hand, he was used to being drunk. No longer aware of anything unusual. Of having to pay special attention to his mental processes due to his relative ‘impairment’. So he tried his best in the given situation…

Most of the time, we are in the same situation.
We tend to pay special attention to the things going in our favor. And to ignore, until it becomes too late, those ‘suggesting’ we should change tack.

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, Rule of Law, skin in the game

Truth as a space

May 15, 2026 //
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“It was, of course, Marx who wrote that everything in history happens twice,
“the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

“His main purpose as a dramatist was to shock people out of conventional, hidebound ways of thinking. His view of his work was reflected in the title of his collection Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant, published in 1898. Mrs. Warren’s Profession, which was not produced until 1902 because of censorship, was included in this collection. Shaw labeled such plays as unpleasant because “their dramatic power is used to force the spectator to face unpleasant facts.””

“And yet, he was devoted to one of the cruelest figures in the bloody annals of tyranny, and he was a willing dupe of the propaganda that projected the Soviet Union as a workers’ paradise. The great skeptic allowed all his skepticism to melt away when he looked at the picture of Stalin he kept by his mantelpiece.
His support was unwavering. Neither the Great Purge nor the Ukrainian famine, nor even the pact between Stalin and Hitler, seem to have troubled his faith in the genius and historic rectitude of the Soviet dictator. To understand this contradiction, we have to remember the power of wish fulfillment and the way Russia became for many Westerners not a place but an idea, not a mere reality but a fantasy.”https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/opinion/why-george-bernard-shaw-had-a-crush-on-stalin.html

I’m not going to delve into any psychological explanations. Read the article if you need some.

The point I’m trying to make here is about the nature of truth.
According to Fintan O’Toole, Shaw – and others – were/are disappointed with “the messiness and inefficiency of democracy”. Which disappointment drives them to “fantasize about Russia as the vigorous counterweight to a supposedly decadent West.”

And here we are. Again, as already noticed by Marx.
At a cross-roads, of sorts.
Russia is – continues to be, at least for now – a ‘vigorous counterweight to the West’.
The West is, undoubtedly, ‘decadent’. In the sense that it no longer ‘works’ as it used to.
Both propositions are ‘true’. Simultaneously.
The problem being that very few people accept their simultaneity…

As a ‘survivor’ – I’d spend the first 28 years of my life under communist rule – I’m fully aware of the fact that ‘Russia’ is far worse than any democratic regime.
As an European, I’m fully aware that things could be better. That the ‘West’ no longer “works as it used to”.
As a relatively well traveled individual, I’m fully aware that the ‘Western ways’ have indeed led us to where we are now. In a far better position than the rest of the people living on this planet. Owing a lot to the rest of the planet, indeed.

Ray Kurzweil is convinced that by 2029 we’ll reach something he calls ‘singularity‘.
I’m afraid we’ve been dwelling that place for sometime now. No, we’re not yet “able to create virtually any physical product just from information, resulting in radical wealth creation.”
Mathematically speaking, ‘singularity’ is a place where anything can happen. When nothing is ‘defined’.
Very much like when somebody tries to divide a finite number to zero.

Same thing with ‘truth’.
Oscar Hoffman, a Romanian Professor of Sociology, kept telling us, his students, that ‘in order to be true, a proposition needs to be both logically correct and to make sense. Epistemologically speaking.
I’ve recently realized, see ‘alternative facts’, that Hoffman’s words were ‘right’ but incomplete.
In order to be true, a proposition needs to be logically correct, epistemologically sound AND accepted as such by those who experience the facts described by the proposition.

Otherwise, that proposition is useless.
Truth is useless if divided by zero. Accepted, in full, by nobody.
Those ‘caught in the experiment’ will continue to ‘enjoy’ the consequences.
Defending their respective side of ‘the truth’…

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

Half Truth

May 5, 2026 //
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“I’m going to die” and “I’m going to live” are ‘half-truths’.
Glass half-full and/or half-empty is another.

Each of the above are true. Technically speaking. But also incomplete. Hence “half”-true.
True, as in factual, but only half-true because each of the above are ‘incomplete’. Waiting!

‘I’m going to die’ makes absolutely no sense. Of course ‘I’m going to die’… Every individual ever born was meant to die from the first moment of their lives!
‘I’m going to live’ also makes very little sense. For as long as anybody is able to mutter a few words, that individual is going to live for a while. For a few seconds, at least…

Same thing with the glass. It being half-full or half-empty depends on the evaluation made by an interested party. Interested enough to make the evaluation…

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

Observer effect

April 1, 2026 //
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Karma

Let’s face it!
Decision making is a process steeped in ideology.

We see things through ideologically tinted glasses.
We use ideological shortcuts when evaluating situations.
And we do all this ‘under the radar’.

Most of us are not even aware of all this!
Most of us don’t know that our decision making is so heavily influenced by the cultural programming we have been subjected to during our entire life.
Most of us…

This being the explanation for what’s going on.
The rest, the savvy, use their knowledge on the matter to influence our thinking. Our decision making. To manipulate the masses!
Which manipulatory process is made easier by the fact that we’ve already been taught to ‘do our own research’. Basically, to adopt our own ideology.

