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Too much of a good thing

June 12, 2020 //
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Charles Darwin gave us “On the origin of Species”.

We’ve summed it up ‘the survival of the fittest’.
And behaved accordingly. Including some of those who should have known better. “The world of the selfish gene revolves around savage competition, ruthless exploitation, and deceit, and yet, Dawkins argues, acts of apparent altruism do exist in nature.“

I reckon all of you know – or at least have heard of, Richard Dawkins.
Compare his celebrity with the relative absence from the public scene ‘enjoyed’ by Ernst Mayr.

And what’s so special about this Mayr guy?
‘Evolution is not as much about the ‘survival of the fittest’ as it is about the ‘demise of the unfit’ ‘

Get it?
In fact, there is no such thing as ‘the fittest’ when we speak about evolution. ‘Fit’ is relative while evolution is a process. Fit is about ‘this moment and this place’ while evolution is about the ability to adapt. To change when needed.

And what has any of these to do with “exploring the consequences of our limited conscience”?

Well, it was us who had interpreted Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species’ as ‘the survival of the fittest’ individual. It was us who had lionized Dawkins’ ‘Selfish Gene’ and left Mayr’s ‘True’ Evolution in relative darkness…

To sum it up, it is us who are are obsessed with something we call ‘success’.

It is us who keep forgetting that the mighty dinosaurs – maybe the most ‘successful’ animals ever, had been the first to disappear when ‘shit’ had struck. And that is was a meek mammal which had inherited the Earth.

“Mammals had lived in the large shadow of the dinosaurs, never getting bigger than a small dog until the mass extinction. The mammals that survived the asteroid were mainly small omnivores – the largest being the size of a rat and weighing about a pound (0.5 kg).
Within 100,000 years of the extinction event, mammals reached about 13 pounds (6 kg). By 300,000 years after the extinction, they got to 55 pounds (25 kg), with the first purely herbivorous mammalian species. By 700,000 years after the asteroid, some mammals weighed more than 110 pounds (50 kg).“

It is our success craving conscience which is highly biased. And I’m not at all sure this is a good thing. In the long run, I mean.

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Categories 1989 and the Global Financial Crisises., arrogance, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, coruptie, Culture, democracy, effective communication, evolution, fail better, Frames of mind, freedom, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, Money as goal, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, skin in the game, The kind of world we are building for our children

How things work

June 12, 2020 //
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Albert Einstein, a physicist, had noticed that observations are relative to the “frame of reference” where the observer happens to make his observations.

Humberto Maturana, a biologist, has reached the conclusion that consciousness – or ‘self awareness’, as he prefers to call it, is a personal trait which is developed by individuals living in concert.

Blending Einstein’s and Maturana’s ideas, it is easy to ‘see’ that observations made by human individuals depend, simultaneously, on two referential systems. Or frames of reference, in Einstein’s terms.

On the actual, ‘geographic’, ‘place’ where the individual makes their observations.
And on the ‘cultural place’ where the conscience – inner referential system, of the observing individual had been ‘shaped’.

Otherwise put, nobody can see things which are not there. Nor ‘see’ – a.k.a. understand, things which are too ‘distant’ from what that person already ‘knows’. Accepts as being ‘normal’. Feels like being ‘right’.

To make things just a tad ‘clearer’ – ‘nature versus nurture’, we must consider the vagaries of individual ‘biology’. Some people see/hear/smell/feel differently than others. And even ‘think’ differently.

And my point is?

Maturana made it before me. The ‘other’ – the more different, the better, is a source of richness. IF we treat each-other the right way. If we help each-other by ‘concerting’ our observations about what we have in common.
The ‘place’ we observe. Einstein’s referential frame. Where we ‘happen to stand’. Together.

And there’s something else I’d like you to read.

“J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues”
https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues

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Categories altruism, awareness, biology, Bounded rationality, Chance, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, Culture, effective communication, evolution, Frames of mind, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, teleology, Trust

Take a breath.

June 11, 2020 //
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We’ve arrived at a very interesting point in our evolution as a cultural species.

Having more or less solved our existential problems – food, shelter, companionship, we’re hard at work towards building ‘self esteem’.

Putting it in Abraham Maslow’s terms, a good portion of the humankind – most of those active on the internet, the netizens, have reached the ‘self-actualization’ stage.

The problem being that we’re so preoccupied with ‘expressing our true selves’ that almost nobody listens anymore. Truly listens…

The kind of listening needed when we try to learn something. To understand what’s going on.

As opposed to the listening used when educating somebody.

