“Valorile de trafic…”

April 19, 2019 //
0

Tin inca minte discursul cu care Basescu incerca sa ne convinga, prin ’98, ca nu aveam nevoie de autostrazi. Si asta pentru ca, atunci, l-am crezut!
Eram atat de pornit impotriva celor care il urmau pe Iliescu incat eram dispus sa cred pe oricine care li se opunea cu un cat de cat succes…
Atat de pornit incat n-am inteles, atunci, cat de mica era diferenta dintre Basescu, Iliescu, Nastase…

Pana la urma, singurul lucru care conteaza este respectul pe care il avem fata de cei din jurul nostru. In ce masura ii consideram oameni asemenea noua. Indiferent de ocupatie, culoarea pielii, limba vorbita…

Uite de-asta am fost nevoit aseara sa trec cu masina prin vad. Iarasi!
Era “standstill” intre Sebes si Alba Iulia asa ca Waze mi-a spus sa o iau la dreapta. Apoi la stanga si… pentru ca Waze-ul meu e setat sa ma duca pe orice fel de drum, am ajuns sa traversez un rau. Pe un pod improvizat din tuburi de beton.

De fapt, era un drum tehnologic. Aferent santierului viitoarei autostrazi dintre Sebes si Turda. “Viitoarei”…


Degeaba dam vina pentru necazurile de ‘acum’ pe ‘actuala’ guvernare.
Indiferent care o fi aceea.
Nimic nu se va schimba cu adevarat pana cand nu ne va veni NOUA mintea la cap.

Noi suntem cei care trebuie sa invatam.
Noi suntem cei care trebuie sa nu ne mai lasam invrajbiti.
Noi suntem cei care trebuie sa ne asumam greselile. Si prostiile pe care le-am facut. Noi, cu mainile si cu capetele noastre!

Doar asa vom putea merge mai departe.
Altfel, orice ‘miscare’ pe care o vom face va fi ‘la remorca’ cuiva.
Indiferent cui, in indiferent ce directie.

Pentru a ne putea hotari singuri destinul, pentru a ne putea deplasa, firesc – ‘inainte’, trebuie sa re-invatam ce inseamna cooperarea. Adica sa tragem cu totii la aceiasi caruta.

Altfel… vom da iarasi cu oistea-n gard.
Si iarasi…

Ce m-a apucat?!?
Ca doar n-o fi prima oara cand m-a scos Waze din tot felul de ‘incalceli’ din astea….
Ei bine, imediat dupa ce-am tras pe dreapta sa fac pozele alea, a oprit si o Dacie Dokker. Din care a coborat un OM.
“Veniti dupa noi. Sunteti pe drumul cel bun. Mai avem un pic si iesim in DeNeu”
“Multumesc foarte mult. Nu m-am speriat, doar m-am oprit sa fac niste fotografii!”
“A, OK… V-am vazut cu numar de Bucuresti. Doar localnicii stiu scurtatura asta si am crezut ca aveati ceva ‘indoieli'”.
“Va multumesc inca odata. Nu sunt foarte multi care sa faca asemenea gesturi.”

Adica se poate. Putem sa ne ajutam intre noi.
Nu ne costa nimic.
Iar impreuna putem muta muntii!

Sau traversa rauri.

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Categories 1989 and the Global Financial Crisises., alegerile pe care le facem, altruism, aroganta, cadre mentale, Ce tara lasam copiilor nostri?, comunicare efectiva, cooperare, Democratie, identitate colectiva, Nu prostiti poporul cu televizorul!, Omul ca masura a tuturor lucrurilor, politica, psihologie, respect mutual, Tara din care traim

Autonomous morality

April 15, 2019 //
1

“The theory that each person imposes the moral law on himself. It is opposed to heteronomous morality, which holds that the moral law is imposed from outside of man by another, and ultimately by the divine Other, who is God, which makes the moral law theonomous.“

I argued in my previous post that in a perfect world the simple fact that we consider ourselves to have been created, in his likeness, by the God we believe in, would have been enough to make us behave in a certain manner.

We don’t. Behave in that manner.

