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I, the three legged stool.

December 9, 2016 //
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For John Locke and his followers “what makes a person identical with herself over time is her remembering or being able to remember the events to which she was witness or agent.” (According mostly to the followers. What Locke actually said is something else, to which I’ll come back shortly)
Jesse Prinz has another opinion.

 

In this video Prinz seems to advocate that we maintain the continuity of our selves by sticking to a set of values. But this is only ‘skin deep’.
He didn’t actually say ‘what keeps us ‘together’ over time but ‘what people think that is ‘keeping us together’ as time passes’.
These two are not necessarily the same thing.
The way I see it memories are just the ‘resource’ from which our identity is continuously being built and the ‘values’ we stick to are the ‘blue-prints’ we use/update during the process but that the ‘driver’ behind all this is our self-awareness/free willing soul.
All three are interdependent.
As Locke observed, without our memories we would be like balloons drifting in a cloud of deep fog. We wouldn’t even be able to determine whether we were moving or not.
As Prinz said, without our values we’re like ships which have lost their ‘compass’.  Just imagine a boat sailing during a starless night or in a cloudy day. There are ways that experienced sailors can use to determine whether the ship is moving – relative to the surrounding water – but not even Black Beard nor Magellan would have been able to reach their destinations without ever seeing the Sun, some stars or using a compass.
Not to mention the fact, sorry Jesse, that without our memory we wouldn’t be able to remember today what set of values we had been using yesterday.
Finally, but not lastly, without our self-awareness/free willing soul we would be like perfectly sea-worthy ships which have been abandoned by their crews. Adrift in the middle of the sea, at the mercy of the elements. Elements themselves being not merciless but amoral…
I have a promise to keep. I said I would come back to Locke.
“ANOTHER occasion the mind often takes of comparing, is the very being of things, when, considering ANY-THING AS EXISTING AT ANY DETERMINED TIME AND PLACE, we compare it with ITSELF EXISTING AT ANOTHER TIME, and thereon form the ideas of IDENTITY and DIVERSITY. When we see anything to be in any place in any instant of time, we are sure (be it what it will) that it is that very thing, and not another which at that same time exists in another place, how like and undistinguishable soever it may be in all other respects: and in this consists IDENTITY, when the ideas it is attributed to vary not at all from what they were that moment wherein we consider their former existence, and to which we compare the present. For we never finding, nor conceiving it possible, that two things of the same kind should exist in the same place at the same time, we rightly conclude, that, whatever exists anywhere at any time, excludes all of the same kind, and is there itself alone.“
 I’m sure that by now you have already figured out what I mean.
It is “we” that ‘compares’ and ‘considers’ things, that forms “ideas of identity and diversity”, that sees “anything to be in any place in any instant of time”, that is “sure” of anything (or not)… and so on and so forth…
Without this “we” no discussion about memory nor values would have ever been possible
Without memories the “we” would go ‘hungry’. Or nuts.
Without values the “we” would be ‘toothless’. Or antisocial/in jail.
And all these have already been mentioned, albeit in different terms, by both Humberto Maturana and Stephane Lupasco.
PS.
Don’t tell me that none of you have ever thought, however passingly, of the other meaning of ‘stool’.
ganditorul

 

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Categories Bounded rationality, cooperation, Psychology, yes but

Of Men and their ‘use’ of Tallow…

December 1, 2016 //
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Tallow = “the white nearly tasteless solid rendered fat of cattle and sheep used chiefly in soap, candles, and lubricants“.

bite-the-bullet

“The mutiny (India, 1857) broke out in the Bengal army because it was only in the military sphere that Indians were organized. The pretext for revolt was the introduction of the new Enfield rifle. To load it, the sepoys had to bite off the ends of lubricated cartridges. A rumour spread among the sepoys that the grease used to lubricate the cartridges was a mixture of pigs’ and cows’ lard; thus, to have oral contact with it was an insult to both Muslims and Hindus. There is no conclusive evidence that either of these materials was actually used on any of the cartridges in question. However, the perception that the cartridges were tainted added to the larger suspicion that the British were trying to undermine Indian traditional society. For their part, the British did not pay enough attention to the growing level of sepoy discontent.”