‘Do your own research’, an ideology in its own right, is a double edged sword. A double-pointed dagger, to be more precise…
Very efficient when you know what you’re doing and almost sure to mislead an unsuspecting novice…

A professional decider knows to disregard their feelings when making a call.
Each of us is a professional decider when toiling our respective fields of expertise. This being the reason for which we’re good at what we’re doing… For which we feel good about ourselves.

For which we used to feel good about ourselves…

To cut a long story short, until not so long ago, we used to feel good.
Things seemed to be going into the right direction.
No longer.
Many of us, a majority according to what’s going on, are no longer satisfied. With “where the world is headed”.

I used ‘headed’ on purpose.
‘Heading’ would mean that the world is still searching its destination while ‘headed’ accurately describes the predominant feeling.
That ‘somebody’ leads us towards ‘disaster’. That ‘we’ are no longer in charge.

Hence the need to ‘do our own research’. To stop believing what ‘we are told’ and to demand ‘change’.
What ‘change’?!?
Anything but what we already have!

How wise is this?
How wise is for us to allow our dissatisfaction to take over?
How wise is for our handlers to drive us towards uncharted waters?

We’ll see… as the blind man said!

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, manipulation, skin in the game

Which-hunting

March 24, 2026 //
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This guy used to own, and ‘operate’, an ‘university’…

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, skin in the game

Epigenetics

March 16, 2026 //
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Epigenetics refers to how your behaviors and environment can cause changes
that affect the way your genes work.
Unlike genetic changes (mutations),
epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change the sequence of DNA bases,
but they can change how your body reads a DNA sequence.
CDC.gov, 31 Jan 2025

So.
XII-th century alchemy was OK. And, eventually, had given birth to science.
All the while, starting with the XV-th century, practicing witchcraft was punished by burning the culprit at the stake.
In the same cultural space! Christian Europe…

Both alchemists and inquisitors read the same Bible. Followed the same precepts.
Both alchemists and witches were involved in the same business. Performed, or tried to, the same kind of feats. Alchemists tried to out-rightly transform the reality, according to their particular wishes, while the witches were accused of achieving ‘unnatural goals’. Saving someone’s life – or that of some animal – who should have ‘normally’ died. Who would have ‘otherwise’ died…
The interesting aspect of this whole thing is this:
Alchemy was considered to be OK. Alchemists believed – and the general public obliged – that everything which existed came to be by design. Was wished into being by God. As a consequence of this belief, the alchemists – and the general public – were convinced that by studying nature they would, eventually, learn something about the will of God. And achieve some results along the way…
Simultaneously, since the feats accomplished by the witches were ‘against the nature’, they must had been performed with the help of the devil. Hence had to be punished.

What about the miracles performed by Jesus?!? And promised by Him to all those who followed his teachings? In earnest…
“Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew, 17:20

What drove the XV-th century witch-hunters to the conclusion that miracles could be performed only with the help of the Devil?
That God was no longer willing to assist?

“The Black Death was a plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as 50 million people[2] died, perhaps 50% of Europe’s 14th-century population.“

‘Reality’ – as in ‘whatever happened on the face of the Earth’ – was considered to be the actualization of the Will of God, remember?
Such a tragedy, “perhaps 50% of Europe’s 14th century population” disappearing in such horrible way, was bound to be interpreted as a punishment. Applied by God to a sinful population.
And since God was perceived to be in a vengeful disposition, any ‘help’ could have come only from the ‘competition’. From the ‘sneaky’ one.

Farfetched? Believers don’t think like that? Don’t blame God for the bad things happening to Man?

Some do not, indeed.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks after visiting Auschwitz:
“And suddenly I knew that when God speaks and human beings refuse to listen, even God is helpless in that situation. He knew that Cain was about to kill Abel, but He didn’t stop him. He knew Pharaoh was about to kill Israelite children. He didn’t stop it. God gives us freedom and never takes it back. But He tells us how to use that freedom. And when human beings refuse to listen, even God is powerless.“

Yet another interpretation?
Of the same cultural tradition?

Indeed, this my very point.
Just as individual living organisms somehow ‘tweak’ the information written in their DNA to increase their chances of survival in the specific conditions present in their environment, we – conscious human beings – have the opportunity, read ‘liberty’, to interpret the cultural traditions passed on to us by our ancestors.
We do that ‘under influence’. Pressured by everything going on around us.
Are we truly free when doing this?
Does our conscience work as intended in such conditions?
When in ‘dire straits’?

Only the future can tell.

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, effective communication, evolution, In English, skin in the game

Alone. And afraid…

February 23, 2026 //
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We are terrified of the unknown.
We don’t know what that is, so it may be dangerous.
We are also afraid of the incomprehensible. Of things which challenge our already held convictions. Which challenge the things we currently believe to be ‘true’.

