Archives for category: Frames of mind

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

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.”

Tags cosmos, Flat Earth, making sense, monotheism, Universe

Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, Frames of mind, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

Language

June 29, 2025 //

Living organisms constantly exchange information with their environment.

Then where is the difference between ‘us’ and the rest of the living creatures?
Information-wise, of course!

Language…

As far as we know, humans are the only critters currently living on Earth which are interested in how other creatures learn. Or teach…

“An individual actor A can be said to teach if it modifies its behavior only in the presence of a naive observer, B, at some cost or at least without obtaining an immediate benefit for itself. A’ behavior thereby encourages or punishes B’s behavior, or provide B with experience, or sets an example for B. As a result, B acquires knowledge or learns a skill earlier in life or more rapidly or efficiently that might otherwise do, or that it would not learn at all.” Caro and Hauser, 1992

In the 20 odd years since Caro and Hauser have set the bar for what teaching means quite a number of species have been found to do it. To fully or at least suggestively cross all the necessary t-s. From ants to primates.

Interestingly enough, all of those species have a clear ‘collective’ behavior.
All individuals belonging to a species collaborate, of sorts, towards the survival of that species. This goes without saying.
But in some species this collaboration is more intense than in others.
Ants and bees versus most other insects.
Elephants versus cheetahs. Or leopards.
Even chimpanzees versus orangutans…

OK, for some species hand to hand collaboration between generations is impossible. Most parent insects are dead when their offspring hatch. Orangutans live in forests where food is too scarce for more than 1 individual to forage.
Others have found their niches. Where the individual approach is good enough for them to survive. Cheetahs, leopards. Bears, even…

Charles Darwin taught us about evolution. Merging individual lives into the survival of the species those individuals belong to.

Life, as I see it from a “functional and mechanistic perspective“, is yet another manner in which matter is organized. Yet another ‘state of matter‘.
For life to be present, three conditions have to be met.
– Individual organisms have to be exchanging, in a controlled manner, substances with their environment. To ingest nutrients and to excrete the by-products of their metabolism.
– Individual organisms have to be exchanging information with their environment. And with their interior. Otherwise the exchange of substances would no longer be controlled by the individuals.
– Individual organisms have be passing to the next generation the pertinent information needed for the species to survive. In the kind of life we are familiar with, that would be ‘the genetic information’.

Considering the above, I dare to make a difference between what Caro and Hauser consider to be teaching and what we, humans, do.
Intent!

I doubt that any of the ‘animal teachers’ do it under their own volition.
After all, nobody has yet identified an animal con-artist who cons the members of their own species… as we do!
As far as we currently know, ‘teaching behavior’ is displayed inside species which collaborate more closely than other species. Which suggests that that kind of behavior is somehow innate to those species. A ‘habit’, not a choice. As it is with us.

What makes it possible? This difference?
Our special kind of conscience and our use of language.
The fact that we are the only species – as far as we know – capable of building a ‘virtual image’ of the surrounding reality. Capable to select certain aspects of what surrounds us and codify them using various forms of ‘notation’.
And to do this according to our own, individual, interests!
Sometimes even against the interests of the community/species to which we belong.

Tags con-artists, Intent, Language, teaching

Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, Cu pielea la bataie, effective communication, evolution, Frames of mind, man as a measure for all things

Comme il faut

March 6, 2025 //

King Charles III meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk. Picture date: Sunday March 2, 2025.

Etiquette is a matter of social interaction.
A mannerism used to convey ‘we are in sync’. ‘We see eye to eye’ on most matters that count.

In this picture, one of the two men are dressed ‘inappropriately’. According to the ‘normal’ etiquette.

This is ‘posturing’.
That choice of attire – in flagrant breach of ‘comme il faut’ – is a constant reminder to the rest of the world that he, and his country, are not ‘normal’. Like the rest of us still are. For now…

We can accept his ‘look’. Demonstrating that we feel with him. And with his country!

Or… we can show our ‘true colour’…

Tags aggression, comme il faut, etiquette, inappropriate attire, not normal

Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, collective identity, effective communication, Frames of mind, skin in the game

A warning

January 26, 2025 //

Celebratory meme posted by ecstatic Trump 47 supporter a few days after the inauguration.

True enough.

Only living in a world where everybody is scared… isn’t that much fun!

Not even for those who have managed to amass all the money in the market.

As somebody who has lived under both communism and not yet free market capitalism I must stress that there’s little difference between communism and monopolistic capitalism presented under the guise of democracy.
Between a social order where all power – political, economic, social, you name it – is concentrated in the hands of a few self selected people pretending to protect the interests of the people. A social order described by those calling the shots as being a ‘popular democracy'(?!?).
And a social order where all power – …. – is concentrated in the hands of the few people who have amassed all the riches in that particular society. And who, behind manipulated -and no longer liberal – democratic mechanisms pretend to protect the interests of the people.