tallowed-five-pounder

The new £5 notes contain tallow, a substance made from animal fat Credit: AP

“…a trace of tallow in the polymer pellets used in the base substrate of the polymer…”
“As the tweet was shared, social media users expressed their disgust at the news.
“New £5 note isn’t vegan. Was everyone’s 2016 New Year’s resolution to do ridiculously insane stuff like adding meat to money?” “

What are we to learn from these two (separate ?!?) incidents?

That we have not yet learned how, or when, to use tallow?

Or that we have reached, again, such a level of generalized discontent that people might use whatever plausible pretext in order to vent their accumulated grievances?

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Categories 1989 and the Global Financial Crisises., Choices we make, man induced fragility, Mindset, Psychology, The kind of world we live in

Spin Doctors

November 24, 2016 //
6

The essence of spin doctoring is to present a sequence of true facts in such a manner that will compel the audience to reach the conclusion desired by the ‘good-doctor’. The really skilled ones don’t even need to lie in order to achieve their goals. At most they ‘shave’ some of the rough edges so that the truths they choose to mention fit smoother into their narrative
In fact it doesn’t matter much whether the conclusion they mesmerize their audience into is ‘true’ or not – truth is relative, anyway. The only thing that’s important here is that ‘the’ conclusion fits the intentions of the spin doctor.
Also, it even doesn’t matter what those intentions are. Good, bad… the end is always the same.

Because of the manner in which all this works.

The principle involved here is the same as that used by the magicians who entertain the crowds of circus goers.
They first concentrate the attention of their audience to a single point and then direct it in such a way that the people are no longer able to see anything but what they are allowed to by the magician.
Or by the spin-doctor.

Unfortunately the similarities between magicians and spin-doctors end here.
While most of the circus goers have a nice experience, albeit a relatively short one, most victims of the spin-doctors have to endure long lasting trauma and/or substantial material loss.

Again, irrespective of the spin doctors’ intentions. It doesn’t matter whether the method is used by a (well wishing socialist) utopian or by a callous Nazi.  In my previous post I mentioned how ‘political hyenas’ spring up and monopolize all the situations in which their ‘dark talents’ cannot be kept in check by the rest of the society.
Here we have the explanation for why the otherwise reasonable members of the society are unable to perceive the mortal danger they find themselves in.

Because the spin doctor had skilfully overloaded their attention.
Because after living for so long ‘under the spell’, too many people have become accustomed to let others think for them and in their name.

Was that clear enough?
The spin doctor doesn’t have to be malefic in order for the tragedy to take place. It is enough that they have occupied the attention of the people and have exhausted the ability of too many of the individuals involved to think with their own heads.
In these conditions the ‘political hyenas’ will undoubtedly make their appearance and attempt to gain control over the society.

And, undoubtedly again, those attempts will be extremely detrimental for the entire society.

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Categories authoritarianism, Choices we make, collective identity, democracy, limited rationality, manipulation, Mindset, Psychology, Trust

Who’s Who?

November 22, 2016 //
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socialism-for-dummies-explained

What’s going on here has nothing to do with what the bona-fide socialists were about (long time ago they tried to reduce the imbalances produced by the ‘savage capitalism’ that was roaming freely in those days) and a lot to do with what’s currently going on in so many contemporary societies.

What’s left for us to do is to find out who is the ‘socialist’ here.

Those two bone headed morons who are fighting over who to be in control of that ladder?
And who are crying now because both halves have become useless?

Yes, that was what they were fighting for!
If all they wanted was to leave the pit it wouldn’t have mattered who did it first…

Or, maybe, the ‘serpent’ who offered to help those two divide the ladder amongst them?

And who, by doing precisely that, made sure that his control, over his ladder – which was not shown, remained unchallenged?

But what has any of this anything to do with socialism? At all?

