Archives for category: Choices we make
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The Difference

January 20, 2025 //
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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!

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

Superposition

January 19, 2025 //
1

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’?

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Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, In English, man as a measure for all things, Money, skin in the game, teleology

Head scratch

January 14, 2025 //
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“Intelligence is the ability to think, reason, and understand
instead of doing things automatically or by instinct.
Nerve cells, after all, do not have intelligence of their own.“

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!

““There’s going to be things we do and the superintelligences just get fed up with the fact that we’re so incompetent and just replace us.”
Nearly 10 years ago, Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla Motors, told American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson that he believes AI will domesticate humans like pets.
Hinton ventures that we’ll be kept in the same way we keep tigers around.
“I don’t see why they wouldn’t. But we’re not going to control things anymore,” he said. “

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

“I don’t know!”

January 11, 2025 //
0


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

What’s going on?

January 10, 2025 //
1

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?

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Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, complementary ways of attending knowlege, effective communication, In English, skin in the game

Retribution

December 18, 2024 //
0

The Government you elect
is the Government you deserve.
Thomas Jefferson

We are currently convinced that ‘an eye for an eye’ is an excessive – abusive, even – form of justice. But in its time, it was a very progressive principle.
Do not exert more punishment than the original damage.
NO MORE than an eye for an eye.

We don’t need more chaos. We need more consideration!

The likes of Trump are turning the tables on all of us!

Yes, some of those pushing left-side issues have jumped the shark. Not in the sense that the issues themselves were worthless but in the manner used to pursue them.

The likes of Trump have done nothing else but appropriated that very same manner of conducting business.

““The late Phyllis Schlafly, whom I worked so closely with, used to say, ‘If you get to claim and frame the argument, you almost certainly get to win.’ In other words, if you take their framing, it’s a woman’s right. Are you gonna put women in jail? No. It’s about a baby. Now, what do we do? Frame the argument. Own the argument,” he said.”

Recognize the lingo? The line-up of arguments?

Only this time the method is used by Ed Martin. The Trump nominee who wants to jail women for having abortions.

While the hard right argues for a blanket ban and the hard left argue for a no holds barred policy regarding abortion, real people have a hard time trying to lead a normal life. The extremes keep pushing for their stated goals while we’re stuck in a kind of limbo.
Watching them as if mesmerized by their antics…

Consideration rather than more chaos would come in handy at this point!

https://edition.cnn.com/kfile-ed-martin-rnc-platform-committee-anti-abortion-exceptions/index.html

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

Sustainable

December 15, 2024 //
0

It’s the ‘vengeance’ part which spoils the whole thing.

Evil is to be resisted, of course, only this is better done in a sustainable manner.

WWI was won for nothing. The vengeance part in the Versailles ‘peace process’ had spoiled the whole thing.
Hence the war had to be won again.
During the process, the winners had become wiser. Some of them, at least.
The peace process had been inclusive this time.
The North Atlantic region, the end result of that peace process – no scare marks needed this time, is one the most successful stories of human development.

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

A tricky one

December 9, 2024 //
0

So, when Popper doesn’t tolerate intolerance,
he is being mean?

Intolerance is something no one should tolerate.

From where I’m looking, intolerance is like a pebble in your shoe. You may walk for a while, without removing the pebble, but the damage will be there. For certain.

And if you persevere, the damage will be permanent.

Your question is a tricky one. Popper is not necessarily mean when refusing to tolerate intolerance.
He would have been mean only if he used unkind words when trying to convince the intolerant to change their hearts.

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Categories awareness, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, Psychology, skin in the game

“peut on rire de Dieu?”

November 22, 2024 //
0

“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

Who is in charge here?!?

November 16, 2024 //
0

“Facts don’t care about your feelings.“

It’s the act which does the trick.

It is the fact that it was you who had determined whether to keep them or not as they were given to you which actually affirms ‘it’.

Simple, actually, if you consider it with an open mind…

And here’s another question.

How wise is it for people to not care about other people’s feelings?

‘Cause I don’t expect facts to care about feelings. Mine or anybody else’s…

Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, Trust
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