Archives for category: teleology
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

And the truth of the matter is…

March 2, 2025 //
0

We don’t get what we deserve,
we get what we put up with.

How did we get here?

Then

What is Truth?
Pilate

Well, there are two kinds of truth.
The one you feel with your shin when you hit a coffee table.
And the one you feel in your heart when those present laugh at you hopping on one leg while caressing the hurt one.

Which two kinds of truth divide us, people, into two categories.
Those trying to patch ‘an ever-changing truth’ out of many individual pictures – each of them the consequence of a ‘shin’ happening to connect with a portion of the ‘outside world’. Which people are currently known as ‘scientists’.
And those trying to reach ‘the truth’. By thinking, by divination, by… God only knows what any other means… Philosophers, theologians, quacks…

I was trained as an engineer.
To notice needs and to design solutions while evaluating the possible consequences of those needs being met by the proposed solutions. Which places me squarely into the first category.

Tags , , , ,
Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, teleology

When Goal Trumps Values

February 25, 2025 //
0

“Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia acknowledged “constructive changes” in the U.S. position on the conflict. He told the council the resolution was “not an ideal one,” but “a starting point for future efforts towards peaceful settlement.””

By sending the Red Army to invade Ukraine, Putin had crossed a red line.
The rest of the world noticed.

Some played possum. ‘Let’s stay out of it. And maybe, maybe, get something for ourselves’.
The majority said “No! This is too much.”

Russia does have veto-power in the UN Security Council. Hence the dead-lock.

The Biden led US and the EU had chosen to support Ukraine. And to sanction the Putin regime.

Every day, people are being killed. Soldiers on the front and civilians under aerial bombardment.
Reasonable individuals want the fighting to stop.

Easier said than done.
Putin might say: ‘My bad!’ and tell his soldiers to go home.
Ukraine might agree, on its own volition, with enough of Putin’s demands. And, hopefully, get at least a respite.
Or those helping Ukraine might say: ‘We had enough. From now on, you’re on your own.’

Putin is not yet ready to back off. Ukraine is not yet ready to cave in.
‘Somebody’ is getting ready to act as a mediator.

What are the immediate consequences?

Putin is back. No longer an outcast!

Is the rest of the world ready?
For it to go back? Back to what was going on before WWI but on a far wider scale?

Tags , , , ,
Categories 1989, awareness, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, teleology

Superposition

January 19, 2025 //
1

Two things cannot exist
simultaneously
in the same place

Logic, ‘the correct way of thinking’, starts from the notion that no two things can exist, simultaneously, in the same ‘place’. Not even in our own head… Until they do, actually.

I’ll make a break here and tell you about Oscar Hoffman. A Romanian Teacher.
Who kept telling us, those who had the privilege to hear him teaching,
‘It’s not enough for a proposition to be valid from the logical point of view. It also has to make sense. Epistemologically speaking.’

The bottom part of the picture describes a stance which does make some epistemological sense and is seriously deficient when examined logically.
The top part is logically correct but also includes the meaning hidden in the bottom part.
Let me elaborate.

“100% irrefutable study that is proof and absolutely statistically significant.”
Absolute BS.
No scientific study has ever proved anything. Other than the facts examined confirm, or contradict, the hypothesis being tested during that study. Hence the hypothesis is allowed to stand, temporarily, as a theory or declared to be wrong.
A single study being claimed to be ‘absolutely statistically significant’ is so outrageous that it isn’t worth any comment.
“100% paid studies with an agenda and of little to no value or significance whatsoever”…
Nowadays 99.99% of the studies do involve money changing hands. Scientists have to eat and ‘money’ want to learn things. Hence ‘agendas’, on top of ‘money’.
‘Little to no value’ makes a lot less sense. If those studies yield results without any “value or significance whatsoever”, then why is any money involved and any time spent? To discuss about them, let alone to put them together….
To fit an agenda?
The scientists involved – all of them?!?, “100%” – are frauds and all those paying the hefty sums of money are suckers?
Then how can be explained the huge technological leap and the scientific breakthrough we currently witness?

