Archives for category: teleology

No, Putin’s henchmen executing a nuclear attack isn’t the worst case scenario.

This is.

People around the world asking themselves ‘how is it possible for an army belonging to a civilized country – one currently holding the right to veto any UN Security Council decision, might behave in such a horrible manner’?!?
How is it possible for a civilized people, the Russian people, to allow something like this to happen?

After the Cold War had been lost by the Soviet Union, the world over was under the impression that the liberal-democratic and capitalist model had ‘won’. That nobody could any longer advocate for an alternative.
Nine years later, Russia was on the verge of collapse. After following – ineptly, the capitalist mantra – greed is good, the Russian people was almost dying of hunger. That’s how the Russians had fallen under Putin’s spell. He had turned around the Russian economy and earned the gratitude of the ordinary Russian people.

  • But he had done nothing but reigning in Yeltsin’s oligarchs… and got filthy rich in the process!

Yes, but the ordinary Russians had enjoyed, for some 15 years, a life they had never thought possible. A life of relative abundance.
At a relatively low cost. At a cost they were already accustomed with.

The Russian people has been been accustomed, since always, to keep its mouth shut.
That’s so deeply ingrained into their minds that most of them never even dream of speaking up….

  • OK, OK… but what is the link between your ‘worst case scenario’ and the Russian people being unable to ‘speak up’?!?

Putin is able to do what he is currently doing because nobody is challenging his decisions.
Nobody inside Russia…

Because nobody inside Russia is challenging his decisions – and a ‘handful’ of ‘dimwits’ actually executes those decisions, the rest of the world is under the impression that the Russian people is OK with what’s going on in Ukraine.

  • And who are you to tell us that ‘regular Ivan’ would challenge Putin’s decisions if he had any opportunity?!?

I didn’t say that!
If you are under that impression, I’m afraid I haven’t made my point yet.

You see, what we really need to do is to ‘fold’ the Russian people into our ‘Weltanschauung’.
To welcome them into our social and cultural space.

The current war will end. One way or another.
Putin will die. Sooner or later.
But until the Russian people will learn that with us is far better that against us… we – all of us, will live on a ‘tight-rope’.

My impression, watching the horrors committed by the Russian army, is that those horrors have been ordered by Putin for one reason. And one reason only.

To convince us, the rest of the world, that the Russian people is nothing but a bunch of savages.
That they deserve no compassion.

That their leader – Putin, must be offered an easy way out – at the expense of the Ukrainians, and that the Russian people must be left to rot at his disposal.
That the Russian people deserves nothing. Nothing but to be left at the mercy of their ruthless and mind-twisting sheep-master.

That is the worst case scenario.
Us accepting that another people, any people, is worthless.

Putin’s followers – Le Pen and Orban being but the most obvious examples, are eagerly waiting for that to happen.

Dacă aș crede în Dumnezeu, Rusia lui Putin ar fi pentru mine Diavolul.
Dar nu cred. Așa că spuneți dumneavoastră cum pot fi numiți acei români care vor continua să fie putiniști, neutraliști și relativiști în fața Iadului adus în lume de ruși?

De fiecare dată când cineva spune „iadul adus pe lume de ruși” putiniștii își freacă mâinile.

Iadul a fost adus pe lume, iadul despre care vorbim acum, de către Putin. Ajutat de câteva mâini la fel de criminale ca ale lui și de către o mare masă de ‘nedumeriți’ care, practic, (încă) nu-și dau seama ce li se întâmplă.

Atunci când spunem „iadul a fost adus pe lume de ruși”, adică de toți rușii, îi băgăm pe toți în aceiași oală. În aceiași oală ‘criminală’.

Adică îi facem jocul lui Putin!

Ce își doresc dictatorii? Toți dictatorii?

Ca ‘supușii’ lor să stea ‘strâns uniți în jurul „Marelui Conducător”’?

Ce ne dorim noi, cei care vrem să scăpăm de alde Putin?

Ca ‘supușii’ să vadă, odată, cât de ‘gol’ este împăratul lor?

Și cum să facă supușii acest lucru? Cum să vadă cât de gol este împăratul dacă noi, cu pana noastră, îi împingem, strâns, cu spatele la respectivul împărat?!?

