Archives for category: Mutual Respect
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Meaningless

April 11, 2020 //
0
“Yes you can! No people to feel/live/see it, no spring.”

Remember Protagoras? “Man is the measure of all things”?

Without man, there’s no meaning?

Yes, our world becomes meaningless.
The moment we no longer care enough about it.
The moment we stop paying attention.

The other day I had a riveting conversation with my son.
With my 21 years old son.

I asked him to comment on my previous post.
The one about too many people allowing sentiment to cloud their judgement.
The one about even reputable news agencies using click-bait titles to entice readers. Hence reinforcing the habit of sentiment being allowed to cloud reason.

‘Life was never better for so many of us’, explained my son. ‘Since WWII most of us had enjoyed peace. Since the Spanish Flu, we hadn’t experienced a pandemic. Since Salk, we’ve led ourselves to believe we were safe from disease. Since the fall of communism, even the ideological divides have paled down. And now we have enough technology to feed the entire planet, comfortably. The point being that we have no idea how to deal in this situation. What to do. How to behave.
Simply because we have no relevant prior experience.
Until recently, historically speaking, we have successfully dealt with wars, famines and pestilence.
But it’s the first time that we experience such abundance.
We need to adapt to the new reality.
To transform it into an opportunity. Into an opportunity to go forward.
We have to avoid, at all costs, the pitfall of allowing this abundance to bog us down.’

Heartening, isn’t it?
That a person so young can find such deep meaning.
If I may say such things about my own son…

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Categories 1989 and the Global Financial Crisises., altruism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, The kind of world we are building for our children

TDS as a state of mind.

April 9, 2020 //
1

OK, Trump did say something.
Which isn’t exactly stupid, by the way.
Two halfwits had self medicated themselves to death. With the very same substance Trump was peddling.
But we don’t know for sure whether those two had ever heard Trump advertising that substance. “In Nigeria, households still regularly use tablets containing chloroquine for treating malaria, even though it was banned in 2005 for first-line use because of its declining effectiveness. News of a February study in China about the use of chloroquine for the coronavirus had already sparked lively debate in Lagos, so people began stocking up.”
And there’s a lot of other people, way more knowledgeable than Trump on the matter, who advocate the same course of action.

Yet Trump is held accountable for those two ending up dead…
Are we going to get out of this state of mind?
Ever?

The sooner the better….

After all, what’s the real difference between those who see Trump as their savior and those who see Trump as their arch-enemy?

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Categories arrogance, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, fail better, Frames of mind, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, man induced fragility, manipulation, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, Trust

To each, their own.

April 7, 2020 //
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Some see here a herd of sheeple being led to disaster by:

The Democrats
The Republicans
The Government, in general
Any other con artists of their choice.

I see at least one guy who just figured out what was happening.
And who tries to share what they’ve learned!

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Categories 1989 and the Global Financial Crisises., altruism, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, democracy, effective communication, evolution, Frames of mind, In English, Intent, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, teleology, The world as described in jokes, Trust

Lesson no.1

April 5, 2020 //
1

Maybe it’s to early… I’ll take my chances though.

Germany has weathered this crises a lot better than most of her neighbors.

There are no toll- booths on the German highways. Not that I know of, anyway.

And what has this to do with anything?!?

Well, does your heart bill you for its services?
Your lungs? Your gut? Brain?
The immune system?
Even if each of them works at a cost… for the whole organism!

The health care system is the social equivalent of the immune system.

We, each cultural community around the world, might treat it as an industry. Fine tuned to maximize profit.
Or as a social service. Meant to protect the society from the consequence of disease. And run as efficiently as possible, of course. But sized to be able to cope with reasonably estimated ‘loads’.

There is a fine balance to be held here, of course. A multi-dimensional equilibrium, actually.

It depends on us, as individual members of the brain, to fine tune that equilibrium.

Or else…

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Categories altruism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, fail better, Frames of mind, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, teleology, The kind of world we live in

Outcome

April 5, 2020 //
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All outcome depends on inputs.
When humans are involved, ‘intent’ can be found among inputs.

What do we want, in the present situation?