Did anybody whisper ‘monopoly’?
Back there?

Anyone?

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Categories Choices we make, cooperation, Frames of mind, limited rationality, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, Psychology, Social justice, The kind of world we live in, Trust

The real problem with the fake news that have taken over the Internet.

November 19, 2016 //
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fake-vs-real-news

“When Silverman (the author of the study that produced the chart quoted above) confronted Facebook with this data, the social media giant argued that…”

Why would anyone confront Facebook with something like that?

Facebook is happy that we, the users, share anything at all on our walls for others to read.

This is how Facebook makes its living. They sell add space on top on whatever we choose to share on our walls. From a mercantile point of view Facebook shouldn’t really care whether what is shared by its users is legit or not, they simply must enforce the rules – no pornography, no open incitement to hate, no bullying, etc., etc…

We do the sharing, we bear the responsibility for our acts.
And it is we who will, eventually, experience the full consequences.

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Categories arrogance, authoritarianism, Choices we make, collective identity, limited rationality, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, politics, Psychology, The kind of world we live in, Trust

The Two, Only Apparently Different, Most Common Methods to Fuck Everything Up.

November 11, 2016 //
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shark2-625x352

Over reliance on ‘tradition’ and over reliance on ‘science’ (a.k.a. rational thinking).

The individual prone to falling victim to the first method is convinced that:

– They has adequately framed the problem.
– The answer, to that particular problem or to one close enough so that the old answer is still usable,  has already been found and recorded in the collective archive currently known as ‘tradition’.
– They is smart enough to identify the correct answer inside that huge wealth of  rather haphazardly accumulated knowledge.

The individual prone to falling victim to the second method is convinced that:

– They has adequately framed the problem.
– The answer to that particular problem can be reached scientifically.
– They is smart enough to identify the correct answer using the scientific tools currently at their disposal or to develop new ones, if necessary.

If, on top of all this, that individual, in no matter which of the two situations described above, is so convinced of the adequacy of “their” answer as to be prepared to impose it on others, even against their will – or without telling them before starting the implementation of “the answer”, then all hell will break loose – sooner or later.

By now you have probably figured out why these two methods are ‘only apparently different’.

In fact both of them are nothing but variations of the ‘inflated ego syndrome’.
This theory has been proven by the fact that all the dictators that have ever ‘ruled the Earth’ have always been convinced they were ‘rational people’, regardless of all of them either pretending to had been ‘blessed by God’ or explaining their ‘arrival’ as a ‘natural consequence’ of Marx’s scientific/dialectic materialism and/or Nietzsche’s Will to Power.

The people suffering from this syndrome can be identified by the manner in which they react to every input they receive. If their response is either ‘No, you’re wrong about this’ or ‘Yes, I was thinking along the same lines’ but never ‘Thank you for this fresh and very interesting perspective’ then you are dealing with someone harboring a very ‘inflated’ – and usually also very jealous – ego.

This kind of people are usually very good at spearheading change but allowing any of them  to acquire any considerable amount of power is, to say the least, suicidal.

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Categories authoritarianism, Choices we make, cooperation, corruption, Frames of mind, limited rationality, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, Rule of Law, The kind of world we live in, Trust

‘Political Correctness’ my Ass!

November 10, 2016 //
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An otherwise excellent article published by Robby Soave in reason.com claims that “Trump Won Because Leftist Political Correctness Inspired a Terrifying Backlash”

While I think that yes, there is something here, I’m also afraid that the author is ‘guilty’ of the same crime… he’s too afraid of ‘crossing the red line’ that to go all the way and spill it out.

“Trump won because of a cultural issue that flies under the radar and remains stubbornly difficult to define, but is nevertheless hugely important to a great number of Americans: political correctness.”

“What is political correctness? It’s notoriously hard to define. I recently appeared on a panel with CNN’s Sally Kohn, who described political correctness as being polite and having good manners.That’s fine—it can mean different things to different people. I like manners. I like being polite. That’s not what I’m talking about.