When attempting to learn, we listen opening our minds. We let information in and structure it afterwards.
When educating people, our listening is focused. We take information in with the sole goal of detecting dissent – in order to stifle it, and openings to exploit in our quest to implant our opinion about the world in the minds of our ‘targets’.

Take a breath.
And exhale carefully not to inflate another bubble.
There are already a lot of them waiting to burst.

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Categories arrogance, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, Culture, effective communication, evolution, Frames of mind, freedom, In English, Intent, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, manipulation, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, teleology, Trust

Bowing to an image

June 6, 2020 //
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“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Science teaches us many things.

In fact no, science teaches us nothing!
Science cannot teach, at all. Simply because science is not a teacher.

At individual level, science is an attitude. A mind open enough to accept its own fallibility. To accept the fact that, sooner rather than later, it will fail.
To accept the fact that the image it constantly generates during its interaction with the surrounding world is, at best, incomplete.
To accept the fact that the understanding it has reached during its existence is, and will remain forever, a work in progress.

At the social level, science is a way of conducting business.
Based on ‘trust but verify’. A scientifically minded community trusts its individual members to be honest in their efforts but verify their work because – as mentioned above, each of us will, sooner rather than later, fail.
Hence, by aggregating their efforts, a scientifically minded community will eventually paint a still imperfect image but one closer to the reality than any of those belonging to its individual members.

In order for the community to be able to continuously improve their ‘work in progress’ each, or at least, enough of its members need to preserve their scientific mental attitude. Their intellectual humility.
As soon as too many of the individuals reach the conclusion that their image of the world is the only correct one – and they start not only to bow towards it but also to convince others to join them, things start going south.

“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Who among us is perfect? Perfect enough to be sure?

And why had been chosen an adulterous woman as the main character for this lesson?
Because adultery is a sin which cannot be committed in solitude? Only in cooperation with ‘the other’? As a relationship? Where each member contributes to the shared doom?

Do you see how similar science and sin are?

Both start ‘individually’ and are put in practice ‘together’.
Both are initiated as individual pulsions and put in practice as choices.

I’ve started this post by mentioning science.
The scientists among us have reached the conclusion that there was no need for a God to start the process of which we are the alleged pinnacle. That evolution was enough to drive the whole thing. I tend to agree.
On the other hand, history – yet another branch of science, has produced enough evidence to prove that God had a tremendous contribution to the present state of civilization.

Not God himself but the image of God we have created for ourselves. The Image we’ve been bowing to for some time now.

Go figure….

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Categories altruism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, Frames of mind, freedom, In English, man as a measure for all things, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, teleology, The kind of world we are building for our children

Who’s the problem now?

June 4, 2020 //
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I’ve always been fascinated by quotes which are ambiguous enough to be simultaneously wrong and right.

In this situation, the ambiguity comes from ‘government’ covering three ‘patches of ground’.

‘Method of running a place/country’. (Self)Organized versus chaotic.
‘System in place’ which is used in running a country.
A particular group of people who man, at any given moment, the above mentioned ‘system in place’.

Now, which of the three meanings was at the top of Reagan’s mind when he was uttering those ‘famous’ words?

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptable(sic). Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.

Frank Herbert

The way I see it, government ‘as a manner of running things’ is a very powerful method. Which had served us rather well, on aggregate. Only it is not fail-proof. Or, more exactly, fool-proof.
Government as a ‘system in place’ is a work in progress. We’ve been improving it since we’ve invented government as an alternative to chaos. Only we need to be very careful. As a man made system it will always be far from perfect. It has not been perfect in the past and, no matter how much effort we’ll put into it, it will always remain perfectible.
Finally, government as ‘the team temporarily in charge’ ‘suffers’ mainly from being composed of humans. Hence both corruptible and attracted to power. Hence liable to do everything to maintain their positions.

‘Liable to do everything to remain in power’.
Which means that it’s our job to keep them on the straight and narrow.
We, The People, are the first to experience the consequences of their decisions. Hence we, all of us, are those who need to keep Government – ‘the team in charge’, on a short leash.
If they want to remain in power, they need to keep us ‘alive’.
They need to keep the system in shape. Working good enough for the vast majority, not for just a few of us. For a few of them, to be more precise.

Otherwise ‘government as a manner of keeping chaos at bay’ would have failed.


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Categories 1989 and the Global Financial Crisises., altruism, arrogance, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, corruption, democracy, effective communication, evolution, Frames of mind, freedom, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Politically induced fragility, Psychology, teleology, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

Si vis pacem, Parabellum.