Basically, to survive! Right?

For as long as possible… as individuals…

The fact that the sum of our individual survivals results in the survival of our species/cultures is a truism. And, maybe, not so important for some of those struggling to survive as individuals.

The point I’m trying to make here being that how we attempt to survive will decisively influence the general outcome.

We might try to survive against the others.
Or we might try to survive with the others. In close – even if ‘distant’, cooperation with the other members of our community/culture/species.

And while surviving we might try to amass whatever we want. Of whatever we’ve always wanted. Doesn’t matter what ‘that’ is. Money, power, prestige… you name it.

Or we might learn something. We might turn Maslow’s Pyramid on its head.
We might use this crises as an opportunity to understand that we’re stronger together.
That cooperation among autonomous individuals generates a lot more chances of survival than attempting to pass through as individuals.
As a lonely individual or as an individual hiding in the middle of a crowd, doesn’t matter.

And we should bear in mind that surviving the crises will be only the first step.
How we do it will shape the stepping stone for how we’ll rebuild our livelihoods.

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Categories altruism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, In English, Intent, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, teleology, Trust

Knowledge

April 3, 2020 //
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Any attempt to learn something, to increase your knowledge about a certain subject, is nothing more and nothing less than an attempt to become intimate with it.

Students have two open roads ahead of them.

One which implies a lot of wooing, patience and a certain degree of self appeasement.
The other asks for a direct, almost blunt, approach.
While the first is more like the student dancing around the subject, the second is akin to a hands on combat.

The results are, obviously, different.
Not exactly different. Only fundamentally.

The difference is very much like the difference between courtship and rape.
The end result might be a child. But…

Same thing with art and science.

It is true that in order to have sex, both partners need to be, at least somewhat, naked.
But there is all the difference in the world between having sex and making love!

The end result is only apparently the same!

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Categories arrogance, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, In English, Intent, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, teleology, The kind of world we are building for our children, Transparency, Trust, yes but

SF

April 2, 2020 //
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Where S stands for Sociological.

So. Let me present you with a sociologically fictitious scenario.

We have an intelligent observer and and a trans-galactic vehicle.

There are no details available about the observer except for the fact that it has access to a comprehensive real time stream of data about what is going on inside – or, more exactly, on the surface, of the trans-galactic vehicle.

And here’s what the observer had recorded.

The vehicle is being continuously transformed by its passengers.
In fact, there are two manners in which the passengers change their vehicle.
By interacting directly with it.
And as unintended consequences of the interactions which take place between the passengers themselves.

The passengers are evolving.
During the observation period, some of them had become dominant.
But no matter whether they had become dominant or not, most of the passengers had disappeared. Both as individuals and as species.

The current dominant species is the most intriguing ever.

It displays a strange mix of intelligent behaviors and suicidal tendencies.

It is composed of rather autonomous individuals who are adept at finding ingenious solutions to almost intractable problems.
But, strangely enough, they haven’t yet been able to figure out two basic things:
The limited nature of the vehicle on which they live. In both time and space.
Nor how to balance their individual functional autonomy with their need to cooperate towards their natural goal. The survival of their own species.

If the whole ‘project’ were a SF movie, the text above would have been the opening.
Followed by:

Currently, the dominant passengers are being taught a lesson by the apparently most insignificant amongst those transported by the vehicle. By a virus, as the dominants refer to it.
The virus – like all of its kind, is able to hijack other organisms and somehow convince them to work for him. At a very high cost for the hijacked organisms.
In this case, the hijacked organisms belong to the dominant species.

And what have the individuals belonging to the dominant species chosen to do?
Inform each-other promptly and cooperate earnestly towards the common goal?

Not exactly. Not yet, anyway.

Homework:
What would the intelligent outside observer think about the whole situation?
Would He consider to lend a helping hand?

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

Frames

March 28, 2020 //
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https://i.imgflip.com/3ua749.jpg

Well, we must remember that solutions came a lot easier when we refuse to think inside a box. Inside any box. No matter how large or how nice.

Every time I understand/notice that somebody tries to frame my thinking process, I go ‘ballistic’.