Dacă, prin cuvintele noastre, validăm minciunile împărătești?
El, Putin, le spune rușilor că fără el, fără protecția lui, sunt pierduți.
Iar noi, care abia așteptăm să scăpăm de Putin – adică abia așteptăm ca rușii să ne scape de Putin, spunem că ‘rușii aduc iadul pe pământ’…

Mai întâi trebuie să facem noi diferența între criminali și nedumeriți.

Abia după aceea putem să pretindem nedumeriților să vadă goliciunea lui Putin.

Și, ca să răspund la întrebare, românii care continuă să fie putiniști după toate cele întâmplate sunt, și ei, de două feluri. Criminali – plătiți sau, efectiv, ‘duși cu pluta’, și ‘nedumeriți’.
Și aici trebuie să învățăm – tot noi, cei care ne pretindem democrați deschiși la minte, cum să-i deosebim.
Altfel nu vom reuși niciodată să-i ajutăm pe nedumeriți să deschidă ochii.

Tratându-i pe toți la fel, ca pe niște „vite”, îi vom ajuta pe criminali să mâne întreaga ‘cireadă’ – inclusiv pe noi, la abator!

Putin advisers ‘too afraid to tell him the truth’ on Ukraine: US official
“Putin didn’t even know his military was using and losing conscripts in Ukraine, showing a clear breakdown in the flow of accurate information to the Russian president,” the official said.

There are two ‘things’ which collide here.

Dictators tend to drive away really competent people and those remaining tend to put the entire blame on the ‘guy on top’.

As many of you already know, I grew up in the communist Romania. Ruled by Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator who ended up being shot on Christmas Day, 1989.

At 28, I was already familiar with the notion of ‘yes-people’. Decision makers who ruled our daily lives were surrounded by people who provided the ‘right’ answers, effectively isolating the decision makers from the reality.
This ‘development’ being the fundamental explanation for how all dictatorial regimes, including the communist ones, ended up in abject failure. For ‘how’, not for ‘why’ – but this is another issue.

After Ceausescu was toppled, I was absolutely flabbergasted when I first heard

‘He didn’t know what was going on. Had his close advisers kept him in touch with the real situation, he would have taken the proper decisions to rectify things’

Really?!?

Who had selected his ‘close advisers’?!?

Who prevented him from asking ‘a second opinion’? From stepping out of his office and ….

Who, step by step, had ‘created’ the ‘atmosphere’ which had driven all those unwilling to lick where ‘he’ had spat to flee, living ‘him’ surrounded by sycophants?

Sycophants attempting, after Ceausescu had been toppled, to pile all the blame on his shoulders…

I’m afraid we are witnessing a replay, with Putin as the lead character.

I grew up in a communist country, Romania.

Russian films were ‘readily’ available.
Some of them were good. Really good.

Besides going to the movies, I was an avid reader.
I must confess that the ‘great Russian classics’ didn’t impress me. No special reason.
But I did read a lot of Russian literature. About the partizans fighting the Nazis during WWII, about the communists fighting for freedom – for their version of freedom, in the early ‘920-ies, some Sci-Fi novels about the happy lives the Russians were going to live in the next millennium.

This morning I was listening to the radio.
The news bulletin was, of course, about what’s going on in Ukraine.

A refugee, a woman who had fled accompanied by her young daughter – her husband and her son remained at home to fight, was speaking in her native language.
I know that Ukrainian is different from Russian. But for my ears they sound very much the same.

Imagine what I felt.

I grew up associating the Russian language with the struggle for freedom. With the promise of a better world.

As I learned things… my understanding of history had become more ‘nuanced’.
The Soviet Union had collapsed after Afghanistan. The regime finally got what was coming to it.
As Putin crushed Chechnya, killed Litvinenko, ‘peacefully’ occupied Crimea … things were no longer ‘nuanced’…

But this!

They say that an image is worth a thousand words… I’m no longer sure about that!

There is so much violence paraded in front of our yes that our ‘retina’ has become calloused.

Hearing that brave woman trying to convey her tragedy in a language I associated in my childhood with the promise of liberty really did it for me.

This time the oppressor itself was speaking Russian.
Russian soldiers were doing the very same thing the Russian people had experienced during the WWII. And they were doing it to their ‘brothers’.