The problem with both situations being the fact that a few people – no matter how capable and/or well intended, if that is the case – cannot manage, over a sizeable amount of time, such a complex thing as a society. Period.

Tags liberal emocracy, making money, monopolism, popular democracy

Categories 1989 and the Global Financial Crises, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, effective communication, Frames of mind, In English, Mutual Respect, skin in the game

‘Murder, He Says’

January 16, 2025 //

“Thou shalt not make unto thee
any graven image, or any likeness of any thing
that is in heaven above….“
Exodus 20:4

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

And it thus becomes obvious that Nietzsche has been falsely accused. It wasn’t he who had murdered God! He was simply the first who had the guts to write His death certificate…

My point being that what we call ‘God’ is a man made image. A concept.
It doesn’t matter, for this analysis, whether there is an actual god or not. What we call God is nothing more than our image of one.

And it had been enough. For a while.
For as long as we have followed the rules we ourselves had established to guide our own behavior – as in written them down – the God we’d imagined worked as intended. ‘Religion’ did what it was supposed to do. People had a ‘spiritual environment’ in which they behaved both coherently and cohesively.
Coherently and cohesively enough to evolve from slaves – owned and/or owners – to equal rights owning/yielding citizens.
Coherently and cohesively enough to evolve from horse driven war chariots to the M1A3 Abrams tank.
Coherently and cohesively enough to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ to the tune of 8 billion. Give or take. Not all of them following ‘the rules’ but all of them benefiting from the results of those rules having been followed for a while.

Yet, when things were unfolding so smoothly, why have we given up following those rules?

Have we outgrown the need for a shepherdly Father? For a Ghost to frighten us unto doing the right thing?
Or have we become so infatuated with our own ability to think, to reason, that we have turned it into an idol? Against all odds…
Despite having been warned about it!

Pascal’s wager is about turning the tables on ‘God’.
The image we made for ourselves about God, the ‘Holy Gost who frightened us unto staying on the straight and narrow’, convinced us to behave in a constructive manner. Benefiting the entire community.
The argument made by Pascal was made to convince us, individually, that we – each of us – should believe in God for their own sake. For their own benefit!
Effectively transforming each individual belief into an idol… ‘Graven’ by each individual, upon their own soul, in the likeness of things in heaven, for their individual use… Transforming the community creating God into an individual tool designed and believed to ‘give’ each of us ‘everything’.
Individually. As opposed to making it possible for everybody to exist.

As Nietzsche observed, by making Pascal’s wager – by transforming faith into a rational thing – we have collectively killed God. The same God which has made us possible.
Against everything we have been warned about, by our wise ancestors, we have replaced God with ourselves. So that we “gain all”. Individually. Each of those who had made the rational decision…

Tags God is dead, idol, Limited awareness, Religion

Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, collective identity, effective communication, Frames of mind, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, teleology

Lost in ‘translation’…

February 18, 2024 //

Language is the tool we use to convey information.
To speak our minds…

The consequences of tool use – messages, in this case – depend on the yielder.
The consequences of shooting a gun depend mainly on the person aiming the gun.
The consequences of using language … depend on those who are at the both ends of the ‘barrel’.

Messages – consequences of language being used to put together batches of information with the intent of transmitting them to an audience – are interpreted as soon as they reach their ‘target’.
Meaning – what the receptor makes of a message, using the same languaging tools as those put to work by the emitter – depends mainly on the receptor. In fact, most of the times, there’s more information to be gleaned from a message than that intended to be conveyed by the person initiating the exchange.

The text attributed to Orwell is too simplistic and too misleading to had been penned by Orwell.
Hence Google…
“There is no substantive evidence that George Orwell who died in 1950 made this remark. The earliest known matching statement appeared in a column in the Washington Times newspaper written by the film critic and essayist Richard Grenier in 1993“

If interested in who said what and what Orwell thought about the subject… just click on the link above.
I’ll only add the reasons for which I know it to be a misleading affirmation.

The factual truth is that only dictators need to be guarded by rough men during their sleep. And during the rest of their lives…
We, the rest of ‘the people’, go to sleep at night knowing there’s only a very slim chance to be targeted by thieves. Yes, we know that the police will likely come to investigate after the fact. After the fact…
But we also know that we are less likely to fall prey to violence than those living in other countries because our societies work better than those which are more violent than ours.

Because our society works better, not because we employ more ‘rough men’ to guard us…
On the contrary!
The more violent a country, the more ‘popular’ the ‘rough men’ are. On both ‘sides of the isle’!