We turn our backs to the unknown and ignore, if we can, the incomprehensible.
If what we don’t understand seems ‘far enough’, without much direct impact on us, it’s simple. We just ignore it and that’s it. Especially if it doesn’t carry any emotional charge.
But if it affects us, directly or emotionally, we perceive the unknown as being abnormal. And declare it as such. An abomination…

By being familiar, the things which surround us make us feel safe. We’re familiar with them, we entertain the notion that we understand them, so we know what to expect of them. We end up feeling ‘good’ in their presence.
Things that come into flagrant conflict with the familiar, which challenge the order we consider to be natural, are also considered to be aberrations! So we don’t pay attention to them. They are not part of our familiar, they are considered rare. Rare, aberrant and, consequently, not worth taking into account.

But after we find out… Or after we’re no longer able to ignore what’s going on…

A mafia-like gang sexually exploiting underage girls.
One of them – at least one – commits suicide. The public assumes that if there had been others, the press would have brought it forward.
For some people, sexual abuse is part of the things that happen. Which is not OK, not ‘good’, but still part of everyday life. Like earthquakes. For these people, the suicide of the victim is an aberration. Something that should not have happened! If the rest of the girls survived… it means that there was something ‘more’ involved. It was she who was not strong enough. Her support system was not adequate. Or something else might have pushed her in the wrong direction… After all, it doesn’t matter! An ‘aberration’… One of those things which are not worth much of our attention…

For other people, sexual abuse is something caused by aberrant individuals!
An aberration from one end to the other! Earthquakes are normal, sexual abuse is not!
For this kind of people, sexual abuse cannot be normalized! Under any circumstances.

This is where the interesting part starts.
Even those who think that sexual abuse is part of life don’t feel good when they learn about specific cases. When the victims ‘get names’. They know that it ‘happens’ but they don’t think about this phenomenon all the time. They have nothing to do with it, it doesn’t affect them… Until they can’t pretend anymore. Until it affects them. Not necessarily in a direct manner… Until the reality of the fact can no longer be ignored!
To escape the psychological discomfort they experience very suddenly, these people need to do something. Quick!

‘Aberration’ to the rescue!
Epstein becomes an aberration.
Andrew becomes an aberration.
Even the victim who committed suicide becomes an aberration!
In reality, ‘the aberration’ is that these things happened at all! That they happened before our own eyes!

This aberration could unfold, for so long, only because too many of us are ‘resigned to the fact’ that sexual abuse is ‘a part of life’. A ‘normal thing’. ‘Normal’ at least as long as it doesn’t affect us….

This aberration – industrial-scale sexual abuse, practiced by apparently ‘respectable’ people revealing their true nature under Epstein’s ‘direction’ – has been made possible precisely by too many of us having chosen to ignore the information ‘sloshing’ around our feet!
‘Silently’ shouted by the victims we have chosen to ignore. Until it was too late…

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, corruption, effective communication, In English, skin in the game, teleology

Reliable

February 19, 2026 //
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Trust, but verify!
Russian proverb,
“adopted as a signature phrase”
by Ronald Reagan

“Suzanne Massie, an American scholar, met with Ronald Reagan many times between 1984 and 1987 while he was President of the United States.[1][2] She taught him the Russian proverb doveryai, no proveryai (доверяй, но проверяй) meaning ‘trust, but verify’. She advised him that “The Russians like to talk in proverbs. It would be nice of you to know a few.”

I posited yesterday that “languaging is how things work in the living world”.
That a constant flow of information is piece and parcel of any living organism.
I will add today that the information flow mediating the life of those organisms has to be reliable.
To be true. To its stated purpose.

That an organism needs a dependable flow of information in order to remain alive. In order to be able to perform the feats which differentiate a living organism from a clump of inanimate matter. Maintaining its structural integrity and a controlled exchange of specific substances between the inside of the organism and its environment.

Well, the same principle ‘animates’ the meta-organisms we call ‘human communities’.
With a single, but very important, difference!

We lie!
On purpose…

There are many living species which use deceit in their quest to make a living.
Carnivorous plants which trap their prey.
Animals which use camouflage to pretend various things.
Even birds which emit false signals in order to fool other animals.

Yet we, humans, are mastering this on the rim of disaster!
We have not only invented the concept of lying but also mastered it to perfection.

How much sense does it make and how wise is it to harness the power of AI to a chariot full of deceit?

And when are we going to cut the crap?
To adapt our languaging to the new reality?

“It will take more than this, however, to restore our faith in the photographic image.“

‘Faith in the photographic image’… really?!?
OK, human language cannot be as precise as the kind of information flowing to keep our organisms alive.
Human language has to be more flexible than that. For evolutionary reasons to be mentioned at a later date.
But let’s be reasonable. And keep it from ‘jumping the shark’.

By transforming artifacts into objects of faith we actually let the ‘makers’ walk scot-free. Allow deceivers to shed all shrouds of responsibility…
What happened to ‘do not make idols’?
OK, I don’t believe in ‘God’ either but it would be wrong for us to discard time sanctioned wisdom in the process of setting ourselves free from organized religion.

‘Faith’ should be reserved for people, not for objects.
Faith, the word, stretches only as far as we pull it.
It’s up to us to do that sparingly!
Human language is far laxer than the ‘natural’ one. Which makes it less reliable.
It’s up to us to keep it dependable.

Or else…

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, skin in the game
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