Russian soldiers were turning Kyiv into rubble!
Kyiv, the birth place of the Rus-ian people…

All this conveyed in a language which, for me, sounds very much the same as the language I had associated in my childhood with the quest for freedom.

I wept.

Hoping the Kremlin will learn to understand tears.
Maybe not the present ruler but at least the stony walls…

Circa 840, “three noble brothers” of Viking origin – Rurik, Sineus and Truvor, established “what came to be called Kievan Rus”.

“Rus,” which is where the name “Russia” comes from, purportedly derives from an old Nordic word for “men who row.”

882. Oleg the Prophet captures Kyiv and moves the capital of the Viking kingdom from Novgorod to Kyiv.
Thus the Rus becomes Kievan.

1703. Peter the Great of Rus-sia established Sank Petersburg as a bulwark against the Swedish Kingdom.
The city served as Russia’s capital from 1712 to 1918

1941. Hitler breaks the German Soviet Non Aggression Pact and starts a war against the Soviet Union.
Leningrad – the city formerly known as Sankt Petersburg, had been put under siege from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944

2022. February 24. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the present day ruler of Rus-sia, in complete defiance of the Budapest Memorandum, started a “special military operation” meant to achieve the “demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine,”

Kyiv hasn’t been besieged yet but has already been under heavy bombardment.

I’m Romanian.
Romanians don’t have very fond memories of what had happened to their country whenever the Russian soldiers had come by to ‘visit’.
As a teenager I read The 900 Days The Siege of Leningrad, 1968, by Harrison Salisbury

And wept.

Now, an already old man, I check out, on the Internet, what’s going out in Kyiv – the former capital of the Kievan Rus.

And weep.

Homo homini lupus has become a massive understatement.

My late mother used to quote a co-worker:

After you get used to it, being hanged becomes bearable.

Let me give you some context.

I live in Romania. You know, that country which shot its dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, on the Christmas Day 1989.

I was drafted to the army in October 1980. When I left home, you could still find food to buy. Soap, chocolate, washing powder, toilet paper… you name it. Nothing fancy but life was ‘normal’.
Nine months later, in July 1981, food was already scarce.

In 1985, things were already bad. You had to queue up for anything you needed. For all of the above mentioned items.

By 1988, things had become even worse. On top of what I had already mentioned, rolling blackouts were common. Those of us who lived in apartments connected to central heating were ‘enjoying’ running hot water for only a few hours a day/a few days a week. And shivered during the entire winter.

I’m telling you all these because in December 1989 most of us were hugely surprised when communism had fallen. With a bang.

We’d become so accustomed with what was happening to us that we were convinced our lives were ‘normal’.

Compare that to what you see below.
Oh, I forgot to tell you that we had only 1 (one) TV channel. Which was on for 2 hours each working day from Monday to Saturday and 12 hours on Sunday. And 80% of what was churned out was pure propaganda.

This is a stub.

Basically, this post will reinterpret the arguments used in the previous one.

This is a stub.

‘This time is different’. https://www.economist.com/media/pdf/this-time-is-different-reinhart-e.pdf

History teaches us that each and every empire has collapsed. Usually under it’s own weight. Pareto has given us a valid explanation – each structure which doesn’t have to ‘refresh’ itself tends to become clogged with self serving individuals, near-sighted enough to ‘forget’ that none of them (none of us, actually) is able to survive ‘outside’. Yet each ’emperor’ allows themselves to believe that this time is different. I’m better than all my predecessors. And their followers allow this to happen, just as Pareto had taught us.

‘They is a rational operator hence they must have a reasonable objective’.
That’s how people raised/educated in a reasonable environment think/interpret the actions of other people.
This being the reason for democratically groomed leaders having such a hard time when they need to understand how dictators operate. This being the reason for democratically groomed political operators having such a hard time when it comes to identify skillful would be dictators.

https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/russias-road-to-autocracy/

Let us imagine, for a moment – or longer, than among the already innumerable objects circling the Earth is yet another surveillance satellite.
One operated by aliens…

What would they think of the current developments?

One of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the topmost watchdog pretending to guard the ‘normalcy’ on Earth, brazenly attacks its neighbor.
Both the aggressor and the victim are members of the organization watched over by the Security Council.
But the aggressor has veto power over the Council.
And, of course, uses that power whenever it sees fit.
Another of the “five permanent members” of the Council chooses to abstain from voting. When the Council is discussing the aggression perpetrated by one of the permanent members of the Council against another fully recognized member of the ‘international community’.

Would the alien observers be laughing their heads off?
Would they keep us isolated from the rest of the Universe? Lest we spread our suicidal behavior ‘among the stars’…?
Both at the same time?!?

‘Guided missiles and misguided people‘….

Chapter 1. Explaining prediction.

I’ve trained to be an engineer. And practiced being one.
Then I felt the need to understand. And studied sociology.
That’s how I learned, the hard way, the difference between ‘hard’ science and ‘soft’ science.
Between ‘bona fide’ science and ‘bogus’ science…

Those of us still convinced that soft science is bogus have yet to grasp the whole meaning of ‘science’.
A collection of ‘special’ data, a ‘special’ method of gathering data and a ‘special’ state of mind.

We all know what ‘scientific data’ and ‘scientific method’ mean.
But there is almost no talk about ‘scientific state of mind’.
Most people consider that ‘scientific thinking’ is solelly about applying the scientific method when dealing with the ‘reality’. With what happens ‘outside’ of us.
Outside of our individual consciences…

Historically, science – the concept of science, had sprung up in the minds of people concerned primarily with physics and chemistry.
Hence the subsidiary concept of ‘consistency’.
Data can be considered to be scientific only if it had been gathered in a ‘consistent’ manner.
If by applying the same method, in the same circumstances, the end results will be the same – regardless of who had happened to be at the helm of the experiment.
And a method can be considered to be scientific only if it produces the same data whenever it is applyed, in the same circumstances, by no matter whom.

I’m sure that, by now, at least some of you have figured out what I’m driving at.
The main difference between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ science is, of course, related to the relative inconsistency of the data yielded by the ‘soft’ sciences. This being the reason for which some people cannot even accept the ‘scientific’ nature of the soft sciences…

Hence the need to discuss about the ‘scientific’ ‘state of mind’…
Let me start by pointing out the fact that we, people, are rationalizers.
We pretend to be rational, true, but in reality we are nothing but very astute rationalizers.
So astute that we are not even aware of the fact.
We are so convinced of our rational nature that we are fooling ourselves.

Please read about this subject by hitting the link below if you are not familiar with the concept of rationalization before proceeding.
https://cushmanlab.fas.harvard.edu/docs/rationalization_is_rational.pdf

Accepting that we are deep enough into rationalization that we need to pay special attention when trying to be objective is the first step towards attaining a scientific state of mind.
The second, and just as important, step being the respect we need to extend towards our peers. Towards our fellow experimenters.

Changing tack – and approaching ‘scientific state of mind’ from another angle, I might try to describe it as a ‘work in progress’.
A never ending attempt at self improvement made by someone fully aware of the fact that they’ll never get there. Yet still striving towards that goal.
A never ending attempt made by somebody who knows they’ll never get ‘there’ yet they continue to encourage others to go further and further up that road.
A never ending attempt made by people who know they’ll never get there yet they respectfully help each-other towards their common goal.

And now, that I’ve done my best to explain what I mean by ‘scientific state of mind’ let me delve in the main subject.
The real difference between soft and hard science.

By their very nature, hard sciences are defined by the fact that an explanation constitutes a very good prediction.
If you are capable of explaining the Earth rotation around the Sun you are also able to compute where the Earth will be 10 seconds from now. As well as ten centuries from now…
If you are capable of explaining radio-activity you are also able to build an atomic bomb.
By understanding how DNA works we have been able to come up with a mRNA vaccine against the SarsCOV-2 virus.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/mrna.html

The problem with soft sciences being that in their case, explanations – no matter how precise, cannot predict much.
We know why a maniac behaves like one – because …, but we don’t know what a maniac will actually do. Nor when…
We know that a free market works better than a monopoly but we cannot agree upon how free a market should be. Nor can we agree upon what a ‘free market’ really looks like…
We know what will eventually happen to an empire – it will fall, because of ‘negative selection’, but we never know exactly when and how that will happen… nor what will occur between the establishment of the empire and its eventual demise.

Savvy?