The segment of the electorate who flocked to Trump because he positioned himself as “an icon of irreverent resistance to political correctness” think it means this: smug, entitled, elitist, privileged leftists jumping down the throats of ordinary folks who aren’t up-to-date on the latest requirements of progressive society.

Example: A lot of people think there are only two genders—boy and girl. Maybe they’re wrong. Maybe they should change that view. Maybe it’s insensitive to the trans community. Maybe it even flies in the face of modern social psychology. But people think it. Political correctness is the social force that holds them in contempt for that, or punishes them outright.”

There are two problems with this approach.

It is both counterfactual and too imprecise.

First things first.
A sizable portion of Trumps supporters do not care much for such subtleties like ‘political correctness’. They might indeed feel ‘the social force that holds them in contempt’ but they are the kind of people who do not beat around the bush. They blame a person directly, not their manner of thinking.

Secondly, using the same name for two very distinct behaviors, ‘polite and having good manners‘ versus ‘jumping down the throats of ordinary folks who aren’t up-to-date on the latest requirements of progressive society.‘ is so imprecise that it becomes counterproductive.

By using the same label for both we end up discouraging both.

Do we really want to discourage people from being polite? From having good manners?
Do we really think that actually destroying all ‘political correctness’, the first kind included, is a good thing to do?

The way I see it we have to use a different moniker for the second behaviour.

How about ‘political bigotry’?

This way it would be clear what we stand for and what we strongly oppose.
‘Good manners’ would be in and ‘grab them by the pussy/jumping down the throat… simply because we can’ would be out.
‘Polite and considerate’ would be in while ‘smug, entitled and privileged‘ would be out.

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Categories arrogance, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, Frames of mind, gender roles, limited rationality, Mutual Respect, Psychology, yes but

Democracy as the ‘Tyranny of the Majority’

November 10, 2016 //
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Most of my right wing friends – and some from the left, are fretting about taxes and angry about the fact that they, the taxes, are ‘forcefully’ collected by the democratically elected government.

In their interpretation, the majority dictates, by the power of their numbers, the amount of taxes that the ‘fretters’ have to pay. The rationale being that ‘the poor’ help themselves, ‘democratically’, to the hard-worked, or other-wise rightfully owned, private property of the wealthy.
This rationale is a little fallacious – I see taxes as a form of ‘protection fee’, received by the state/government for maintaining a functional environment where everybody, including the wealthy, can take care of their lives and businesses – but this is a different subject.

Others warn us that “The Most Intolerant Wins” and that we must not, in the name of tolerance, tolerate any form of intolerance.

Isn’t it funny that under the current law a minority of Americans, composed significantly of ‘less educated, lower middle class people’, have imposed, upon themselves but also to the entire planet, a right wing President who has wowed, among others, to lower the taxes?

popular-vote

education-and-income

Any complaints?

PS.
Even stranger is the fact that 18% of Trump’s supporters said they didn’t thought he was qualified for the job but that they had ‘nonetheless voted for him, as did 20% of those who felt he did not have the necessary temperament.‘.

Further more “Of people who gave their opinion of the candidate they voted for, 41% strongly favoured them, 32% had reservations and 25% said they disliked the opponents.”

 

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Categories Choices we make, democracy, Frames of mind, freedom, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, Psychology, The kind of world we live in, Trust

The people has spoken.

November 10, 2016 //
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What can we make of it?

Momentous as it was the result was no landslide.
Only a little less than 120 million people bothered to vote – out of the 250 million or so who are old enough to do it – and most of them, 47.7% vs 47.5, have chosen the ‘looser’.

Actually I don’t like the notion of anybody winning – or loosing, for that matter, a democratic election but that’s a different subject. Stay tuned, I’ll probably cover it soon.