‘Outlier’ versus ‘General trend’, is a far more ‘logically sound’. But also a lot more vague… The first proposition/picture, when examined with an open mind, does include everything claimed by the science deniers and the conspiracy speculationists. An outlier can be right, all change starts with one, and trends can be wrong. As all of them end up being…

So. What will it be?
Are we going to let ourselves be divided into warring camps?
Or understand ‘superposition’? Accept that having an agenda is not necessarily bad and that money is an excellent servant but a horrible master?
Or continue the current trend? Until we will have killed each-other along the line of divide et impera while repeating at nauseam ‘greed is good’?

Tags , , , ,
Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, In English, man as a measure for all things, Money, skin in the game, teleology

‘Murder, He Says’

January 16, 2025 //
0

“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 , , ,
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

“peut on rire de Dieu?”

November 22, 2024 //
0

“Dans tous les cas,
la seule « condition » est de le faire
dans les limites de ce que permet la loi”
Aurel, dessinateur de presse au Canard enchaîné

Would you poke fun at a volcano?
No? Because it doesn’t make any sense?
But would you poke fun at people who, 800 years ago, prayed to a ‘volcanic god’ asking for ‘mercy’?
Why? Only because (we currently know that) ‘it doesn’t work like that’?!?

OK, forget about the volcano.
Would you make fun of Shoah? Also known as the Holocaust.
No, because it’s illegal? Otherwise you would have mocked a tragedy?!?

It’s not illegal to fall down.
And impossible to ‘ignore’ gravity. Just as impossible as it is to ignore a volcano!
We laugh our eyes out when clowns pretend to fall.
Nobody laughs at a volcano.
Hence it is us who choose what is funny and what isn’t. Just as it is still us who choose whether to obey the law or not. We’re talking about the human laws here, not about the natural ones…

Which brings us closer to the gist of this post.

For the believers, God is everything. Both the entire world and their reference point. Without their God, the world loses its meaning. Without their God, the believers lose their bearings.
Making fun of God, of any god, is no different from making fun of a volcano.

‘You’re making absolutely no sense. No sense whatsoever.
A volcano is a real thing. Sometimes too real, even. While God, all gods, …
Nonsense. Absolute nonsense!’

Do you have faith in vaccines?
Why? Because they work? Because they save a lot of lives?
Despite vaccines being rather expensive and despite the fact that some guys have become obscenely rich as a consequence of people needing vaccines, and other medicines, in order to survive, right?
Have you ever made fun of vaccines? Of obscenely rich people, no matter how they got their money?

Do you understand how religion works?
How religion actually works… Psychologically, sociologically, etc.
No more than you understand vaccines?
Or you just consider religion to be a hoax while vaccines are a scientific fact?
Why? Because you have been told so by reputable people? By people in whom you have absolute trust?

So.
You trust doctors to the tune of allowing them to mess up with your immune system.
And you trust those thinkers who try to convince us not only that God doesn’t exist but also that religion is the “opiate of the masses“. “An ideological tool that legitimates and defends the interests of the dominant, wealthy classes in the population.” According to Marx, that was. Karl Marx. The guy advertising the advent of the communist happiness uber alles…

Let’s backpedal for a while.
You’re OK with vaccines and hate the fact that some people get way too much money for selling those vaccines. You’re OK with the idea of making fun of rich people but not of vaccines. Because vaccines save lives while obscenely rich people are… well… obscene!

Let’s get back to religion.
Making fun of vaccines doesn’t make sense. To you. To us, actually. Because they’re not funny. Because they are a scientific fact. And because they save lives.
Making fun of God also doesn’t make sense. For the believers. For those who truly believe in God.

For those who have a different understanding of the world than we do.

What would you think about people who dismiss vaccines?
The scientific concept of vaccination, not a specific vaccine.
You consider them…?
From your point of view, their reference point is way out of this world? That they have lost their bearings?
That they actually deny the reality? Your/our reality?

That’s exactly what also happens when people make fun of God. Of any god.
Those who believe in God – in the particular god which is the target of the joke but also in all other gods – feel queasy. ‘Sea-sick’. Their world and their bearings are being put into jeopardy. Which puts them into a very difficult position.
There are only two ways out of their conundrum.
To consider the jester as being clueless. As having no idea.
Or to consider the jester as an ‘agent provocateur’. To consider the whole thing as being an insult.

You have a concern and you want to express it? As the law allows you to do?
How about doing it in a considerate manner?
In an efficient manner! In such a way as to get through…
Insulting people, or being considered clueless, doesn’t help if you want to be heard by the other side.
If you want the other side to listen, carefully, to what you need to say.

