Archives for category: teleology

We are terrified of the unknown.
We don’t know what that is, so it may be dangerous.
We are also afraid of the incomprehensible. Of things which challenge our already held convictions. Which challenge the things we currently believe to be ‘true’.

We turn our backs to the unknown and ignore, if we can, the incomprehensible.
If what we don’t understand seems ‘far enough’, without much direct impact on us, it’s simple. We just ignore it and that’s it. Especially if it doesn’t carry any emotional charge.
But if it affects us, directly or emotionally, we perceive the unknown as being abnormal. And declare it as such. An abomination…

By being familiar, the things which surround us make us feel safe. We’re familiar with them, we entertain the notion that we understand them, so we know what to expect of them. We end up feeling ‘good’ in their presence.
Things that come into flagrant conflict with the familiar, which challenge the order we consider to be natural, are also considered to be aberrations! So we don’t pay attention to them. They are not part of our familiar, they are considered rare. Rare, aberrant and, consequently, not worth taking into account.

But after we find out… Or after we’re no longer able to ignore what’s going on…

A mafia-like gang sexually exploiting underage girls.
One of them – at least one – commits suicide. The public assumes that if there had been others, the press would have brought it forward.
For some people, sexual abuse is part of the things that happen. Which is not OK, not ‘good’, but still part of everyday life. Like earthquakes. For these people, the suicide of the victim is an aberration. Something that should not have happened! If the rest of the girls survived… it means that there was something ‘more’ involved. It was she who was not strong enough. Her support system was not adequate. Or something else might have pushed her in the wrong direction… After all, it doesn’t matter! An ‘aberration’… One of those things which are not worth much of our attention…

For other people, sexual abuse is something caused by aberrant individuals!
An aberration from one end to the other! Earthquakes are normal, sexual abuse is not!
For this kind of people, sexual abuse cannot be normalized! Under any circumstances.

This is where the interesting part starts.
Even those who think that sexual abuse is part of life don’t feel good when they learn about specific cases. When the victims ‘get names’. They know that it ‘happens’ but they don’t think about this phenomenon all the time. They have nothing to do with it, it doesn’t affect them… Until they can’t pretend anymore. Until it affects them. Not necessarily in a direct manner… Until the reality of the fact can no longer be ignored!
To escape the psychological discomfort they experience very suddenly, these people need to do something. Quick!

‘Aberration’ to the rescue!
Epstein becomes an aberration.
Andrew becomes an aberration.
Even the victim who committed suicide becomes an aberration!
In reality, ‘the aberration’ is that these things happened at all! That they happened before our own eyes!

This aberration could unfold, for so long, only because too many of us are ‘resigned to the fact’ that sexual abuse is ‘a part of life’. A ‘normal thing’. ‘Normal’ at least as long as it doesn’t affect us….

This aberration – industrial-scale sexual abuse, practiced by apparently ‘respectable’ people revealing their true nature under Epstein’s ‘direction’ – has been made possible precisely by too many of us having chosen to ignore the information ‘sloshing’ around our feet!
‘Silently’ shouted by the victims we have chosen to ignore. Until it was too late…

Since the early days of Photoshop in the 1990s,
developments in image fakery have seen us looking at photographs with rising suspicion.
But the Rijksmuseum’s latest photography exhibition asks a pertinent question:
Have photographs ever told the truth?

As I mentioned earlier, individual organisms remain alive for only as long as:
They manage to keep their innards in and most of everything else out. Or, in more formal parlance, to maintain their structural integrity.
They manage to take in what they need in order to continue their metabolism and to excrete the consequences of the before mentioned metabolism.

To perform those tasks, organisms need two things.
Matter and rules. Substance distributed in such manner as to constitute the organism we’re talking about and instructions regarding what to do in each circumstance.
For example, while not all organisms need to breathe, all of them need to take in some ‘matter’. Use some of it for ‘maintenance purposes’ and the rest as fuel. In order to recognize the precise substances needed, each organism needs very specific ‘filters’. And information from ‘inside’ regarding the amount needed in each moment of time. Then, once the required quantities of those respective substances have been ‘ingested’, the organism needs to perform certain precise tasks in order to obtain the necessary results.
Not to mention the fact that ‘substance distributed in such a manner as to constitute the organism we’re talking about’ has to be ‘distributed’ in a certain manner… yet even more information!