Then Trump is no Hitler, as some have feared.
Even if he is riding a similar wave of popular discontent like the one used by Hitler to rise to power, and uses the same political tricks, Trump is nothing more than the ultimate opportunist.
Check his body language.Turn off the sound and just watch him.

the-most-corrupt
While Hitler was a mad ideologue absolutely convinced of his own righteousness Trump’s only conviction is that he ‘deserves’ as much as he can ‘grab’.
Now, that I’ve mentioned ‘ideology’, in this respect it is Clinton who belongs to this category – people who conscientiously use an elaborated ideology as a compass to find their bearings and as a ‘looking glass’ to read the fine print on the maps they try to navigate. But this is a subject I’ll have to come back to at a little later.

No landslide but still momentous.

A lot of people who had not bothered to vote before have come out in droves.

Trump, the business man, and the Republican Party – which now controls both Houses of the Congress, cannot afford to forget this.
Also, they must not forget about the other half, the one which had chosen to remain silent, on Tuesday, of the electorate.
The fact that they didn’t vote, then, doesn’t mean that they didn’t have any opinion.
And they are simply too many to be discarded.

“How come we haven’t seen this coming?”

I keep hearing these laments from my fellow sociologists.

Well, the raw data was all there. Compiled in the opinion polls result sheets, only that we could not interpret them right.
Trump had felt it in his gut – and acted on this hunch, but we had not been able to see it coming despite our ‘scientific’ methods and hugely accurate number crunching machines.

Which brings me to the main topic of this post.

What happened these days is yet another proof that the math used by the number-crunchers is nothing but a (very accurate) language and that ‘science’ is nothing but a (meta) tool that can be used to make sense of various aspects of the surrounding reality.
The results obtained, by us, through the use of this tool and expressed with the help of that language depend primarily on our skills and intelligence and only secondarily on the quality of the tools used in the process and on the precision of the language used to present them.
Not to mention the fact that it was us who developed the tool and formulated the language…

I ‘warned’ you I’ll come back to ‘ideology’.
This is yet another tool. As I mentioned before, we, all of us, use it as a compass with which we try to find our way through the world and as a magnifying glass with which we try to make sense of what’s happening to us.

‘But you just said we’re using science ‘to make sense of various aspects of the surrounding reality’?!?’

Well… we’re using both.
Whenever confronted with anything new we have to make a snap decision. Try to assimilate it with something we already know or investigate it.
It is our personal ideology which kicks in first and tells us what to do. And each time that we choose to look in our mental drawers for something that might fit in the new situation we remain in the ideological realm and continue to use ideology as a light beacon – what happens to be inside that beacon is brought to our attention while everything else doesn’t exist for us.
Only if we choose to investigate, science kicks in. But not even then we are not entirely free from ideology. Each time that the investigative process leads us to anything which contradicts something that had been already ‘filed’ in our ideological cupboards we find ourselves in a huge dilemma. How to proceed from there on. Continue to trust the scientific method or revert to the safety of the already settled?

This is why individual responsibility is hugely important.
And why no one should ever consider that he is the sole repository of the entire truth.

This is why we need to be constantly reminded about the limited nature of our understanding.
And the democratic process has been proven, time and time again, invaluable in this respect.
As long as it was allowed to proceed freely and it was conducted with respect towards all members of the community involved.

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Categories arrogance, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, democracy, effective communication, Frames of mind, limited rationality, Mutual Respect, Psychology, Transparency, Trust

“Lost in Translation”.

October 25, 2016 //
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Unfortunately, sometimes essential meaning is lost not only ‘in translation’ but also during ‘interpretation’.

While reading an excellent article about Zineb el Rhazoui, a Charlie Hebdo survivor, I encountered the notion that “Islamophobia is not an opinion: it is an offense.”

Come again?!?

Is it possible that anybody might be offended by someone who’s being afraid? Regardless of that fear being reasonable or not?

Since that notion was said to have been promoted by Collective against Islamophia in France I checked their site, hoping to understand what they mean by that.