May 29, 2020 //
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-Si vis pacem, para bellum- resounds in the heart of any warrior. “If you want peace, prepare for war” that is how it was hundreds of years ago, and that is how it will remain forever. As the new SECUTOR, you mark your own destiny grabbing the Bellum, ready for combat, ready for warfare.

War has been the subject of many books. From war novels to ‘how to’ treaties.
When the subject is mentioned, two stand up high. Sun Zu’s “The Art of War” and Clausewitz’s “On War“.

I’m not going to discuss the relative merits of the two treaties. Only to point out a few parallels.
The authors had been involved in wars. Wars between states inhabited by more or less the same people. Sharing more or less the same culture. Wars which had ended when the warring parties had coalesced into what we call nations. China and Germany, respectively.

Yet we currently refer to those two treaties when we consider war between totally different nations/cultures.

Furthermore, we consider those two as being the pinnacles of strategic thinking. In a sense, that would be right. After all, both had been written by the winners of those respective wars.

But what happened next?

What major war had China won after becoming an united nation? WWII? When her enemy had been first beaten to a pulp, literally, by the US?
What major war had Germany won after becoming an united nation? The one against France in 1870? OK. And afterwards?

And what is the real meaning of ‘Si vis pacem, parabellum’?

‘If you want peace, prepare to wage war’ or ‘if you want peace, make your self resilient to war‘?

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Categories altruism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, Frames of mind, freedom, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust, yes but

Epiphany

May 26, 2020 //
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What if our self awareness, otherwise known as conscience, has evolved in order to understand, accept and mitigate randomness?

There’s no evolution – hence no life, without randomness.
Yet life, anyway you look at it, is about maintaining a certain degree of order.

Whenever there’s so much randomness that life can no longer adapt to it… evolution stops.
Whenever structures become so big/rigid that they find it harder and harder to evolve, they eventually succumb to an otherwise survivable amount of randomness. Dinosaurs and too big to fail corporations versus mice and flexible operators.

In a nutshell, self-awareness is about not being ‘fooled by randomness‘.

And to avoid the deepest pitfall we’ll encounter during this never ending journey – randomness will always be wider than our individual ability to encompass it, we must keep remembering that conscience is selfish. Untrained, it is more about protecting itself than about helping the entire ‘individual’ to survive.

‘What?!?’

Yes, it’s hard to believe!
But what other explanation is there for so many of us continuing to smoke after finding out, the hard way, that this habit might actually kill us?
I use this example simply because I still remember the cigarette I smoked when I last visited the grave where rests a woman I loved dearly. And who is no longer with us because of lung cancer.

Too often our conscience will prefer to rationalize away new information than accept that past choices could have been better.

I’m certain all of you are already too familiar with ‘confirmation bias‘.

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Categories altruism, authoritarianism, awareness, biology, Bounded rationality, Chance, Choices we make, collective identity, complementary ways of attending knowlege, cooperation, democracy, effective communication, evolution, fail better, Frames of mind, In English, Intent, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, Trust

Lungs are a blind alley.

May 22, 2020 //
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This being the most convincing argument that we really need to quit ‘smoking’.

Just think of it.
Inhale, exhale.
Inhale, exhale.
Inhale, exhale…

I know you can do this, breathe, without thinking.
You’ve actually done it since your birth. And you’ll continue doing it after you’ll have reached the end of this post.
But right now you should be fully aware that your lungs have only one opening.

What has to come out – what doesn’t belong in there, needs to exit from where it came in in the first place. Which is rather hard for anything which isn’t air.
That’s why dust, tar, or even microbes, should not go in there at all.

Quit smoking. And quit belching smoke into the atmosphere.

Let’s get to the second part of the post. Presumably, the more interesting one.
Click on the image and read the whole thing.
Now tell me why would somebody attempt to ‘debunk’ such a lie in the first place? Is smoking something worth arguing for?

“The anti-smoking industry is happy to carry on misleading people on this subject because that is how they make their money. I would guess that the reason many people who know better do nothing to correct this misconception is simply that they think that if people stop smoking as a result of a little white lie then so be it!
Yes it is myth that smokers have black lungs! They would probably all be very dead long before they could become an organ donor.“

Oops… so the whole thing revolves, again, around money…
And, if I understand correctly the point proposed by the author quoted above, a certain Fredrik Eich, there isn’t much of a difference between being duped into giving up and starting/continuing to smoke.

