Gender-mandering

August 27, 2025 //
0

“In America,
voters don’t pick their politicians.
Politicians pick their voters.”
Wayne Dawkins

America is the land of the free.
‘The people’ can, according to the Constitution, choose among the candidates.
The politicians can, also in ‘certain’ conditions, choose their voters…

And those so inclined can choose their gender!

Do I have a problem with that?

No!
But I find it very interesting that ‘gender-mandering’ is such a divisive subject.
Very revealing, actually.

Let me start with the beginning.
“The word gerrymander (originally written Gerry-mander; a portmanteau of the name Gerry and the animal salamander) was used for the first time in the Boston Gazette[b] on 26 March 1812 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. This word was created in reaction to a redrawing of Massachusetts Senate election districts under Governor Elbridge Gerry, later Vice President of the United States. Gerry, who personally disapproved of the practice, signed a bill that redistricted Massachusetts for the benefit of the Democratic-Republican Party.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering.
In this context, it’s worth mentioning that the Democratic-Republican party very soon later divided itself into the present day Republican and Democratic parties…

So, gerrymandering is one of the many common traits shared by both parties…
“The Founders frequently wrote about the dangers of political parties. They often labeled them “factions” that were divisive and rooted in self-interest. In Federalist #10, James Madison wrote that factions were a majority or minority animated by “some common impulse of passion, or of interest” harmful to the rights of others and the common good. They could be a source of unjust laws and a threat to popular self-government. President George Washington concurred and warned in his 1796 Farewell Address that “the baneful effects of the spirit of party” included strong passions, jealousies and revenge, dissention, and despotism.” https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/the-history-of-political-parties-in-the-united-states

“Some common impulse of passion, or of interest”

And there is a common impulse of passion. And of interest!
Both parties want power. And in order to get it…

Hence not only gerrymandering – used by both parties – but also ‘gender-mandering’.
Using gender as a bone of contention. A very useful posturing pretext…

Who, but those experiencing gender-dysphoria, is actually interested in the subject?
Maybe those baffled by the insistence with which some trans-women demand to be allowed to participate in professional sports… against cis-women, of course!

On the other hand… as a posturing pretext, the subject is invaluable!
To some, it epitomizes ‘you can be whatever you want to become’. ‘Progress’ in its purest form.
To others, it is anathema. The very notion of ‘against’. Against of nature, defying God’s will, you name it!

Did I make myself clear?

What about those living ‘in hell’?!? ‘Caught in the wrong person’?
Who cares about them?!? They are few enough to be negligible. Except for when a scapegoat is in order…

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, arrogance, biology, Choices we make, effective communication, gender roles, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

Health

August 25, 2025 //
0

Evolution is not about ‘survival of the fittest’.
Evolution is about the demise of the unfit.
Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is, 2001

Well, it actually makes a lot of sense.

Being healthy is relative.
On having a diagnostic hanging over your head.

Here’s another way of looking at things.

Functional versus dysfunctional.
For as long as one is functional, that person is not a burden for anybody. Regardless of any diagnostic.
Even a dysfunctional person can be useful for those around them. Even if that person is completely dependent on those taking care of them. A good word spoken at the right moment makes wonders.

So yes, I would also love to die ‘healthy’. As in trying to do my best to be useful.
At least, to be as light a burden as possible.

On the other hand, health is yet another virtual thing. ‘Virtual’ as in man made…
Until not so long ago, ’cause of death’ for people over a certain age was always ‘old age’.
No longer. No matter how old the deceased, the body is transported to a medical facility and the particular cause of death is forensically determined.
It makes perfect sense. Scientifically speaking. There is no such thing as too much data, specially when it comes to something as precious to us as human life.
And it raises a ‘somewhat’ unreasonable kind of hope. That sometime, somehow, all causes of death will be mitigated. Diagnosed and treated.
That life will become ‘longer’. That we, humans, will live if not forever… then until an accident will happen to shorten our destiny.

Can you imagine something like that?
People living for 3 or 4 hundreds of years?

No retirement.
No risk taken.
No change…

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Categories 1989, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game

Meaning

August 24, 2025 //
0

Do your own thinking!

How many times did you came across this message? ‘Do your own thinking!’. ‘Do your own research!’. ‘Don’t believe everything you are told!’

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? What’s wrong in googling up a subject before making up your mind? What’s wrong in storming your brain before calling something one way or another?

Let’s examine something else first.
There are ways in which we relate to ‘reality’. ‘Conservatively’ or ‘open-mindedly’.
And no, this has very little to do with our intelligence or with our level of education.

It depends on how important the subject at hand is to our well being and whether we have already made up our mind about it!

How open minded are you when it comes to spending the last money you have in your pocket? With no prospect of getting any in the near future?
How open minded do you remain after you have already declared, publicly, one way or another?

Most of those lavishly spraying their audience with ‘use your own heads’ – in my FB feed – also told their followers to avoid vaccines, at all cost. The one against Covid in particular – ‘it will eventually kill you’, but also those against measles. ‘It might cause autism’.

How this thing works?

Survival bias.
We not only want to survive, physically, but also to ‘feel good’. To preserve the good opinion we have constructed about ourselves.

This being the reason for which those of us who struggle to find their next meal will not take time to consider any philosophical subject. Will gladly accept the more ‘convincingly’ stated opinion and get back to the more important task of ‘foraging’.
And this being the reason for which those of us already entertaining a strong opinion about a subject see the world ‘differently’. Effectively associate different meaning to the same words!

“Do your own thinking” actually means different things to different people.
For those who have already made up their minds it means “feel free to stick to your own opinion”.
While for those who, for whatever reason, are open-minded about the subject at hand it means “please hear me out”.

Take your pick.

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Categories awareness, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, limited rationality, man as a measure for all things, manipulation, Mutual Respect, skin in the game, Trust

The Starting Point

August 23, 2025 //
0

“Our measures do not tell us whether philosophy majors
go on to apply their newfound abilities in the service of truth and justice
or, conversely, for personal gain and glory.
Settling that question would require gathering a different kind of evidence.”

Reading it, https://theconversation.com/studying-philosophy-does-make-people-better-thinkers-according-to-new-research-on-more-than-600-000-college-grads-262681, brought back to memory another research subject. Linking a ‘reasonable consumption of alcohol’ to various health benefits.
A quick google search produced this:

The paper I found now, https://www.phcc.org.nz/briefing/glass-half-full-alcohols-health-benefits-cardiovascular-disease-still-controversial-and, is quite thorough.
More importantly, for me, it raises the points which bothered me when I first found out about the claim. On FB, more than five years ago.
I’ll put it in my own words.

Being able to drink for a relatively long time means one had a fairly strong health at the start of the whole process. And at least some degree of self-control.
Otherwise the drinker would have very soon become ill, an alcoholic, suffered some accidents… or any combination thereof.

Same thing regarding the findings of the first study.
Take a number of smart people. One has to be smart in order to be interested in philosophy! And able to graduate…
Train those people’s abilities. Help them develop whatever they’re good at. And like doing…
Then wonder about the good results you’ve achieved!

Writing this post made me realize that it goes far deeper than this.
No, this is not a self-congratulatory study. Far from it.
It’s stark warning!

“Public trust in higher education has hit record lows in recent years, according to polling by the Lumina Foundation and Gallup. Meanwhile, the rapid advance of generative AI has threatened the perceived value of a traditional college degree, as many previously vaunted white-collar skills are at risk of being automated.
Yet now more than ever, students must learn to think clearly and critically. AI promises efficiency, but its algorithms are only as good as the people who steer them and scrutinize their output.
The stakes are more than personal. Without citizens who can reason through complex issues and discern good information from bad, democracy and civic life are at risk.”

This paper is not about the virtues of learning!
It’s about us.
So many of us still have so much more to learn about the virtues of learning…

One possible explanation for what’s going on is that not enough of the learned people “go on to apply their newfound abilities in the service of truth and justice“.
Me starting this post with the distinct feeling that this was a self-congratulatory study is yet another confirmation of the generalized distrust which permeates the whole society.
We’ve reached that stage where we primarily look for reasons to refute.
Some say a little paranoia is good for you. That it keeps you safe.
I’m afraid we’ve reached exactly where ‘they’ want us to be.
Distrusting, paranoiac people cannot do anything together.

Constantly looking over your shoulder will never lead you forward.
Will only make you, us, susceptible to manipulation.
Remember, in this context, how many reasonable posts we get from people supporting various horrendous ideas.
How many ‘think with your own head’ messages we get from those ‘also’ promoting MAGA. How many times Putin says he only makes ‘reasonable’ demands.

How can we build trust?
I don’t know how but I do know we don’t have any alternative.

We either learn to respect each-other, and build trust together, or become subjects.
And I’ve already been a subject. To a communist regime. Don’t want to repeat the experience.

Tags , , ,
Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, collective identity, In English, skin in the game, Trust

AI

August 21, 2025 //
0

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Categories alternative ways of acquring knowledge, awareness, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, Psychology, skin in the game, teleology

Unu și cu unu

August 19, 2025 //
0

„Fenomenologia este un curent filozofic care se concentrează pe studiul
structurii experienței, așa cum se manifestă în conștiință,
fără a recurge la explicații cauzale sau la metodele altor discipline.
Se concentrează pe esența lucrurilor, nu pe fapte sau teorii”
AI Overview propusă de Google pentru „fenomenologie definiție”

Teoretic, unu și cu unu fac doi.
Dar asta doar pentru că așa am hotărât noi.
Să dăm câte un nume pentru fiecare chestie încolonată în ceea ce noi considerăm a fi ‘șirul numerelor întregi’.
Și cum ‘chestia’ care îndeplinește condiția =1+1 s-a nimerit să fie cea botezată de noi cu numele doi…

Bat câmpii?
Stați să vedeți ce urmează…

Deci.
Tot teoretic, două doctorate înseamnă de două ori mai multă deșteptăciune confirmată oficial decât un doctorat.
Simplu, nu?
Conceptul cheie din spusa de mai sus fiind „deșteptăciune confirmată oficial”, bineînțeles.

„Tema centrală va fi așadar viața ca încercare, viața ca ispită, idee care prelungește considerațiile heideggeriene anterioare făcute în marginea epistolelor paulinice în privirea îngrijorării, nevoinței vieții.
Heidegger sesizează în textele lui Augustin și o altă tensiune, anume aceea dintre tendințele genuine ale vieții factice (care motivează experiența creștină) și tendințele conceptualizatoare și teoretizante, de proveniență neoplatonică, prin care datul genuin al facticității este deturnat în sensul său originar, și astfel acoperit, obturat, falsificat.
Așadar, cursul lui Heidegger despre Augustin se va construi pe doua fronturi. Pe de o parte, va fi vorba de tensiunea dintre tendințele genuine ale vieții factice creștine și tendințele teoretizante care provin din aluviunile conceptuale pe care le întrebuințează tacit Augustin, idee ce se situază în descendența considerațiilor privind critica primatului teoreticului (fenomenologia ca știință originară pre-teoretică).”

Pe cealaltă parte, cred că am bătut destul câmpii. Că ați înțeles deja ce vreau să spun.
Cristian Ciocan, autorul rândurilor de mai sus (Întruchipări, Studiu de fenomenologie a corporalității, Humanitas, 2013) are și el două doctorate. Tot două doctorate… Universitatea din București, 2006 și Paris IV Sorbona 2009.

OK, sunt câteva diferențe între cele doua situații.
Din păcate, există și o trăsătură de unire. Între ele…
Se justifică una pe celălaltă! Adică se explică între ele. Se ‘normalizează’ dacă vă place mai mult genul ăsta de exprimare.
Privindu-se una pe cealaltă, ca într-un soi de oglindă, cele două situații devin cât se poate de transparente. De inteligibile…

Mă pregăteam să …
Și mi-am dat seama că!

Mai bine închei cu o amintire.
Undeva prin clasa a VII-a am descoperit revista Săptămâna. A lui Eugen Barbu.
Nu eu, ci prietenul meu cel mai bun. Care le avea pe astea cu literatura. Nu mai țin minte ce îi atrăsese atenția, cert este că erau multe lucruri interesante acolo. Chiar pentru niște copii, așa cum eram noi.
În afară de chestiile interesante, erau și unele extrem de hazlii. Din când în când, dădeam peste niște texte scrise în stilul folosit de dl. dr. Ciocan. Râdeam cu hohote. Nu erau la fel de complicate precum exemplul de mai sus, cele mai multe erau din zona criticii literare, dar exprimarea era la fel de pompoasă. Efectul la fel de … hazliu, pentru noi. Pentru noi, niște puști care le citeam cu dicționarul în mână. După care ne întrebam: „Da’ de ce nu vorbește ca oamenii? Cui se adresează? Cei care sunt capabili să înțeleagă cuvintele astea abracadabrante nu au nevoie să le traducă cineva ‘ce a vrut să spună autorul’”.

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Categories 1989, alegerile pe care le facem, comunicare efectiva, constiinta de sine, Cu pielea la bataie, cultura, In limba Romana, Omul ca masura a tuturor lucrurilor

Stages

August 18, 2025 //
0

Things happen.
The consequences of which
reshape what we call ‘reality’.

‘Things happening’ is how ‘reality’ works.
Is how we came about…

Believers and nonbelievers alike, all of us are consequences of ‘things happening’. ‘Naturally’ or ‘as commanded by God’.

‘Reality’, on the other hand…
What we call ‘reality’ is determined by ‘us’.

(What we call) reality is the consequence of things happening inside itself.
Consider a huge cauldron full of ‘events’. What’s going on inside that cauldron, each stage ‘reached’ by its content depends on what happened inside that cauldron. And to that cauldron if we accept the ‘god’ hypothesis.
Which ‘god hypothesis’ only compounds the reality. Which can be construed as being simple, evolving in an unhindered manner, or being run by a (bunch of) god(s).
Examined in this manner, the existence of a putative god doesn’t change much, does it?

Reality being shaped by what’s happening inside it leads to further considerations:
We, humans as part of this reality, have had played a role in all this. And continue to contribute to the process.
We, humans, as part of this reality, are one of the many consequences engendered by this whole ‘evolutionary’ process.

Another way of looking at this produces another train of thoughts.
Until we had reached the conscious state, things had happened exclusively in a ‘natural’ manner.
Furthermore, until that moment there was no difference between ‘natural’ and ‘non-natural’.
For the simple reason that there was nobody to make it…
Nobody able, let alone willing, to make that difference!

The gist of today’s post being the fact that we are shaping reality according to our wishes.
Not entirely, not fully aware of what we’re doing, yet our actions have more and more important consequences.

Let me give you an example.
Until not so long ago – historically speaking, all empires – most socio-political arrangements, usually known as ‘states’, functioned as authoritarian regimes – used to crash under their own weight, had been crushed by the competing empires ‘happening’ in their vicinity or a combination thereof. The Western part of the Roman empire, weakened by the mistakes perpetrated by its rulers, had been ‘dismantled’ by the nomadic people who fancied the riches accumulated inside its borders.
The process had many iterations. An aggressor, a would be ‘imperator’, noticed an opportunity. What he considered to be an opportunity…
Mounted an aggression. And was either successful or defeated…

Until Napoleon Bonaparte had stirred so thoroughly the hornets nest that enough people noticed what was going on. Were aggravated enough to spring into action.
So they banded together, twice, and sent the initially successful aggressor where he belonged. In exile!

For the first time in modern history – as far as I know it – an aggressor had been ‘tamed’ by a ‘coalition of the willing’.
The same process had unfolded during WWI, WWII and WWIII. Otherwise known as the Cold War.

The only other example which comes to my mind – but I’m no historian – was the Persian Empire being defeated by a coalition led by Athens. Some 2500 years ago…

What’s keeping us from understanding this simple thing?
That unless we band together, we’re at the mercy of whoever puts up a fierce enough aggression?

https://www.britannica.com/event/Greco-Persian-Wars

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Categories 1989, authoritarianism, awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, skin in the game

Co-modified Information

August 16, 2025 //
0

Commodities are things produced for exchange, with a market value,
rather than for their intrinsic use or benefit.
Commodification prioritizes exchange value over use value,
meaning things are valued primarily for their potential to be sold and generate profit,
not for their inherent purpose or usefulness. 
AI Overview

“US soldiers kneeling for Putin? Viral red carpet photo triggers backlash…” The Times of India

We’ll never know how many people have watched, mesmerized, the ‘breaking news’ detailing what had happened yesterday in Anchorage.

Otherwise put, we’ll never know how many people have watched exactly nothing.

On the other hand, there are some who know. How many people have already watched and how many continue to watch. The countless interpretations offered by the talking-heads regarding what had happened. Regarding the nothing which had been breaking the news all day yesterday…

What’s going on?

Until not so long ago – until Robert Murdoch has launched the first 24-hours news channel, Sky News, UK 1989 – ‘fresh information’ was provided to the general public mixed up with other ‘things’. TV channels used to air, some of them still do, a carefully choreographed mix of entertainment, sports, movies and news. And news…
TV watchers used to be treated as people. As individual human beings. With various tastes, indeed, but also with a common interest. A common interest in the well being of the place where they happened to live…
The common denominator uniting the audience was, even if never stated in plain language, the understanding that all of them cared for the important things. Country, values, tomorrow…society…

Not any longer.
Nowadays the audience is considered/treated as a herd of consumers.
How many times have you heard “welcome to the show” at the start of a news bulletin?
News bulletin which is meant to keep you riveted to the TV set for long enough so that you’ll be exposed to the commercial messages being ‘trafficked’ by the TV stations…

I argued in the previous post that democracy is a weeding out mechanism.
That in a functional democracy the informed citizen will, eventually, weed out inefficient politicians. Those who had allowed themselves to become ‘corrupted’. Not necessarily in the direct sense, as in taking bribes and all that. Political corruption takes many forms, all of them drastically diminishing the efficiency of government.

The informed citizen…
But what kind of information is currently available?
And, furthermore, who initiates the ordinary TV watcher in the fine art of watching the news?
Remember, in this context, that the ‘ordinary TV watcher’ is considered to be a ‘consumer’, no longer a ‘concerned citizen’.

And who are the people who know exactly how many viewers have watched yesterday’s news bulletins? And today’s interpretations of what had happened yesterday?
The ‘media watchers’, of course. Those who measure the audience for the sole purpose of extracting as much money from selling commercials as possible…


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Categories 1989, awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, corruption, In English, Mutual Respect, skin in the game

Mutatis Mutandis

August 15, 2025 //
0

Kiss an ass for long enough, its owner will become god.
And start behaving accordingly…

We all know that no communist regime has ever worked. For long…
Some of us have noticed that all empires, all imperial regimes, eventually collapsed. Under their own weight. Under the weight of accumulated errors…

The mechanism is simple.
Lord Acton was convinced that “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
Frank Herbert, looking from the other direction, argued: “It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible”.
My experience suggests that both were right. Power is magnetic to the corruptible and when enjoying it those in power are subjected to innumerable ‘temptations’. Already corruptible, most of them indulge themselves…

Democracy is nothing but a weeding mechanism. “The People”, realizing that (some of) those in power have become too corrupted, have the necessary tools to weed them out. To replace those corrupted politicians peacefully.
With other politicians, not – as yet, anyway – as corrupted as those sent away.

Imperial regimes, the communist ones included, do not have such mechanisms.
The already corruptible, once in power, sink deeper and deeper into corruption. Become more and more impervious to any advice. More and more confident in their own infallibility. More and more prone to making bigger and bigger errors.
The consequences of which errors keep pilling one on top of the other.
Until nothing works anymore…

Which is why all reasonable political regimes have limits.
Elections are organized on a timely manner.
And no more than two presidential mandates, for example.

Given all of the above, I’m afraid. Petrified, actually.
Two people are going to meet, in a short time, pretending to solve…
The entire planet seems mesmerized!
Two people are going to determine the fate of billions!?!

Are we nuts?


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Categories 1989, awareness, Choices we make, collective identity, corruption, effective communication, freedom, In English, Mutual Respect, skin in the game

Who Wants What

August 14, 2025 //
0

Mind what you wish for,
for it might happen…

Putin wants to survive while Trump wants the same thing.
Xi also wants Putin to survive…

Without Putin(ism), Europe wouldn’t spend a dime on weapons. On American weapons!
America would have to develop and maintain alone the hardware needed to keep Xi at bay.

Once Putin gone, the Russian people will completely turn their attention towards Europe.
Leaving the ‘Chinese model’ stranded. In limbo…

What do we want?!?
Who cares?!? But now, that you’ve asked…

We want America back!
The already great America…
The one wise enough to save Europe from itself. Twice!
The one wise enough to help Japan back on its feet after WWII.
The one wise, and brave, enough to defend South Korea.
The one wise enough to understand that behaving like a bull in a China shop might be fun. For a while… but inexorably produces a fine mess… Specially when the bull owns much of the china being traded in that shop!

America does have a huge responsibility in maintaining the world in a working state. For the simple reason that America’s wealth depends, directly and indirectly, on the smooth functioning of the increasingly integrated world market.
Forgetting this, and concentrating your attention on ‘particular interests’, vested or not, is nothing short of blinding yourself. Of shutting reality out!

And we want Europe back!
Europe has already done the same mistake America is about to commit.
Behaved like the bull in the China shop. Literally. Then, overwhelmed by the consequences, left out without clearing up the mess.

Finally, but equally important, we need China – along with all other ‘wishful thinkers’ – to learn.
To understand that behaving like a bull in the China shop, even if you do it at home, doesn’t help anybody. Not in the long run.
Everybody, including the bull, ends up in tatters…

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Categories 1989, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, skin in the game
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