So life is about matter and information. Big deal! Nothing new under the sun…
Even Pulcinella knows that living organisms rely on genes to pass information from one generation to the next one.

True enough.
My point being that transfer of information is inherent to being alive!

A ‘new born’ cannot ‘become’ unless the pertinent information is ‘put forward’ by its ‘parents’.
And it cannot remain alive unless information continues to flow between the individual organism and the environment where it lives. As well as inside the above mentioned organism…

But there’s a problem here.
I keep saying ‘information’. But what is it? How do we recognize a signal as being information?
The answer is contained in the question. To have information we need signals and a key to interpret the inputs.
For instance, ‘get some more oxygen, or ‘food’ ‘, and a receiving agent, capable of performing the task, which can decipher the signal. ‘Lungs’, or ‘guts’, able to simultaneously understand the signal and to fulfill the need expressed by the ‘managing center’.

To cut a long story short, languaging is how things work in the living world.


True or false?
Does it make any sense to sent false signals?
To interpret them ‘differently’?

‘Living’?!?
What does it mean, after all?

Civilizations rarely collapse in moments of chaos.
More often, they decay through a sequence of decisions
designed to postpone accountability.
By the time destruction arrives, it feels abrupt
only to those who refused to look directly
at what was already happening.

Genny Harrison

At some point, there were way more driven/ridden horses than wild ones.
Currently, there are substantial numbers of cows, chicken, pigs and so on raised by humans and almost no wild brethren of the above mentioned animals. Same with quite a number of plants.

Are we even aware of the whole situation?

Why?
Because so few of us are still needed when it comes to ‘raising food’?

I’m afraid we’re very soon going to face the consequences.
Directly!

Direction, protection and order.
These are what a leader is supposed to provide.
According to the current lore, that is.

Until the start of the previous century, drivers used to drive horses. Then cars.
Since computers have come of age, drivers enable the OS – operating system – to run the hardware. To drive the printer, for example.
Which makes sense. A driver – a person or a computer script – makes the link between the problem which has to be solved and the means which will be used to accomplish the task.

Furthermore, a driver – regardless of its nature – must act inside a certain ‘perimeter’. Certain things must be balanced in order for the drivers to be able to accomplish their tasks. For instance, horses – or donkeys, oxen or even camels – must be harnessed to the carriage. But not zebras! Despite zebras being very much similar to horses…
Same thing for computers. No matter how well written, no driver will ever be able to cajole a printer to perform the task fulfilled by a mouse.

Comparing human and computer drivers, they share one thing. And are set apart by another.
Human drivers must assume the task, despite the fact that they are never sure – not even after reaching the destination – about the final consequences of what they’re doing. Just as the computer drivers. Only the computer drivers don’t care. ‘Cause they cannot care…

Then how come human drivers … ?!?
Human drivers, like their computer counterparts, have their ‘orders’. The direction of the journey, the rules they have to follow… and they are even shielded from some of the consequences.
How many of you would start a journey into a completely anarchic ‘unknown’, just for the fun of it? Into a real life completely anarchic unknown, not into a computer generated virtual reality experience pretending to give the impression…

For the fun of it, into a place you know nothing about but the fact that there’s no established rule you can count on…. and without any form, whatsoever, of insurance.

I encourage you to click the picture and to read the post. Highly illustrative for the points I was trying to make. Direction, protection and order… making possible the interaction.
My gratitude goes to Jess3152.

Evolution is not as much about the survival of the fittest
as it is about the demise of the unfit‘.
Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is

As an engineer, I’m more concerned about consequences than fascinated by explanation.
OK, explanation – as in understanding the process – is necessary when trying to improve things. To fine tune. To ‘increase efficiency’…
But ‘survival wise’… sometimes it’s enough to bring things back to square 1. To repair. Specifically when the thing which no longer works used to make wonders.

Passeist? Anti-progressive?!?
No, as I already mentioned, I’m just a ‘don’t fix it if it’s not broken’ engineer. And currently … IT is broken.