The world exists. And will continue to exist, regardless of whatever we might do in the foreseeable future. Maybe not the Earth as we know it but it’s rather unlikely that we’ll ever be able to destroy the entire world.
Here, on our home-planet, we’ve more or less soiled everything we’d come in contact with. Willingly or unwittingly.
Which suggests that the world might not be perfect but is more or less OK. And that it is us who haven’t yet risen to the occasion.

We may not have fully risen to the occasion, indeed, but we’ve managed to somehow survive. Until now, that is.
How was that possible, given our imperfect nature?

Was our behaviour shaped from outside as the heteronomous morality theory suggests? By (a) God, as the theonomous morality theory pretends?

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.”

What do we have here?
A couple of people, who are already able to speak, who cannot yet make the difference between good and evil but who can see that ‘the fruit of the tree is good for food’ and ‘desirable for gaining wisdom’.
Furthermore, the couple is not only able to communicate between the two of them, they – or, at least, one of them, are also capable to negotiate with ‘outside agents’.
And, in fact, it was a consequence of a ‘negotiation’ that they had learned to differentiate between good and evil.
Moving even closer to Godhood in the process: “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

“So the Lord God banished him (them, actually) from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.”

I must confess that things become more and more complicated instead of becoming clearer.
‘Moral law is imposed’…
Adam and Eve have learned the difference between good and evil as a consequence of ‘freely’ interacting with someone from ‘outside’ their ‘immediate community’.
And got punished for it. On a ‘technicality’!

What is moral in all this?
What are they to learn from this experience?
Since all that God had imposed on them was ‘punishment’, are they (we?!?) to understand that ‘moral law’ is equivalent with ‘gallows’?

In this setting, moral law is supposed to be learned exclusively through ‘trial and error’?
No ‘explanation’? No ‘prep school’?
Is this nothing but a form of ‘radical training’? Like that advertised by B.F. Skinner?
Not to mention that for some ‘sins’, the punishment is to be served ‘later’…

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Categories arrogance, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, Frames of mind, freedom, In English, man as a measure for all things, man induced fragility, manipulation, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, skin in the game, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

Moral identity

April 14, 2019 //
1

“God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

Hence all people, male and female, have been created equal. Simply because all of them have been cast in the same mould.
And all of them, male and female, harbor a spark of divinity. Simply because the mould into which all of them have been cast had been made “in the image of God”.

Simple logic would tell us that all people who believe mankind had been made in the image of God would behave in a certain manner.
Because of the reasons I mentioned above.
That kind of behavior had been called ‘ethical’ by well established thinkers. Plato, for instance.

“Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” “

.
.
.

“This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground”

Same simple logic I’ve invoked earlier tells me that God had created ‘the heavens and earth’ in two different stages. More or less like we do things.
First we think about the things we are going to do – ‘design them’ would be a more modern term, and then we put our thoughts into practice. ‘Execute’ our designs, according to the practical aspects which always limit our actions.

“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

The Bible itself seems to agree with me. When God finally decided to put into practice his idea of a man, he started with something he already had at his disposal. Just like we have to do whenever we attempt to accomplish anything.
“Dust from the ground”.
Man, ‘made in the image of God’, was fashioned from already available material, not from ‘thin air’.

Could this be the origin of man’s limitations?
His ‘earthly’ nature, no matter his divine likeliness?
Could this be the reason for God going back on his words?

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” “

What made God change his mind?
In Genesis 1 – the R&D phase?, he had planned a world where man was allowed to feed on everything under the sun while in Genesis 2 he had established rules about what Adam was allowed to eat and what not.
Furthermore, why make a ‘tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ in the first place? If you were going to forbid your favorite pet from eating its fruit, under the most drastic penalty…

No!
This is not yet another half backed attempt to deny the existence of God under the pretext that the only source describing its existence is full of inconsistencies.
Pretending that God does not exist simply because those who tried to describe him had not been able – or willing ?, to present a more coherent image of him is equivalent to pretending that God exists simply because we haven’t found, yet, an exhaustive explanation for everything.

You ‘see’, the Bible, no matter how holly we might consider it to be, is nothing but an image of God. A Man made image of God.
A Man written image of God, to be more precise.

The fact that the Bible is chock-full of wisdom can not be denied.
Which fact remains true regardless of whether it had been written ‘under guidance’ or ‘on their own’ by a group of ‘free agents’. Or, even, by a combination of both.
Unfortunately, there is another fact which seemingly contradicts the first. The Bible had been used as pretext for horrible crimes. Committed by ‘over-zealous’ believers, by ruthless ‘self serving’ operators or by a strange combination of both.

In order to encompass the simultaneous existence of both aforementioned facts each of us must take a step back-wards.
Extract ourselves from the fry.

Each of us must start thinking for ourselves.

How to do that – become ‘independent’, and yet preserve our chances to survive? As in remain connected with the day to day, hard-core reality?

Stay tuned. That will be my next subject.

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Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, democracy, effective communication, evolution, fail better, Frames of mind, freedom, In English, man as a measure for all things, Mindset, Mutual Respect, politics, Psychology, skin in the game, teleology, Trust

Cherry picking.

April 11, 2019 //
0

It’s not unusual for a Christian ‘zealot’ to accuse an atheist of ‘cherry picking’.
When the latter uses a quote from the Bible to argue something which ‘displeases’ the former, of course.


“If God does not exist, everything is permitted.”

I found this quote, which belongs to Dostoevsky, in an article published by http://www.thecatholicthing.org in 2016.
” That is to say, the nonexistence of God means that we live in a world of perfect moral freedom; we may do anything we like, up to and including mass murder. “

Well, if I remember correctly – more than three decades have passed since I had read The Brothers Karamazov, which didn’t impress me much, the book is an intricate, but very compelling, demonstration of the exact contrary.

” Raskolnikov is unable to live with himself after the assassination of the usurer. It is fundamentally unable to clear his sense of right and wrong, to silence his conscience. Initially, he tries to continue living, enjoying his cunning, concluding that it is a superman. Yet the humble Sonya reminds him of his act, reminds him of his guilt and therefore needs forgiveness. Dostoevsky destroyed the theory of the Superman condemning the characters involved in the mental suffering until they recognize the truth.“

Time has come for me to admit of having myself committed the sin.
The quote I used above ends with ” and the light of Christianity. “

Cherry picking had grabbed my attention while researching for a future post. ‘Moral identity‘. Which implies ‘autonomous morality’:

” The theory that each person imposes the moral law on himself. It is opposed to heteronomous morality, which holds that the moral law is imposed from outside of man by another, and ultimately by the divine Other, who is God, which makes the moral law theonomous. ”

So.
Those engaged in cherry picking do it because the selection serves their purposes or because their actions are “imposed from outside”?

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Categories awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, Frames of mind, freedom, In English, manipulation, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, religion, The kind of world we are building for our children, Transparency, Trust

Individual liberty, private property and…?!?

April 8, 2019 //
0

Some people consider individual liberty to be supreme.
Nothing else comes even near, except for private property. Which is seen as the practical embodiment of freedom.

‘Me and my property, free from any outside intervention’.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

I agree.

Some others consider ‘community’ to be the most important thing.
Or various alternatives. ‘Traditions”, “elders” and so on.

I also agree!

And here comes the tricky part.
While ‘traditionalists’ have dominated for most of human history the ‘individualists’ have gradually gotten the upper hand during the last 2 to 3 centuries.
For example, Confucianist China – traditionalist by definition, had been the first civilized nation. It had a very productive economy when Europe’s was primitive and a sophisticated culture when Europe was yet learning to read and write. Yet it had been the Europeans who had invented ‘science’ and who eventually dominated China. For a while, at least…

So. In the end, it seems that individualism trumps traditionalism… or that it had been able to do it at least once…

But there’s a catch.
Ever since individualism got the upper hand, humankind had experienced her worst crises. Not only more intense but also more often ones. And almost always starting in the Euro-Atlantic area. WWars, most economic crises, ‘erosion of values’…
Only this hasn’t always been the case. Historically, China also had her share of wars – both ‘civil’ and with her neighbors, the Spaniards had been able to conquer Central and South America simply because those living there had been at each-others throat when the Spaniards had landed… and so on.
Not to forget the huge number of wars fought inside Europe, between European ‘factions’.
Then what if European individualism wasn’t the whole explanation for what had happened? What if Europe had been able to basically impose her Weltanschauung over the rest of the world simply because she had kept, at least for a while, her trade-mark individualism under control? At least when ‘domestic’ matters where at stake…

When Europeans dealt with other Europeans…
Remember the rules governing King Arthur’s Round Table. What chivalry used to mean. The Geneva Convention, so often invoked and less and less observed as conflict took place further and further away from Geneva.

My point being that freedom – and private property, don’t make much sense unless accompanied by at least some mutual respect. While mutual respect won’t take you very far unless exercised amongst free agents.

Freedom understood as ‘ending where my nose starts’ is nothing but a continuous bout of fisticuffing.
Preserving your ‘private property’ against all others is hopeless while preserving it in a collaborative way – as we currently do, is a breeze. As long as enough of us consider theft to be unacceptable, of course.

I was speaking a little earlier about ‘mutual respect among free agents’.
In a sense, the phrase is an overkill. Respect cannot be mutual unless it is extended among free agents. And if those who show respect are not free, that respect is neither genuine nor mutual.
This being the reason for which whenever respect ceases to be expressed among free agents it becomes nothing more than ‘window dressing’.

Hence useless when push comes to shove. When people need to gather together. To cooperate towards their common good.
Towards their common survival.

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Categories altruism, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, In English, Mindset, Mutual Respect, politics, Psychology, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

Sitrep

April 8, 2019 //
3

Each of us made of a huge, but finite, number of atoms belonging to a few chemical elements, we, humans, are in relative control of a huge, but finite, planet.

As animals – living animals, that is, we need to constantly ‘ingest’ part of our environment and periodically excrete the ‘consequences’ of our metabolism.

As conscious humans we learn. Constantly.
Practically, we ingest information about what is going on around us.
We ‘digest’ it by ‘thinking’ about what concerns us.

Only the more ‘sophisticated’ animals control their bladders and bowels. Hence choosing – according to various criteria, what to do and where to deposit the ‘consequences’ of their metabolism. By doing so they actually increase their chances of survival.

We, as the most sophisticated animal around, have taken a huge step forward. We not only control our excretion, we also control our intake.
Animals – along with plants and fungi, ingest whatever they can from whatever surrounds them at any given time.
We’ve reached the stage where we actually change our environment in order to make it more amenable to our wishes. To our wishes, no longer to our mere necessities.

While the living have started to change the planet long before we evolved into being – by ingesting part of it, digesting it and excreting the consequences of their metabolism, we’ve considerably ‘revved up’ the process.
Simply because of our ability to learn and apply our knowledge towards what we consider to be our goals.

In a sense, we not only ingest our environment in a direct, material, way but also in a ‘virtual’ one. By learning about it we practically ingest it in an ‘informational’ manner. And by implementing our decisions we ‘excrete’ the consequences of our learning.

As I mentioned before, the animals who control their bladders/bowels have experienced increased chances of survival as a consequence of their new – evolutionary speaking, ability.
It is high time for us to learn how to control our imagination/desire in order to achieve the same thing. Regarding to our ability to informationaly ingest and decisionally transform our environment.

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Categories Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, evolution, In English, man as a measure for all things, physics, Psychology

Whose liberty ends where?

April 4, 2019 //
0

There’s a seemingly unending debate about what “my liberty ends where yours begins” really means.

The initial saying was a little longer, “Your right to swing your arm leaves off where my right not to have my nose struck begins.”, and had been coined during the disputes between those who tried to impose the Prohibition and those who opposed it.

In that context, it made sense.
‘How close to my house – a teetotaler, should you be allowed to open a bar and why should I be able to tell you what to drink/serve in your house.’

In a wider setting – individual rights, for instance … not so much!

‘Your right to swing your arm leaves off where my right not to have my nose struck begins’ only if at least one of the following is true:
– My arms are as long as yours AND I’m willing/able to defend my nose.
– You are a civilized person.
– We, the entire community, have reached the conclusion that we are better off, together, if we observe – and enforce, this rule.

The first sentence describes a situation of generalized conflict. Not necessarily ‘hot’ but, nevertheless, always ‘waiting to happen’.
In the second situation, ‘one side’ depends, decisively, on the ‘other side’ behaving ‘properly’. Nice and commendable but what happens when one of them goes berserk?
The third describes the de facto functioning of any civilized nation. Which nation, any nation, is composed of individual people. ‘Endowed’ with ‘free will’ and not always ‘well behaved’.

Hence the danger of narrowly defining freedom as a collection of individual spaces where each of us might do as they please – as long as the consequences of their actions remain inside that space.
Which spaces would have to be constantly defended.
Or could be extended, whenever any of the neighbors wasn’t on the lookout.

How about ‘our mutually respected individual liberty is the well deserved consequence of our collective effort to enlarge OUR freedom’?

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Categories altruism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, democracy, effective communication, evolution, Frames of mind, freedom, human rights, In English, Mindset, Mutual Respect, Psychology, skin in the game, The kind of world we are building for our children, Transparency, Trust

Racing ourselves to the bottom

March 28, 2019 //
1

Classical economy sees the market as the place where demand meets supply and prices are born.

‘Relative’ economics, which hasn’t been written yet, sees the market as the place where people meet to offer their wares and to fulfill their needs. In order to meet this goal, people negotiate prices and adapt their behavior/attitude.

Classical economics sees the market as being either free or ‘non market’ – a.k.a. ” “planned” economy“: the one which “is heavily regulated or controlled by the government, most notably in socialist or communist countries.”
As an aside, while I fully agree with the notion that communist countries – ‘popular democracies’, as their rulers used to describe them, had organized their economies around strictly centralized decision mechanisms, I cannot but wonder how would a classical economist describe Hitler’s economy? Or ‘crony capitalism’?

‘Relative’ economics, which – I repeat, hasn’t been written yet, sees the market as being either ‘free’, ‘un-free’ – a.k.a. ‘captured’ or ‘cornered’, or ‘obsessed’.
Of course, there never was such a thing as a completely free market, only functionally free ones. And I’m sure most of you fully understand what I mean.
Also, it is clear what ‘un-free’ means. Any situation where a small number of people call all the shots for an entire market. It doesn’t matter a bit whether those few people are directly involved in the market – over which they ‘enjoy’ monopolistic power, or they are involved with – read ‘control the’, government. The determining factor here is the scarcity of decision makers and the chock-hold they have over the entire decision making process.
The ‘obsessed’ market is the most interesting of all. For me, at least.


Remember “Tulip Mania”?

As with many interesting stories, there are at least two sides attached to this one also.
One version describes the whole thing as a generalized folly which had ended only after the government stepped in while the other paints a considerably duller picture.
Only nobody denies the fact.

That for whatever reasons, tulip bulbs had been – admittedly for a relatively short while, on a par with houses. Value-wise.

Did it make any sense? Then?
For those involved, yes! Otherwise…
Could they afford it? Had they been affected when the bubble burst?
That depends on whom you ask… and whom you believe…

Does it make any sense now? Can we make anything out of it?

We can certainly explain what had happened.
Holland’s was the most affluent economy of the continent and the wealth was sort of spread around.
A lot of money was ‘sloshing’, a lot of people were looking for a way to ‘show of’ and tulips were the ‘thing of the day’.
Does it make any sense now? Retrospectively, no. Not for me, anyway.
Do we have an explanation for what had happened? You’ve just read a very condensed one. If you need a more elaborate version, try Veblen’s ‘The Theory of the Leisure Class‘.

Anyway, that’s the perfect example of an ‘obsessed’ market.
Where the agents are free to do what they please but are obsessed enough to act in sync. As opposed to ‘in concert’.

‘Obsessed’ means that all present look in the same direction and react in the same way.
Which might be a good thing – when a group tries to escape a fire.
Or a bad one, when the same group is trying to gather food from a forest. If all of them are looking, exclusively, for a single type of mushroom, many other sources of food are neglected.

In a really – as in ‘functional’, free market, people display a variety of behaviors.
Some suppliers are greedier than others, some are diligent, some are sloppy and others are dedicated craftsmen.
Some buyers are more ‘relaxed’, others ‘stingier’. Some know their way around the market, others are ignorant.
On the whole, a dynamic equilibrium is constantly negotiated among all these ‘free’ agents. Simply because there is a variety of opinion.
When the market is ‘un-free’, the whole notion of negotiation and equilibrium disappears. The parameters are set by the ‘rulers’. And things go on only as long as the ‘rulers’ manage to maintain a modicum of normality.
When the market is ‘obsessed’, things become really interesting. The agents maintain their apparent liberty – at least for a while. Only they don’t actually use it. All of them act as if pre-programmed.

And somebody sooner or later notices what’s going on. And turns the whole thing to fit their own goal. Which is, almost always, not so different from the ‘general’ one.

Tulip Mania was relatively benign.
Nothing really bad had happened.

We’ve somehow managed to weather the recent financial melt down.
Which had been the consequence with our obsession with money as the ultimate goal.
Which obsession continues unabated.

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Categories 1989 and the Global Financial Crisises., authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, evolution, In English, Mindset, Money, Money as goal, Mutual Respect, Psychology, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

Epigonii

March 27, 2019 //
0

De vreo treizeci de ani tot discutam despre ‘moștenirea lui Ceaușescu’.
Ce-a dărâmat, ce-a construit, cum a plătit datoriile – lăsându-ne pe noi în foame și în frig.

De multe ori discuțiile astea se termină cu ‘aștia nu sunt în stare nici măcar să întrețină tot ce a construit Ceaușescu, darămite să continue’!

Ei bine, eu cred că suntem într-o eroare mare cât casa.
Cât Casa Poporului….

Ceaușescu n-a construit nimic.
N-a construit – și nici n-a dărâmat, nimic!
Noi am făcut toate astea.

Că el dădea câte o ‘indicație’…
Acea ‘indicație’ trecea întâi pe la CSP – unde devenea ‘indicator de plan’, apoi pe la ministerul economiei… și abia după aceea ajungea ‘pe teren’. Unde era pusă ‘în practică’.
Iar toate aceste operațiuni erau îndeplinite de noi. De ‘Oamenii Muncii’. De la ‘orașe și sate’.
Ceaușescu n-a dărâmat, cu mâna lui, nici o biserică și nici un sat. N-a construit nici un apartament și nici o fabrică. N-a scris nici o filă de plan și nici un borderou de materiale. N-a semnat nici o dispoziție de plata, internă sau externă.
Toate astea au fost făcute de noi.

Că am ascultat de el…. Asta-i altă chestie!
Că n-am fost în stare să-l contrazicem atunci când o lua razna… Și asta e tot ‘altă chestie’. Că s-a înconjurat el de oameni din ce în ce mai ‘ascultători’… și n-a mai fost cine să-l mai contrazică… până când situația devenise atât de ‘groasă’ încât chiar și cei mai ‘disciplinați’ și-au dat seama că ‘purceaua era moarta-n coteț’ și l-au ‘lăsat din brațe’… astea sunt deja istorie….

Dar mai rămăsese ceva!
Ceva unde contribuția lui Ceaușescu fusese cu adevărat consistentă.
Unde Ceaușescu dusese mai departe un început de tradiție – ‘Titulesciană’.
De fapt, ăsta a fost singurul domeniu în care Ceaușescu – și România, în ansamblu, a avut un real succes.

Standingul internațional!

Relativa independență față de URSS, relativa apropiere față de spațiul Euro-Atlantic, relația bună cu statele ne-aliniate, statutul de mediator între Israel și lumea arabă….
Aceasta fiind, de fapt, și singura ‘punte de legătură’ dintre regimul ceaușist și cel post-comunist.
Așa am fost acceptați în NATO și cooptați in UE.
Ai cărei președinți ‘rotativi’ suntem în momentul de față…

Cum de ne-om fi ales noi tocmai momentul asta pentru a irosi și ultimul lucru bun ‘moștenit de la Ceaușescu’?!?


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Categories cadre mentale, ce alegeri facem, Ce tara lasam copiilor nostri?, cooperare, coruptie, In limba Romana, Incredere, Justitie sociala, Libertate, respect mutual, Tara din care traim

Deterministic Science as an Oxymoron

March 24, 2019 //
0

“The philosophical doctrine that every state of affairs, including every human event, act, and decision, is the inevitable consequence of antecedent states of affairs.”

“The systematic study of the nature and behaviour of the material and physical universe, based on observation, experiment, and measurement, and the formulation of laws to describe these facts in general terms.“

In these terms, science must be deterministic.
No systematic study of anything might ever be made if not starting from the conviction that a given set of causes will produce the same results, over and over again. No laws attempting to describe any facts in general terms might be formulated unless starting from the same premises.

On the other hand, it was science itself which had taught us that:

“It’s impossible to determine, with absolute precision, both the position and momentum of an electron“

The same ‘uncertainty principle’ can be extended to other pairs of “complementary variables, such as length of time and energy“.

And there are countless other examples of ‘in-determination’ which have been documented by scientists during their search for the ultimate truth.

Any chance of reconciliation?

Well…
To start, I’ll note first that ‘determinism’ is a concept which had started its career in philosophy while ‘science’ has a more ‘complex’ origin. It might have been initiated by Christian theologians trying to ‘guess’ God’s will only they were attempting to fulfill that task by closely watching Nature – which was seen as the very embodiment of God’s intentions.
In this sense, scientific determinism can be understood as the conviction that Nature must make perfect sense – must be completely explainable, simply because God’s creation – which includes Nature, must be perfect.
OK, and since all theologians agree that no human will ever be able/should ever pretend to know God, what’s the problem in accepting that Man – collectively speaking now, will never learn enough to find a complete explanation for everything?

‘And what about the atheists?’

What about them?
Oh, you mean the people who are sure that God doesn’t exist? Who are just as sure that God doesn’t exist as the staunch believers who are perfectly confident that God not only exists but also micro-manages everything? Under the Sun and beyond?
I’ll just leave it there…

On a deeper level, there is no contradiction between ‘determinism’ – philosophically speaking, and scientific thinking. As long as we keep these two ‘apart’, of course…

‘So you are going to accept that science will never ‘know’ everything AND that ‘everything is a consequence of the previous state of affairs’ ‘ ?

Well, again…
The key word here is “inevitable”!
Determinism is ” the philosophical doctrine that every state of affairs, including every human event, act, and decision, is the inevitable consequence of antecedent states of affairs ”
For a philosopher it is very easy to say ‘inevitable’. Even more so for believing philosopher.
For a scientist… how is a scientist going to say that something is ‘inevitable’? ‘Philosophically’ speaking, of course… as in ‘with absolute precision’?!?

Specially since entertaining a truly ‘scientific attitude’ means, above all, to be prepared, at all moment and without any notice, for all your previously held convictions to be contradicted by new evidence…

‘What are you trying to say here?
That everything revolves around the manner in which each of us relates to the meaning of his own interpretation of each concept?
That truth itself is relative?’

‘That man is the measure for everything?’

Yep!
AND that man is also responsible for the consequences his own actions! In front of his own children, before everything else.
For no other reason than it will be his own children who will bear the brunt of his own decisions.

Additional reading:
“Science as Falsification“, Karl R. Popper.
” 800 Scientists say it’s time to abandon “Statistical Significance” “
“Protagoras”
“On the Essence of Truth“, Martin Heidegger
“Suicide now leading cause of death among children aged 10 to 14 in Japan“

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Categories arrogance, authoritarianism, Bounded rationality, Chance, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, corruption, effective communication, evolution, In English, man induced fragility, Mindset, Mutual Respect, physics, Psychology, religion, The kind of world we are building for our children, Transparency, Trust
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