Tags , ,
Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, teleology, Trust

Choices

November 19, 2024 //
0

A marginal benefit is the additional benefit received by a consumer, producer, or society
due to the consumption or production of an additional unit of a product.

When do you stop cleaning something? How do you determine it is clean enough?

When do you stop cleaning the living room? When there’s no more visible dirt, right?
When do you stop cleaning an operating room? You follow the procedure and you check using the appropriate methods and apparati, right?
When do you stop cleaning the operating room where your child will have their life-saving surgery? I’m afraid the surgeon will have to drive you out of the room. You’ll never declare it clean enough….

My point being that we’re rational only as far as there’s nothing personal involved in the choice we have to make.

And as soon as we’re personally invested in the whole thing, we suddenly start to rationalize.
To find rational arguments which favor the position we’ve already adopted. The decision we’ve already made.

My child deserves the best!

Which is true, of course. For as long as we really know what’s good for them…

What capitalism has to do with any of this?!?

Well, most of the ‘hoarders’ rationalize their habit by ‘blaming it’ on their children.
“I have to take care of their future”.
In their attempt to control the future, the hoarders convince themselves that amassing capital will shield them, and their children, from insecurity.

Which is partially true. If the hoarded capital is sustainable…

“I am 82 years old, I have 4 children, 11 grandchildren, 2 great-grandchildren and a room of 12 square meters.
I no longer have a home or expensive things, but I have someone who will clean my room, prepare food and change my bedding, measure my blood pressure and weigh me.
I no longer have the laughter of my grandchildren, I don’t see them growing, hugging and arguing. Some come to me every 15 days, some every three or four months, and some never.
I don’t bake cakes, I don’t dig up the garden. I still have hobbies and I like to read, but my eyes quickly hurt.
I don’t know how much longer, but I have to get used to this loneliness.”
“Author unknown”

Every time I read something like this over the internet – more and more often – I remember that it was us.
We have raised our children into what they are today.

We have amassed vast amounts of financial capital – fiat money – believing that our children will be grateful.
We had not been there when they were growing up. We had not been there when they were learning things.
And now we are the ones who don’t understand why there are no more bonds between us. Between us and our children. Why our children see the world differently from how we do it…

Is it to late?

Tags , , ,
Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, teleology, Trust

Setting things right

November 17, 2024 //
0

Or should I say “straight”?!?
After all, not everything that comes from the right is ‘right’.
Not everything that comes from the left is ‘wrong’. Or good…
And even ‘straight’ has always been complicated but nobody seemed to care!

Neither ignorance or education can do anything.
On their own. Education is a process and ignorance a mere situation.

It’s what the educated choose to do with their knowledge that makes the difference!

The key words in the statements above are “I always believed” and “It seems”.

It’s not ignorance that’s going to willingly destroy anything and it was the educated which had always ‘produced’. Moved things towards carefully chosen goals. ‘Rationally’ chosen goals, according to the latest fad.
Everything there is is the consequence of something initiated by educated people. The good, the bad and even the very ugly!

‘Another biased and inconsiderate post.
You completely dis-consider the ignorant. Assuming they are impotent and inconsequential.’

I’m afraid somebody else is assuming things.
First of all, there are no ignorant. Only the actual idiots are ignorant and they cannot do much. We, all the rest, start learning from the first minute of our life. Each according to how lucky we are.
Secondly, even the highest educated ignore most of the existing knowledge. But that doesn’t make them ignorant. The most important thing a person must learn before calling itself ‘educated’ is that nobody, that person included, will ever know enough.
Thirdly, all action is initiated from a piece of information. One starts to look for food after realizing they are hungry. After transforming a feeling into a resolution and making a plan to fulfill that resolution. A reaction – like pulling back your hand from a hot stove – doesn’t need much thinking indeed. But that’s only a reaction. Not at all a carefully, supposedly rationally, chosen goal.

Tags , , ,
Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, teleology, Trust

Trust, fear, respect

November 13, 2024 //
0

He was my friend. We trusted each-other.

He was huge. 150 pounds of muscle. Pitch black.
Some people feared him. Specially when seeing him for the first time.

He had earned the respect of many. Canine friends in the park. People who had come in contact with him.

Respect is a tricky thing.

Fear is simple. Not that different from love. Somewhat contrary…
Trust is simplish. After enough time spent together, you learn whether you can trust the other.
Respect, on the other hand….