Democracy doesn’t work anymore. Not like it used to, anyway!
If we want to fix it, we don’t necessarily need to understand what happened. Only to return democracy back to where it was.
For that, we need to understand what democracy is, not what had happened to it.

Looking back, we notice that all authoritarian regimes had failed. Crumbled under their own weight, usually, and failed abysmally when attacked from outside. Usually, again.
While no democratic regime had ever failed as long as it had managed to conserve its democratic nature.

‘But the Pharaohs have run Ancient Egypt for three millennia, give or take. In a very authoritarian manner…. they were absolute monarchs, you know!’
Not so fast. During those three millennia, The Ancient Egypt had been run by 33 dynasties. By 33 different authoritarian regimes… When each of those dynasties were no longer able to run the country – when each regime fell under the weight of its own mistakes, with or without ‘outside’ contribution – another dynasty, the next one, took over. ‘Usually’ not in a nice manner…
Same goes for all other authoritarian regimes!

While under a democratic regime, whenever those at the helm of the government start behaving badly, or commit too many mistakes, they are changed in a peaceful manner.

So, basically, democracy is a social arrangement which is able to change itself. To adapt! To what happens inside or outside it.
While the authoritarian rulers do their best – or worse? – to conserve their own power/position at the helm, the democratic regimes contribute to the survival of the entire society.
For as long as they manage to conserve their true democratic nature. Their openness. Their ability to depose those who overcome their welcome at the helm of the government.

Până la urmă, copiii vin cu un nivel de inteligență și un nivel de creativitate normale, ca să spun așa. Este treaba profesorilor ca, pornind pe o normalitate, copiilor să le transferi acele competențe.
N-ai pe cine să pui responsabilitatea decât pe cadrele didactice.

Aici este loc pentru o discuție cât se poate de ‘generoasă’.

Despre distanța dintre cauze și responsabilitate…

Fenomenul alfabetismului disfuncțional are multe cauze.
Doar că nu putem aloca responsabilitate în altă parte decât pe umerii profesorilor.
Nota bene, pe casta profesorilor! Nu pe fiecare dintre profesori.

Și hai să mai facem o distincție. Între cei responsabili și cei care trag consecințele.
Noi, întreaga societate, tragem ponoasele unei educații deficitare. Suntem și responsabili pentru situația în care ne aflăm?

Da, din punct de vedere practic. Noi tragem ponoasele, noi trebuie să facem ceva pentru a remedia deficiențele.
Nu prea, din punct de vedere teoretic. Responsabilitatea implică cunoaștere. ‘Ar fi trebuit să știi.’ ‘Era treaba ta să știi, așa că ești responsabil pentru ce a ieșit!’

Fiecare dintre noi și societatea în ansamblu știm câte ceva. Fiecare dintre noi știe să-și facă meseria iar societatea în ansamblu știe – sau ar trebui să știe, ce ne învață mamele noastre în cei 7 ani de-acasă. Să nu furăm, să dăm bună-ziua, să fim conștiincioși! Societatea, în ansamblul ei, nu se pricepe la mare lucru. Ăsta fiind motivul pentru care există diviziunea socială a muncii…
Cei care ar trebui să știe care e treaba cu educația sunt… „cadrele didactice”. Corpul profesoral!

Ca societate, avem altceva de discutat. Cum am ajuns în situația asta? De ce dă greș funcția socială cunoscută sub numele de „educație”. Corpul profesoral este demotivat, deprofesionalizat sau ambele la un loc? De ce? De ce sunt atât de slabe rezultatele muncii lor? De ce acționează ca și cum ar fi lipsiti de responsabilitate?
Repet, toate considerațiile de mai sus se referă la întreaga categorie. Avem profesori dedicați, cu rezultate de excepție. Cu rezultate excepționale care asta sunt. Excepții… Per total, rezultatele obținute de sistem lasă mult de dorit!

Un foarte bun exemplu pentru deriva în care se află sistemul este chiar termenul folosit pentru a descrie fenomenul. „Analfabetism funcțional” este o calchiere din limba engleză. În nici un caz o traducere!
Conform logicii limbii române, un analfabet funcțional este o persoană care se descurcă, care FUNCȚIONEAZĂ, cu toate că nu știe să citească. Produsele sistemului românesc de educație știu să citească dar nu înțeleg ce citesc. NU funcționează! Suferă de alfabetism disfuncțional…

Nu putem administra un tratament eficient înainte de a formula un diagnostic corect!