No, I don’t like being duped myself.
That’s why I’m telling it straight.
Lungs have only one opening. Don’t let yourselves be duped into believing that smoking isn’t that bad for you. That some smog is inevitable for a thriving economy.
After all, this is how ‘they’ make ‘their’ money.

Now, after proof-reading this, I wonder.
What do the dupers breathe?
Do they have their, private, atmosphere?
Have they duped themselves into believing everything is as pink as a pair of healthy lungs?

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Categories altruism, awareness, biology, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, complementary ways of attending knowlege, cooperation, Economy, effective communication, evolution, Frames of mind, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, teleology, Trust

Aren’t we something?

May 19, 2020 //
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As a species, I mean…

We’ve ‘invented’ mutual respect.
Based on it, we created the two institutions which allowed us to get where we are now. Democracy and free market capitalism.

I’ll make a short detour for those who are not ‘convinced’.

Democracy, the functional kind, starts from the premise that it is impossible for an individual to know everything. And that together we know much more than each of us. This being the reason for any democratic process starting with an intense discussion. Whoever has something to say, takes the stand and whoever is interested in the well being of the community pays attention. To learn where to cast their votes.

Free market capitalism starts, too, from the premise that it is impossible for an individual to know everything. That nobody, be it an individual or a group of people, might be smart enough to call all the economic shots needed for entire society to ‘feed itself’ on the long run.

These two fundamental institutions operate on the basis of mutual respect between those who live within them. The people exchange ideas and goods on the principle that the transactions are done voluntarily and in good faith. That deception is just an exception.

These two institutions made it possible for us to cooperate into building the present reality. We have developed enough technology that we are able to produce enough food for everybody.
We went to the moon
We have enough weapons to destroy the entire planet.
Each of us can communicate, almost instantly, with almost anyone on the planet.

And? What do we do in these conditions?
Although there still are many of us who are starving, we throw away food. For various reasons.
Most satellites are used (and) for military purposes.
Although we could not have ‘arrived’ if we hadn’t ‘invented’ mutual respect, we currently use information technology mainly to spread fake news and ‘consume’ pornography.

Is this really okay?
How much longer is this going to last?

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Categories altruism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperare, democracy, Economy, effective communication, evolution, In English, Intent, man as a measure for all things, man induced fragility, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, teleology, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

People lie

May 17, 2020 //
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Messages which are knowingly incomplete, false or both at the same time.

Why?

Because they have no alternative, want to achieve something or need to survive.

As soon as a person achieves a certain level of self-awareness – read consciousness, they realize that no ‘communication event’ will ever be complete. That nobody will ever be able to communicate everything they know, about the most insignificant subject, to anybody else.

Then what? Stop talking?
Or assume personal responsibility for everything that leaves your lips?

As soon as a person achieves a certain level of self-awareness, they realize there’s more in life than mere survival.
As soon as their consciences bloom – in concert with the accrued influence exercised by the ‘environment’, individuals set goals for themselves. Which goals become integral part of the ‘ongoing project’. Of the self-actualizing conscience. Achieving, or failing, each of those goals leaves an indelible mark on the conscience itself. On the manner in which each individual relates to their environment.
Since achieving is far more ‘satisfying’ than failing, conscience is naturally biased towards ‘achieving’. If the ‘environment’ ‘allows’ it, the bias becomes more and more ‘slanted’.
The messages used by the individuals – by their conscience, to be more precise, will increasingly serve the purpose of achieving goals rather than the purpose of ‘honest communication’.

As soon as a person achieves a certain level of self-awareness, that conscience wants to survive.
Mind you, not the person but the conscience.

‘?!?
Conscience cannot exist without the mind/body which supports it….’

OK, tell that to people who believe their souls are going places after their mortal bodies expire. Then try to demonstrate to yourself, honestly, that those people are wrong. That there’s no chance for their belief to be ‘true’.

But metaphysics are hard.
Let me give you a far lighter example.
Smoking. Or drinking. Driving fast. Eating that extra piece of chocolate…
Don’t tell me you never did anything ‘foolish’. That you never lied to yourself: ‘This cannot happen to me. Chances are so small that … Only this time….’

‘But otherwise nobody would ever be able to ‘leave their houses’. We’d be all completely paralyzed with fear…’

Yeap! That’s exactly what I mean. Conscience needs to lie to herself in order to remain functional. Otherwise she would not allow the physical body who sustains her to assume any risk.
They would both suffocate.

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Categories altruism, awareness, biology, Bounded rationality, Chance, Choices we make, collective identity, complementary ways of attending knowlege, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, Frames of mind, freedom, In English, Intent, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, manipulation, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, skin in the game, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust
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