You cannot respect something/somebody which/whom you find repulsive.

You can ‘trust’ a bully to make your life miserable but you cannot respect them.

Do you fear a bully?
Not necessarily. You don’t need fear to avoid a danger. You only need to understand what’s going on.

Then what is ‘respect’?
Something you learn about. While trust is something you learn to.
Trust is something to be rather felt while respect is something you experience with your mind. First and foremost.

Furthermore, nobody fakes trust. Unless presented as ‘respect’.

Why have I chosen an animal to illustrate this post?
Because ‘fear’ is what drives awareness. Fuels conscience. And, as far as evidence suggests, it is widely felt in the animal kingdom.
Our family. Our only home in this world!

Tags , ,
Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, effective communication, In English, Mutual Respect, teleology, Trust

Consequences

October 7, 2024 //
0

“And what’s in it for us, ordinary people?”
My 90 years old father, commenting the news just running on TV

Nothing but what we can make of it.

The Earth was circling the Sun since the very beginning. Way before Bruno ‘discovered’ the phenomenon. Again…
The egg was sending ‘chemical signals’ since … who knows when. We, all of us, have been born without any knowledge on this matter.

Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake.
He wasn’t the only one to face the consequences of his discovery. The lives of everybody else have been changed by his discovery. And the way we understand the world!
Sooner or later, somebody will find a way to use the information about ‘how the egg works’. To make some money out of it, to help people… or even to make an ‘ideological point’. “Yet another male dominated fantasy about the creation of life…”

So, Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake as a consequence of his discovery?!?

Nope!
Bruno was burnt at the stake as a consequence of what we, the people, have made of his work.
Well, not exactly us but our ancestors. And not exactly we, the ordinary people, as the ‘bright minds of the day’. They had to be bright since ‘they’ were the ones running the show, right?!?

OK, so ‘those who know how to weave a story are those who order around those who know the facts’.
According to Yuval Noah Harari.
And, again, what’s in it for us?

Nothing but what we can make of it.

For as long as we’ll continue to chase power, ‘political power’, things will continue as they were.
As we’ve conditioned ourselves to expect them to be.

But, hopefully, when the next Giordano Bruno will tell us things can be spun the other way around, we’ll know better than to burn him at the stake. Alive. Again!

Power can be exercised in many ways!
The more sustainable of which being in favor of the general public.
‘For the long term benefit of the self aware social organism’ instead of ‘for how the public has been led to believe by the spin doctors’.

When will we be able to figure this out?
When those who know how things work will spill the beans out-front instead of choosing whose arse to lick.
After all, the egg encourages the most suitable sperm, not the most enchanting one…

Tags , , ,
Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, teleology

Apocalypse

October 3, 2024 //
0

1. Revelation
2. Widespread destruction or disaster

Unsettled.

Not in the sense that I feel unsettled in my ‘beliefs’.

In the sense that the world is coming apart. We allow ourselves to be led further and further away from our brethren and, together, from the ‘hard’ reality.

The key concept here is ‘rabbit holes’, not ‘conspiracy theories’.

Each of those theories are nothing but a highly redacted version of the truth, draped in psychological gimmicks. Dangerous but survivable.

It’s the fact that once hooked, those so disposed become unable to see/perceive/accept that no truth is complete or ‘everlasting’. That we need to adapt our beliefs to the ever-changing reality.

On the other hand, it was us who have built this world. The one we currently inhabit.
We have inherited the world and fine-tuned it according to our own wishes. To fit our own desires.

We are also the ones who have to sleep in the bed of our own making.
We are the ones to continue the project.
Or take it apart…

We have arrived at the moment of reckoning.
Like each and every other generation before us.

After all, one cannot build something new before taking apart the old.
This is the only constant truth.

It hurts me to accept that I have been wrong. That my understanding was incomplete or inaccurate.
Yet I have to acknowledge that before starting to build a new, hopefully better, version of the truth.
And I cannot do this alone.

Going forward, I can ‘circle the wagons’, along other like minded people, and attempt to defend the old truth.
Or I can, accompanied by a ‘motley crew’, attempt to see behind the curtains.

To leave behind the ‘safety’ of the rabbit holes and see with our own, very diverse, eyes what lies behind the make-belief shrouds woven by the conspiracy theorists.

Tags , , ,
Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, evolution, In English, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, teleology
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »