Archives for category: Trust
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Unfolding evolution

December 26, 2021 //
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According to Charles Darwin, natural evolution is the process which has brought us, animal beings, to where we are now. Each to its own place.

According to some, evolution is about ‘the survival of the fittest’.
According to Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is, evolution is about ‘the demise of the unfit’.

It’s up to us to ‘choose sides’.
For no other reason than the fact that Darwin’s evolution was driven by ‘accidental’ changes in the environment. The species which happened to live ‘under the weather’ had to adapt to those changes. Or to ‘exit stage right’!
While nowadays we have to make do with consequences resulting from our own decisions…

“Dr. Jack Lyons remembers the pandemic’s early days when grateful communities banged pots and pans to honor frontline health care workers.
But now, faced with hostility just for trying to save his patients’ lives, he says that, sadly, those days are long gone.”

“Now health care workers fighting on the front lines of the pandemic are also coming face to face with patients who dismiss and even threaten them over how they are being treated for the virus.
“Folks act as if they can come in the hospital and request any certain therapy they want or conversely decline any therapy they want with the idea being that somehow they can pick and choose and direct their therapy. And it doesn’t work,” Lyons told CNN from the CentraCare hospital he works at in St. Cloud, Minnesota.””

“They insult your intelligence, they insult your ability, and most hurtful, they say that by not using these therapies you are intentionally trying to harm the people we’ve given everything to save,” Lyons said.”
“About 70% of the patients in Lyons’ ICU are sick with Covid-19, and almost all of them are unvaccinated.”

Evolution happening under our own eyes. The ‘pot and pan bangers’ got jabbed and no longer have to go to the ICU. Not with Covid, anyway.

Hence the likes of Dr. Lynch are left with the Covid deniers… who already know the ‘right’ treatment…

Deflated health care workers and desperate patients clash over alternative Covid treatments
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/24/us/doctors-patients-threats-coronavirus-treatments/index.html

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Categories awareness, biology, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, Trust

‘Social temperature’

November 23, 2021 //
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In physics, ‘temperature’ measures the intensity of the interaction between the elements which ‘inhabit’ a certain place.
The more energy exists in a certain place, the more intense the interaction. If the place is inhabited by a gas, each molecule is able to ‘travel’ a short distance before actually hitting one, or more, of its neighbors. If the place is occupied by a liquid, the molecules glide against each-other and if we speak about a solid, the components just shimmy together.
The more energy exists inside a place – the higher the temperature, the more intense the interaction between the individual components. And if, for whatever reason, ‘too much’ energy accumulates into a given space the interaction becomes intense enough for ‘change’ to happen. As temperature raises, solids melt, liquids boil and evaporate while gases become plasma.

Adding energy isn’t enough to determine change. Temperature might rise without anything noticeable to happen. Specially when we speak about liquids and solids. If enough outside pressure is applied, the liquid cannot start to boil and the solid stays in place.

Same thing when it comes to a society.
High output societies need a very intense social interaction to make things happen.
To make so many things happen at once… that being the reason for which those societies need to be democratic. Autocracies are too rigid, they cannot accommodate the continuous adjustments needed to ‘absorb’ the huge amount of ‘social change’ warranted by the amount of energy ebbing through the system.

One way to measure ‘social temperature’ – other than the ‘output’ of that society, is to gouge how vulnerable a society is when confronted with a highly infectious disease which is transmitted through direct contact. Cholera will sweep through an entire community which drinks from the same well, regardless of how much contact individual people have with each-other. Covid, and Ebola, need people to ‘touch’ each-other in order to jump from one to another.

But don’t forget to factor in ‘pressure’. And other things specific to each individual ‘place’.
Otherwise the analysis might produce less relevant results.

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Categories 1989, autoritarism, awareness, biology, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, complementary ways of attending knowlege, democracy, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, Psychology, re-definitions, skin in the game, teleology, Trust

Eureka!

November 12, 2021 //
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For sometime now, I was having a very hard time trying to understand what’s going on.

Seemingly intelligent people keep sending messages demonstrating the exact contrary.
On ‘social media’!

So.
Communism is good and life saving masks and vaccines are bad…
Communism is good because some of the capitalists have been bad and life saving measures are bad because they are forcefully imposed!

Communism – which has failed each and every time when and where it had been attempted, is better than capitalism. Because some of today’s capitalists refuse to pay their taxes. The fact that people living in the ex-communist countries still struggle with the consequences of the systemic errors inherent to the communist ‘order’ isn’t relevant anymore. The selfishness of the tax-dodgers ‘trumps’ everything else. Pun intended!

Life saving measures are bad for the single reason that they are forcefully imposed by a majority which wants to live upon a minority which considers liberty to be more valuable than life. I’m not going to argue that you cannot enjoy liberty while being dead. That would be idiotic. I’m only going to ask

Liberty from WHAT?!?

From WHOM?!?

Who’s the oppressor? What do they force us to do? Live?!?

Or wear a mask, get jabbed and pay taxes?
As in ‘do something back for the community which supports you’?
Contribute to the community where you had been born, raised and which makes your current life possible…

The eureka moment had come when

I realized that ‘it takes two to tango’.

Marx wouldn’t have had any traction without the ‘exaggerations’ of the early ‘robber barons’.
Lenin wouldn’t have been able to steer the Russian Revolution so far left without the ‘benefit’ of the former, Tsarist, rulers having behaved in an absolutely idiotic manner.
Hitler, and Mussolini, wouldn’t have been able to steer their countries so far right without the errors committed by the previous ‘administrations’.
The current American political scene would have been completely different had the political actors behaved in a more reasonable manner. Both sides of the political spectrum…

We’re currently at war. Undeclared and mostly not understood.
Let me use a WWII example to make things clearer.

Much of the equipment used by Hitler’s army to attack the USSR had been built outside Germany. Following German designs and according to technological processes developed in Germany but using foreign workers laboring in foreign manufacturing facilities and processing raw materials sourced from outside the Third Reich. France’s Renault, Citroen, Peugeot, Berliet and the Czech Skoda are but a few examples.
Yet despite the fact that the nazis had forced almost the entire Europe to work for them, the Allies have eventually prevailed.
Simply because the Allies had pulled together! And that they had been helped by the Resistance. Which Resistance had been encouraged and helped by the Allies themselves.

The current aggressor, SarsCov-2, uses the very same tactics. It invades an organism, takes over and forces its victim to work for it. To build fresh virus armies. Which armies are then sent out to conquer more organisms.
More Human People, that is.

And what do we do? The potential victims? The ‘logical’ allies?

Do we stick together? Do we have each-other’s backs, like all truthful allies?
Do we make good use of whatever weapons each of us can use? Masks, vaccines, social distancing…?

Like the allies had done during WWII?

You see, WWII, like all other wars, have not been won, or lost, by soldiers alone.
War is a country wide effort. To win, a country must mobilize all its energies.
The “Home Front” is not an empty phrase. Not at all!

Do you see that happening in the current war?

Or too many of us have let the health-workers to fight OUR war of survival on their own?
On our behalf…

ICU nurse sleeping in a box while all the beds and the chairs in the hospital (St. Pantelimon Emergency Hospital, Bucharest, Romania) were occupied.
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Categories 1989, awareness, biology, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, Politically induced fragility, Psychology, Trust

Trust

November 9, 2021 //
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For knowledge to become actionable, it has to be trusted.
It has to be believed as being true!

In order to cooperate with somebody, you need to trust that person.

But trusting a person is far more complicated than believing that a piece of information is true!

Evaluating a piece of knowledge is a uni-dimensional business. That piece of knowledge either corresponds with (what is considered to be) reality – it is ‘true’, or it doesn’t. Hence it is false.
And it’s only after you have satisfied yourself about an information being true that you may start to ‘own’ it. To act upon it.

When it comes to trusting a person, you are confronted with a bi-dimensional endeavor. Which makes it a real problem.
In order to be able to cooperate with somebody, you need to be satisfied on two accounts.
That that person is qualified enough for the business at hand AND that that person ‘means well’.

Not that simple, is it?

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Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, democracy, effective communication, evolution, In English, Intent, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, re-definitions, skin in the game, teleology, Trust

Practical observation

October 28, 2021 //
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The amount of fake-news targeted at someone is the best indicator for how many skeletons that person had already unveiled.
For how many skeletons that person had dug out from closets belonging to people who were accustomed with being ‘left to their own devices’.
Closets belonging to people who considered themself as being ‘above the fray’…

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Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, democracy, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, Trust

Mi-e frică

October 18, 2021 //
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Mult mai frică decât mi-a fost la începutul pandemiei.

Atunci a fost vorba despre un simplu virus. Omenirea a mai făcut față unor chestii de genul ăsta.
Niște carantină, la un moment dat un vaccin, mai devreme sau mai târziu urma să revenim la un nou normal.

Toate astea au venit. Fiecare la timpul lor.
Mai întâi carantina și masca au temperat intensitatea pandemiei, apoi a venit speranța dată de vaccin.
Distanțarea socială produsă de concediile de peste vară a făcut minuni. Ajutată și de vaccin.

După care au venit lecțiile grele!

Am aflat că unii dintre noi nu vor să se vaccineze pentru că, pur și simplu, nu le pasă de cei din jurul lor.
Că nu vor să-și pună „botniță”. Din exact același motiv.
Că sunt semeni de-ai noștri care după un an și ceva de zile încă nu acceptă realitatea. Sunt încă convinși că boala produsă de acest virus este doar o „gripă”.
Alții încearcă să ne convingă, în continuare, să refuzăm vaccinul. Că provoacă infertilitate, că ne distruge sistemul imunitar, că bilgheitz, că doar cei cu imunitatea compromisă au nevoie cu adevarat de vaccin, că vaccinul asta a aparut prea repede… Iar culmea culmilor este numărul prea mare de medici care răspândesc, și ei, genul ăsta de informații.

Se vehiculează tot felul de explicații pentru numărul mic de vaccinați din Romania.
Că oamenii nu mai au încredere în autorități. Că neîncrederea în politicieni s-a transformat într-o neîncredere generalizată.
Că sunt prea mulți analfabeți funcționali. Care chiar dacă știu să citească, nu înțeleg nimic.

OK, ambele explicații se bazează pe niște realități. Triste dar cât se poate de reale.
Doar că aceste explicații nu sunt suficiente.
Neîncrederea și analfabetismul funcțional explică doar comportamentul masei.

Ar mai fi nevoie de explicații cu privire la comportamentul elitei.
La modul inept, politicianist, în care a fost tratată criza de către ‘clasa politică’.
La modul de-a dreptul lipsit de responsabilitate în care s-a comportat o prea mare proporție din clerul ortodox.
La faptul că o prea mare parte a presei a vânat senzaționalul în loc să ofere informație de calitate.

Nu mi-e atât frică de virus cât mi-e frică de ceea ce suntem dispuși să ne facem unul altuia.
Mai bine spus, mie frică pentru cât de puțin suntem dispuși să facem unul pentru celălalt.

Și imi mai este frică de faptul că prea mulți dintre politicieni sunt mai degrabă dispuși să ne dezbine – pentru a se putea ei cocoța mai ușor în scaunele vizate, în loc să ne dea un exemplu despre ce înseamnă colaborarea în caz de pericol.
De faptul că prea mulți dintre noi sunt dispuși să-i înjure pe cei care nu sunt de acord cu ei – indiferent de tabăra din care fac parte, în loc să încerce să înțeleagă ce se întâmplă.

Mi-e frică de faptul că, la un secol și jumătate de la Unire, am uitat cât de greu este să răzbești singur.
Și de cât de ușor le-a venit pescuitorilor în ape tulburi să ne dezbine!

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Categories 1989, alegerile pe care le facem, Ce tara lasam copiilor nostri?, comunicare efectiva, constiinta de sine, cooperare, Cu pielea la bataie, evolutie, In limba Romana, Incredere, Manipulare, Omul ca masura a tuturor lucrurilor, Respect Mutual., teleology, Trust

Commodities

October 14, 2021 //
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Sugar, flour, vegetable oil, gas, toilet paper, soap, pork belly… and also coal, steel, timber, cement…affordable mass produced ‘things’ you expect to be able to buy whenever you need them.

Until something happens and you are no longer able to… either you lost your job or they have disappeared from the market. For whatever reasons.
It is then when you realize that many of your contemporaries consider many of them to be luxuries… And that now it’s your turn to share their experiences…

Then we have the natural ‘commodities’. Things we take for granted but which have not been produced by our fellow humans.
That the sun will rise tomorrow, fresh air, clean water, fertile soil…
Things we take for granted… but, again, quite a lot of people find many of those things to be rather ‘out of reach’!

Finally, but no less important, we have the ‘virtual’ commodities. Man ‘made’, again, but, this time, ‘untouchable’. Love, friendship, respect, trust…

To me, the most important of the ‘commodities’, virtual or otherwise, is trust.

Once we loose trust, we loose everything!

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Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, corruption, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, Trust

Unpictured.

October 11, 2021 //
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There’s no more love lost among your people.
Anything has become enough reason to fight for.
Which has transformed them into a dysfunctional collection of mobs.
Too many people make themselves available to the highest bidders and too few of them ever lend a helping hand to a neighbor in distress.

I know. Things are, indeed, very bad!

And what you going to do about it?
After all, you’re in charge now… Do I need to come back? Take things into my own hands?

The treatment is already under way. And I’m sure you’re aware of it!

It might be. But your cure seems to be making things worse … The old and feeble die alone, the commoners distrust their leaders, the leaders no longer care about those they are supposed to lead, the con-artists command more respect than those committed to the ‘things well done’, ‘fake’ is widely admired while ‘true’ is left behind… where are they headed?!?
I’m afraid some drastic measures are called for!

During the last 2000 years I’ve been thinking hard about the past. About what you had done when confronted with similar situations.
Your measures had been efficient indeed. Harsh but very efficient.
It’s not the harshness of your methods which have prevented me from following in your footsteps.
It’s the short memory of my people. Of our people… they haven’t changed that much, you know…
They forget quickly. A short ‘episode’ leaves a short memory… and the more ‘intense’ the episode, the quicker they ‘clean’ it from their ‘comfort zone’. ‘Something like this cannot happen again!’
So instead of an all cleansing flood or a pestilence which would have decimated them I had chosen a milder cure. A disease they will not be able to tame until they will learn, again, to cooperate.
In earnest! And across every barrier they have erected among themselves!
Until they make a habit of helping each-other instead of running each-other into the ground.

OK, Son, let’s give your method a try.
After all, it was you who to love them to love each-other… It’s your teaching they no longer obey!

There’s something else, Father! Something I wanted to ask you for a while now but didn’t find the proper occasion.
What were you thinking when you gave them freedom of will?
Without teaching them first how to learn?

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, Trust

Damned if you join, damned if you don’t?!?

October 9, 2021 //
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Let me put this another way.

Nobody can survive alone.
Not for a considerable amount of time, anyway.

“It takes nothing to join the crowd”.
To join, maybe… but if you choose to remain, you must ‘follow the rules’.

So yes, it takes everything to stand alone… Your very life!
And the ‘membership price’ is your ‘absolute’ freedom…

Hard to make up your mind, eh?
Then let me raise up a few points.

I started this argument by mentioning that nobody can live alone. Not for long and not very comfortably. No matter how hard you may prepare yourself.
Don’t kid yourself. All those hermits and preppers you hear about – on ‘social media’!, are able to do that because of modern technology. Which technology has been developed by somebody else…
On the other hand, most individuals are able to survive, alone or in small groups, while jumping from ‘one boat to another’. Think emigration, for instance. Or ‘acculturation’.

But no crowd will ever survive its members leaving in droves!

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Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mutual Respect, Psychology, teleology, The kind of world we live in, Trust

Truths?!? How many?

September 29, 2021 //
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I argued earlier that truth is a convention.
And that the Truth exists but will never be known. Not in its entirety, anyway.

Then what are we left with?
How can any of us decide what is true and what is not?

First of all, any convention needs three things. The two convening parts and the object of their convention.

‘So, you want us to believe that truth is a make-believe?!?’

That it can be, yes!

And the further from the real truth – from reality itself, that convened about truth is, the worse the fate the believers will eventually have to face.

The first example which jumps to my mind is the fate of Bernie Madoff and ‘his’ investors.
Bernie and each of the investors had convened a truth. That his investment fund was sound.
Consider what happened to each of them. To each of the investors and to Bernie Madoff himself.

I’ll come back.

Truth, take one
Truth. The One
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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, evolution, In English, limited rationality, Manipulare, Psychology, skin in the game, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust
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