Era să uit.
Tot ca societate, mai e o chestie care ar trebui să ne macine. La care avem nevoie să găsim răspuns…
Copiii noștri nu prea mai sunt interesați să învețe.
Vă las pe voi să puneți semnul. Ne întrebăm, ne mirăm, dăm vina tot pe profesori…

“Weaver pointed out that the word “information”
in communication theory is not related to what you do say, but to what you could say.
That is, information is a measure of one’s freedom of choice when one selects a message”

Space is where ‘evolution’ happens.
Where interaction shapes whatever is.

For space to exist, something must be there. Space needs ‘limits’. Which define it.
‘There’s a gap between these two bricks’.
‘This pile of bricks blocks the way’

‘Space’ is, simultaneously, a place, a concept and a word.
We, writing and reading about it, exist. Somewhere. Somewhere in ‘space’…
We’ve realized that. That we exist. Hence we came up with the concept.
We needed to share that knowledge. To discuss it. We needed the word!

A wise man, using tools crafted by his predecessors, has calculated that whatever exists in space shapes its form. The heavier the object, the deeper the dent.
Which depth of the dent influences the flow of time…

Time… the metric we use to measure ‘evolution’. The order and speed of happening…
Time… Another ‘thing’ which exists, simultaneously, as a ‘reality’, a concept and a word.

Einstein, the wise man with the calculus, did his thing trying to understand. To put together an explanation for everything.
Reading his findings, the results of his calculating, we can push our imagination.
How about switching time for space?

How about considering ‘time’ as being the place where events exist? Interact, producing the ‘space’ needed for that process?
Where the ‘weight’ of events, their ‘importance’, shapes the form of time. Which form of time influences the space ‘becoming’ as a consequence of those events existing/interacting in the place called time…

My point being …
You see, Einstein’s predecessors had developed what we call ‘mathematics’.
Our predecessors, also called ‘ancestors’, had developed a thing called language. Used it to communicate.
Among themselves, as individuals, and among themselves – as a cultural species – and the surrounding reality.
Language as the tool we use to digest and reshape the reality… Before we ‘do’ anything, we think about it. Using language to parse pertinent information stored in memory. Using language to consult with others. Using language to coordinate with others…

One of the languages we’ve developed is mathematics.
Einstein, using this language, reached a ‘conclusion’. Wrote a story. Others call it a theory.
Convincing enough for interested people to try. To try to prove it, to try to disprove it. To attempt to implement it into practice…

We exist.
In space, using whatever resources we can identify and building time as a consequence of our actions. We do this using language. To explore, think and coordinate.
That’s how we’re calling things. Space is where things happen and time is the ‘conclusion’ of whatever we do. Mathematics suggest that time and space are interchangeable.

So what?!?

Have we already solved all our immediate problems?

After all, we’re the only adults in the room. In the limited space called planet Earth.
Or, at least and for all that it might matter, we’re the only adults in the room who care. Who should care about our own fate…
Time’s running out, faster on the route we’re currently using!

The Ancient Greeks made the difference between Nomos and Phusis.
Phusis was Nature and Nomos was what they made of it. And as long as the story ‘held water’… that was it.

By figuring out that they were the link between Phusis and Nomos, the Ancient Greeks were capable of integrating the miraculous into their daily lives. As long as they kept believing ‘the story’…
For as long as ‘faith’ was doing its magic, things were OK.
They, individually speaking, didn’t feel the need for much additional explanation. They kept figuring out what they could and accepted the rest. As belonging to the ‘other’ half of the realm they were inhabiting. People and gods sharing the same (cultural) space….

Phusis was what there was and Nomos was the words they used to describe what they saw.
The words they used to make sense of what they were living. The words they used to spin ‘the story’ which kept them at ease with everything they couldn’t figure out.

Phusis and Nomos, together, was what made us possible. What we call ‘the Western Way of life’.