And the more violent a country, the less peacefully people sleep in that country…

Tags Books, consequences, dictator, George Orwell, Language, misleading, politics, reviews, rough men, tool, Writing

Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, effective communication, Frames of mind, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, re-definitions, Rule of Law, skin in the game, Trust

Making sense

November 23, 2023 //

The Universe has no other meaning
than that we attach to it.

How do we find that meaning? How do we make sense of things?

“The subjective and the objective,” writes the philosopher, (Schoppenhauer) “constitute no continuum, that which is immediately known is limited by the skin, or rather by the external end of the nerves which lead out from the cerebral system. Within lies a world of which we have no other knowledge than through pictures in our head.” Stephen S. Colvin, 1902

According to Schoppenhauer’s take on the matter, we make sense of the world by carefully (?) ruminating the “pictures in our head”. The information which has already reached our ‘inner forum’.
Which means that we should be very careful when letting something ‘in’!
When reading a text, for example…

‘You should follow science, not scientists. Because scientists can be sold.’

Logically speaking, the phrase makes a lot of sense. Right?

Practically… not so much.

Do we learn everything about medicine before taking the pill prescribed by the doctor? Simply because the doctor might have been sold to the big pharma?
Do we learn everything about microwaves before using a microwave oven? Simply because the physicist who had invented the thing might have been sold to the makers of household appliances?
Do we stop using planes because they are used to spray our skies?

Literary speaking, what do you make of “scientists can be sold to the highest bidder”?!?
Sold by whom? How can anybody sell a scientist?
I might understand the notion of a scientist being bought… of a scientist selling his soul, his scientific soul, to the highest bidder… but selling one… Is there a market for scientists?

only because it happens to resonate with something you are already inclined to believe.

Tags meaning, Schoppenhauer, Science, scientists can be sold, sense

Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, Frames of mind, In English, manipulation, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, teleology

Terrorism

October 26, 2023 //

For ‘man made’ things to happen – for anybody to do anything – three requirements must be met first.
‘Circumstances’, ‘determination’ and ‘opportunity’.

To serve a meal, the chef needs ingredients and tools, willingness to do it and a hungry client.
To engage in an act of terrorism, the terrorist needs a certain set of circumstances, the ‘determination’ to do ‘it’ and a ‘trigger’.

Is it far-fetched to compare these two things?
Feeding people and killing them?

From a ‘deterministic’ point of view, there’s no difference between deciding to serve a bowl of pasta and deciding to deliver a bomb.
The consequences are, obviously, completely different.
Supporting life versus taking it away.

There are more differences.
Nobody has yet seriously considered banning restaurants and everybody hates terrorism.
When subjected to acts of terrorism! Otherwise…

Meanwhile, PKK continues to remain a terrorist organization!

So…
Just as food tastes vary enormously, so does various people’s interpretations on what constitutes a terrorist act.
The first constant being the fact that food sustains life while terror tends to make it difficult.
And the second one being the fact that both restaurants and terrorist acts are community based phenomena.

A restaurant depends on the people who deliver the goods, on those who operate it and on the paying customers who keep the business afloat.
A terrorist depends on those who help and facilitate. And a terrorist depends on the rest of the community turning a blind eye towards what’s going on. For no matter what reasons! Until they realize how foolish they have been…

‘But who is a terrorist?’

That’s a very good question!
There are up to three types of ‘associates’ in any act of terrorism.
The ‘direct operator’, the ‘first hand facilitators’ and the ‘people behind’.
While it is quite simple to understand the roles played by the ‘direct operators’ and by the ‘first hand facilitators’, things become murkier when it comes to the ‘people behind’.
For some – including for me, the current Iranian leadership are among the ‘people behind’ the Hamas terrorist organization. But what about those who, willingly or unwittingly, make it so that whole communities become ‘restless’?
Restless enough to generate terrorists and careless enough to turn a blind eye towards terrorist acts being prepared in their midst?

My point being that just as nobody becomes a celebrity chef overnight, it’s almost inconceivable that anybody might engage in major acts of terrorism without being helped by some and noticed by many.
And just as a chef has to be talented to become noticed, a ‘direct operator’ needs to be in a ‘particular’ state of mind in order to operate. But just as an untalented cook is, eventually, ‘set aside’ by a run of the mill community, a willing ‘direct operator’ ends up, literally, being embraced by a ‘triggered’ community.
Or is eventually ‘sent away’ by a normal one. By a properly functioning society!

Just before starting this post, I heard somebody commenting on Antonio Guterres’s words: ‘Even if he will not have to resign, he won’t get another mandate’…
Now, as a coda, I feel the need to share that comment with you.