“For the CCIF, Islamophobia has a clear definition:
It consists of all acts of rejection, discrimination or violence against institutions or individuals on the basis of their real or perceived belonging to the Muslim faith.”
OK, so they are not offended as much by the fear itself but by the heinous actions some people take against people belonging to the Muslim faith, on the basis of the real or faked fears felt by the perpetrators.
But this is far from being OK.
What these guys are doing is confounding people’s minds.
They keep preaching that ‘Islamophobia is bad’ to people who are very naturally afraid of the actions perpetrated by some wackos who pretend to be Muslim.
This doesn’t make any sense.
It’s like saying that people living in a seismic area should not be afraid of earthquakes. And instead of building their houses in a certain manner they should go to the shrink and treat their unreasonable fears.
If some people who pretend to be Muslim behave in a totally unacceptable manner it is not reasonable to expect that all Muslim will behave in the same way but after so many bad things that have been committed by people pretending to belong to the Muslim faith it would be unreasonable not to try to understand what is going on.
On the other hand those who strongly disagree with the CCIF, Zineb el Rhazoui among others, make the mistake of deepening the confusion instead of calling the bluff for what it is:
“This is very dangerous because it has even entered the dictionary as hostility towards Islam and Muslims. Yet criticism of an idea, of Islam or of a religion cannot be characterized as an offense or a crime. I was born and lived under the Islam of Morocco and live in France and I have the right criticize religion and this dictatorship of Islamophobia that says I have no right to criticize! If we criticize Christianity it doesn’t mean we are Christianophobes or racist towards the ‘Christian race.’”
In real life criticism is one thing while violence – verbal violence, even – and rejection are completely different things.
Confounding these two categories is feeding the very monster who is menacing all of us – militant intollerance.
The article about el Rhazoui also mentions her latest book: “Destroy Islamic Fascism“.
I don’t agree with all the ideas excerpted there but there’s one which should grab the attention of all Muslims who describe themselves as being moderate:
“As for mainstream or moderate Muslim clerics, El Rhazoui tells Women in the World that during the Burkini debate in France not one Imam stood up and said “Hey, wait a minute, you can be Muslim and wear a [regular] bathing suit.””
She also says that ““The Muslim religion has its place in the modern world if it submits itself fully to the laws that rule humanity today: universal principles of equality between men and women, sexual and individual freedom, and equality for all, no matter your creed or religion. Until Islam has admitted this and accepted that the freedom of men and women is superior to it, Islam will not be acceptable.””
I’m afraid there’s a small problem with this.
A religion exists only as long as it has followers and inasmuch as those who belong to it choose to make of it.
It is not ‘Islam’ that has to ‘admit’ anything but the Muslim people themselves.
In this sense it is counterproductive for us, the free thinkers of the world, to peruse the Quran in search of violent episodes and then use them to demonstrate that ‘Islam is not a religion of peace’.
What we need to do, if we want to destroy the Fascism which happens to be of Islamic nature, is to win more and more Muslims to our side.
Making fun of their main Book and of their Prophet won’t achieve that. On the contrary.
On the other hand, giving in to even the most unreasonable things in the name of ‘tolerance’ isn’t helping either.
“The Federal Court of Canada ruled in February 2015 that the policy requirement for women to remove their niqabs during their oath swearing at Citizenship Ceremonies is unlawful, as it interferes with a citizenship judge’s duty to allow candidates for citizenship the greatest possible freedom in the religious solemnization or the solemn affirmation of the oath. The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration filed a notice of appeal to challenge this decision at the Federal Court of Appeal and the lower court’s decision is not in effect until the appeal has been decided by the Court.  As a result, women who wish to swear a citizenship oath may not do so with their faces covered.“
What kind of oath is that which is pledged by a faceless person?
How strong is that person’s adherence to our value regarding ‘openness and transparency’ and how willing is that person – or her husband/father/mother/sibling who makes her wear a niqab, presumably against her will – to respect and promote our notion of gender equality?
PS I
And how about replacing ‘Islamophobia’ with ‘anti-islamism’?
PS II
Why is it that the spelling checker suggested me that I should write ‘anti-Islamism’ while ‘antisemitism’ is not usually written using a capital s?
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Categories Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, Mutual Respect, politics, Psychology, religion, The kind of world we live in, Transparency
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