At some point, we’ve started to study physics.
Newton figured out gravity. Not why things fell down, only the rate at which they did it. 9.81 m/second squared at sea level.
Using far more advanced mathematical gimmicks, Einstein was able to calculate a lot more. But we still don’t know why mass tends to pull together. But we stopped worrying about it… now that we’ve been able to measure G. “Big G”, the gravitational constant, different from the “small g” measured by… Galileo Galilei. Forget it.
The point being that we still don’t know why mass tends to pull together, to coagulate, as opposed to attempting to dissipate. As gases do… as long as there’s enough heat available!

To cut the long story short, we’ve cut out the miraculous from what we consider to be normal. Acceptabil in nominal terms.
We attempt to measure everything. And to calculate what we cannot measure.

After all this time, we haven’t yet been able to accept our limits.
Which is good.
We keep pushing them.

Only sometimes we push them too hard.
We keep pushing those limits where they have given up previously. And we don’t always notice what’s really going on.

Trying to understand physics, we’ve learned to fly. Hot air balloons, fixed wing air-crafts, rotary wing air-crafts, Lunar landing modules, nuclear-tipped cruise missiles…
Trying to understand chemistry, we’ve learned to transform matter. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the materials we use, prescription drugs, life-saving vaccines, poison gasses….
Trying to understand biology, we’ve learned to influence evolution. Cross-bred plants and animals, decoded – and then coded back – genetic information…
Trying to understand economics, we’ve built the world as we currently have it. And put together the Efficient Market Hypothesis which keeps failing us…
Trying to understand consciousness we’re messing up everything. Fake-news, post-truth, “artificial intelligence”…

And we still don’t know why mass tends to coagulate, how life came up to be, how consciousness grew up on top of everything…

God blessed them and said to them:
“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.”
Genesis 1:28

Engineers are trained to think first. And ‘shoot’ only after they have figured out what was going on. What was going to happen as a consequence of their enacted decision…
Handymen, the hard working people who actually prevent the ‘wheels’ from halting screechingly, are trained – self trained, mostly – to repeat what has worked in the past.

Both engineers and handymen are convinced that they know better. That each of their Weltanschauungs are more appropriate.
Both are right.
The distance between them can be construed as (one of) the depths we need to fathom. If we wish to understand ‘reality’…

An engineer myself, MSc level, I had my midlife crises rather early. Went back to school. BA in Sociology. Trying to understand ‘decision making’. Figure out what reality really is…
How to make a wise decision if you don’t know what’s going on?!?

Almost 20 years later – and a few entries in my blog – I found out that I was not alone. That more than a century ago, another guy – a former mathematician, had already broken the ‘glass-ceiling’.
While ‘process philosophy‘ is as old as philosophy itself – traceable back to Heraclitus, Panta Rhei – it was Alfred N. Whitehead who had introduced enough epistemological order into the matter to make it a ‘real’ issue.

What’s the meaning of all this?
Why haven’t we changed tack since Whitehead gave us such a powerful heads-up?
Why most of us continue as ‘handymen’?!?

Process philosophy, as I understand it – with my engineering mind, is mostly about responsibility.
Marx’s was about ‘taking charge’. Shoot first, ask questions later – if ever, was how communism had been translated into reality. Like all other dictatorial processes…
Whitehead’s – if I read him correctly – is about understanding responsibility. Not about ‘merely’ assuming it but about accepting it. About accepting the fact that it will be us – or our children – at the receiving end of the processes we initiate.

‘Uncomfortable position’ is a very lame expression for feeling alone. When trying to decide ‘what next’…
‘Maybe we should just proceed as we used to?’

Each situation comes with possibilities.
Which of them happen, and in which order, determine the ‘future’.

As of now, AI – plain vanilla, generative and even agentic – is nothing but a tool.

A tool used by us to peruse what ever information it has access to. Information already ‘generated’ by us…
A tool used to organize, and present, said information according to algorithms. Algorithms learned from us…
A tool used to solve tasks we have set for it. According to our needs, whims and, above all, our ability to relate with the surrounding reality.

And now we’re scratching our collective head.
Wondering why the result isn’t that different from the one we get when using our own heads…

https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/18/generative_ai_zero_return_95_percent

https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/19/us_government_ai_procurement