This is a stub.
Basically, this post will reinterpret the arguments used in the previous one.
Archives for category: evolution
This is a stub.
‘This time is different’. https://www.economist.com/media/pdf/this-time-is-different-reinhart-e.pdf
History teaches us that each and every empire has collapsed. Usually under it’s own weight. Pareto has given us a valid explanation – each structure which doesn’t have to ‘refresh’ itself tends to become clogged with self serving individuals, near-sighted enough to ‘forget’ that none of them (none of us, actually) is able to survive ‘outside’. Yet each ’emperor’ allows themselves to believe that this time is different. I’m better than all my predecessors. And their followers allow this to happen, just as Pareto had taught us.
‘They is a rational operator hence they must have a reasonable objective’.
That’s how people raised/educated in a reasonable environment think/interpret the actions of other people.
This being the reason for democratically groomed leaders having such a hard time when they need to understand how dictators operate. This being the reason for democratically groomed political operators having such a hard time when it comes to identify skillful would be dictators.
https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/russias-road-to-autocracy/
This is a stub.
Using as little resources/effort as possible to get what you’ve set your mind to accomplish versus making as much profit as possible (in the given conditions)
Reversible versus ‘definitive’
Let us imagine, for a moment – or longer, than among the already innumerable objects circling the Earth is yet another surveillance satellite.
One operated by aliens…
What would they think of the current developments?
One of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the topmost watchdog pretending to guard the ‘normalcy’ on Earth, brazenly attacks its neighbor.
Both the aggressor and the victim are members of the organization watched over by the Security Council.
But the aggressor has veto power over the Council.
And, of course, uses that power whenever it sees fit.
Another of the “five permanent members” of the Council chooses to abstain from voting. When the Council is discussing the aggression perpetrated by one of the permanent members of the Council against another fully recognized member of the ‘international community’.
Would the alien observers be laughing their heads off?
Would they keep us isolated from the rest of the Universe? Lest we spread our suicidal behavior ‘among the stars’…?
Both at the same time?!?
Now, that Putin had recognized Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states, I keep hearing that ‘if NATO hadn’t integrated the former socialist states in the Eastern Europe, Russia wouldn’t have occupied Crimea nor encouraged the ‘freedom fighters’ in Luhansk and Donetsk’.
NATO, and UE, are not perfect. Far from it.
Yet the former USSR had been even less perfect.
What drove me to this conclusion?
Well, both NATO and the EU are thriving. People and countries flock to join in. The very present conflict in and around Ukraine had been sparked by Putin’s ‘unhappiness’ with the Ukrainian people insisting in joining both NATO and the EU.
Meanwhile, the USSR is no longer with us. Had collapsed, under its own weight, some 30 years ago.
The second difference between these supranational entities – NATO and the EU on one side and USSR on the other, is the ‘small’ matter of how a member got to join the club.
In NATO’s case – valid also for the EU, a prospective member state has to ask for it first and then wait to be accepted.
The USSR had been organized under the ‘invitation only’ principle. If you were invited, you had to join. Regardless…
CSI, the Community of ‘Independent’ States, is organized under the same principle!
Btw 1.
Did I mention that the USSR had crumbled under its own weight?
By allowing self serving callous political operators to grab too much power?
Too much power for their own selves as well for their country’s well being?
Could we attribute the demise of the USSR on the fact that the bolsheviks were ‘house broken’ into ‘toeing the line’ while here, in the West, some people still dare to speak up their minds?
Btw 2.
No home means ‘no sleep’.
No place secure enough for you to let you guard down – no matter how shortly, and relax.
Survival becomes problematic and occupies all your time. And brain power….
An uncomfortable home means ‘no dreams’.
Every waken moment is occupied by ‘how do I get a bigger home’ and whatever sleep you might muster is fitful.
You cannot rest properly so you cannot do much during your active hours. You’ll never reach your full potential so you’ll never be as useful/productive as you could possibly be.
Too big a home means ‘nightmare’.
Difficult to maintain – for your means, impossible to ‘explore’/’exploit’, always afraid somebody would try to steal it from you.
And, above all, too big a home means ‘insulation’ from the real world. You’re so far away from what’s really happening out there that you’re no longer able of proper decision making.
Nightmare.
I wish you a string of very good nights and some pleasant dreams.
Karl Popper had described science as a (virtual) place where things happen like this:
Some guy has an inkling. Studies it and gathers a lot of information on the subject.
Based on that information, develops a hypothesis. Then attempts to prove it.
After being satisfied with how much proof they had found, the hypothesis is declared a theory. And published as such. Along with all pertinent evidence. For all those interested to see.
So that all those interested to be able to replicate the experience.
To be able to retrace the proving process. To certify its validity.
And for all those interested to be able to find any proof to the contrary!
So that, as soon as that proof had been found – and declared acceptable, the theory to be considered false. Or, at least, incomplete.
The first example which comes to my mind being that the simple existence of Einstein’s Relativity had proven that Newton’s Physics was incomplete….
Fast forward to our days.
To our raging Covid-19 pandemic.
When vaccines are already available and where there are people who refuse to be vaccinated.
The vaccine was supposed to protect us.
From becoming infected.
From needing to go to the hospital.
From dying. From ending up suffocating alone…
But people continue be infected. Even after receiving the vaccine.
People continue to be admitted to the hospital.
And people continue to die. Even after receiving the vaccine.
Wouldn’t all these evidence strongly suggest, scientifically speaking, that the vaccine is useless?
‘Useless’, to say the least?
Wouldn’t it be actually rational to frame the situation in these terms?
Well, according to Popper’s reasoning, the first vaccinated individual becoming ill had been ample enough proof of the fact that the vaccine was not 100 % foolproof. That it isn’t fail-proof!
The first vaccinated individual being admitted to the hospital had been ample enough proof that the vaccine is no absolute shield against any of us who has been infected will ever have to go to the hospital.
The first vaccinated person who had died with Covid-19 had been ample enough proof that the vaccine will not protect all of us from dying after becoming infected with this virus.
And the fact that so many of us continue to refuse to be vaccinated is ample proof of the fact that reasonable should trump rational. Yet it still doesn’t….
Of the fact that too many of us continue to consider that their short term/self serving interests are more important than other people’s lives.
And of the fact that too many of us continue to ignore how vaccines work.
The key aspect here being the last!
People continue to ignore how vaccines work simply because of the huge amount of disinformation which is being peddled on the internet right now.
It’s not the ‘refuseniks’ who put their short term/self serving interests in front and above the lives of innocent people!
It’s those who have initiated, and continue to drive, the fake-news process who will be eventually determined as having been the root-cause of the excess mortality we’re currently experiencing.
When?
Hopefully, after a reasonable amount of time.
If enough of us start behaving rationally… In a comprehensively rational manner…
In a truly scientific manner!
Someone asked me a few months ago:
‘These guys who spread misleading information on the internet, whether out of sheer stupidity or out of personal interest, will at some point understand how many people they have killed. Directly or indirectly.
How will they feel? In that moment…’
Until then, none of my vaccinated acquaintances have kicked the bucket.
Nor seen the inside of any hospital… after being infected with Covid.
Among those who have not been vaccinated… the situation is somewhat different… Although the unvaccinated are, among the people I’m personally acquainted to, about 4 times less frequent than the others, 8 of them are missing already. All 8 of them are no longer with us after having been diagnosed with Covid.
I hope you’ll have a ‘light’ conscience when we’ll arrive at the end of this mess.
nicichiarasa 