I try to raise my mind perpendicularly above the frame. So that I may observe the limits.

Every time when somebody is presented with an ‘either/or’ option there is a strong likelihood that the situation merits a more nuanced approach.
As in ‘yes, the government was terrible at handling COVID-19’ and ‘yes, the government – as our servant, should be mandated by us, the people, to coordinate the help we need in our hour of need’.

How can we reconcile these two?
Simple.
Hire a better government and keep a keen eye on it!

And, if I’m not mistaken, wasn’t democracy meant to do exactly this?

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Categories 1989 and the Global Financial Crisises., awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, fail better, Frames of mind, freedom, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, manipulation, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, The kind of world we are building for our children, Transparency

So close. Yet so far apart…

March 28, 2020 //
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About half of our manufactured goods come from China. From half-way around the world. A shipping container needs about a month to arrive to Rotterdam from Shanghai. While ordering the merchandise takes some five minutes over the internet.

Shanghai is in China. A country so far away that hourly wages are a fraction of those in Europe. Or in the US. That being the reason for so many of our manufactured goods coming from there.

China is a country so far away that it took more than a month for the rest of the world to find out that a pandemic was brewing in Wuhan.
China is a country so far away that the CDC expert embedded in China’s Disease Control Agency was deemed useless by the current American Administration.

China is a country close enough for the Chinese tourists to had been a staple for the Italian hospitality industry. “5.3 million overnight stays in 2018“
China is a country far enough for an “official opening ceremony” to had been “held at the Auditorium Parco della Musica, a multicultural complex, in the Italian capital on Tuesday, at the presence of Italian Minister of Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism Dario Franceschini and Chinese Minister of Culture and Tourism Luo Shugang.”

The ceremony was held because “2020 has been designated the China-Italy year of culture and tourism, as the year marks the 50th anniversary of China-Italy diplomatic ties.”
“Tuesday” was the 21st of January 2020.

The same day

  • United States confirms its first case in Washington state, a man who traveled to the Wuhan area.
  • China confirms two additional deaths, a sixty-six-year-old man and a forty-eight-year-old woman
  • New cases are announced in China, including in Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai.
  • Chinese state media raises number of confirmed cases to 291 and confirms 15 medical workers in Wuhan have been diagnosed with pneumonia.
  • Hong Kong confirms its first case, a person in their thirties.
  • Taiwan confirms its first case, a woman in her fifties.

The above timeline was ‘borrowed’ – through the Internet, of course, yet another example for how close we are of eachother, from https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/updated-timeline-coronavirus on 3/28/2020, 12:30 GMT
Which Internet pulls us together by pooling information/data while simultaneously rips us apart by feeding us a constant stream of fake news.

We are so close together that you can send/receive almost everything (from) almost everywhere.
We are so close together that everybody who has a smart phone can see their similarly equipped buddies halfway across the world.

We’re so far apart that we still have to make up our collective mind about which comes first. The Economy or the People.
We’re so far apart that we haven’t figured out yet that there’s no such thing as a running economy without enough able bodied and mentally sane people. To produce, transport, distribute and buy the things we need.
We’re so far apart that we haven’t yet figured out that the present number of people cannot survive – let alone maintain a decent living standard, without a running economy.

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Categories awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, Economy, effective communication, evolution, Frames of mind, In English, limited rationality, man induced fragility, Money as goal, Mutual Respect, Politically induced fragility, Psychology, skin in the game, The kind of world we are building for our children

Progress.

March 26, 2020 //
0

Some people are convinced that nothing really changes.
That progress is an empty word.

Others are convinced that progress is everything.

And each category has its ‘extremists’:

Some people are convinced that nothing should be allowed to change.
Others are convinced that all change must be imposed, or at least approved, by them.

And the tug of war between these two categories actually hamper whatever progress happens naturally.

Mind you, both categories shoot themselves in the foot.
Each of them shoots only the ‘specific’ foot but the result is equally crippling… Both end up being iron shackles for the rest of us.

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Categories awareness, Bancuri, Bounded rationality, collective identity, cooperation, evolution, Frames of mind, freedom, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion
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