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‘Advertising’

April 13, 2018 //
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Any way you look at it, a human individual is a decision making machine.

When living in the bush, the decision making process was rather straightforward.
Information was available on a ‘what you see is what you get’ basis and bad decisions had the rather nasty habit of becoming obvious after a very short time.

Now, when living in a social context, things are a little more complicated.
Other people want from us.
Other people actually depend on convincing us to do various things and not to do other things.

‘Convincing us’ means influencing our decision making processes.
Which can be done using one, two or a combination of the following methods.

By ‘managing’ the information we have at our disposal when making a certain decision.
By altering the way in which we feel about the outcome of that decision being put in practice.

The A&B of the matter, for those familiar with the domain…

But there are two other things which are rarely discussed about these matters.

How ethical is it to manipulate other people?
Specially when the manipulated are not fully aware of what’s going on, which puts the manipulator in almost full control of the whole process.

What are the longer term consequences of the whole thing?
Is there any difference between manipulating people to ‘consume’ things which are more or less detrimental to their health and manipulating people into making far reaching political decisions?

As in ‘is there any difference between convincing people that smoking isn’t that bad for them (or at least pleasurable enough to balance the risk) and convincing them to vote for/against … (feel free to pick your own candidate/issue)?

“The researcher whose work is at the center of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data analysis and political advertising uproar has revealed that his method worked much like the one Netflix uses to recommend movies.”

Matthew Hindman,
https://theconversation.com/how-cambridge-analyticas-facebook-targeting-model-really-worked-according-to-the-person-who-built-it-94078

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Categories Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, effective communication, fail better, Frames of mind, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, Social justice, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

Climate change

October 30, 2017 //
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We were discussing ‘worst possible scenarios’ on Facebook and somebody mentioned ‘climate change’.
I must add here that the exchange was ‘framed’ by ‘skin in the game‘, a concept used by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his rather don-quixotic quest for more responsible decision makers.

OK, the whole domain of climate change is riddled with epistemological holes.
Linear models are used to approximate processes we barely know anything about.
‘Starting points’ have been, again and again, been proven wrong.
I could go on for hours.

I’ll make a small parenthesis here and inform you that according to a fresh study things might be far worse than we’ve reckoned. This paper, published by Nature.com, suggests that Earth’s oceans used to be far cooler than we’ve previously thought they were.

In this context, one of the participants made the following remark:
“the burden (of proof) should fall on those calling for changes, for the rather obvious reason that we could suggest changes all day long. Only a few can be implemented.”

Hard to argue with that, right?

But which changes are we talking about here?

A change in our manner of interacting with Mother Nature?
Costly, indeed, financial wise, but nowadays technologically possible.

Or about the changes we’ve already – unwittingly, most of them, imposed upon our ‘spaceship’?

We’ve dramatically changed the ‘use of land’. Agriculture and transport – yes, roads and railways have a huge impact – have changed the very nature of what’s going on on a considerable portion of the Earth’s surface.
We’ve dramatically changed the composition of the atmosphere. And I’m not talking about CO2 yet. CFCs, pesticides, NOx and SOx gases, etc., etc….
And, last but not least, we’ve reversed a trend which had been going on for hundreds of millions of years. Photosynthesis used to transform atmospheric CO2 into organic matter, some of which has been steadily accumulated as coal and crude oil.

So, about which changes should we worry first?

Or, in SITG terms, whose skin should bear the brunt of change?

Ours or our children’s?

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Categories Bounded rationality, Choices we make, cooperation, evolution, Frames of mind, limited rationality, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, Politically induced fragility, The kind of world we are building for our children

Manipulation as a masturbatory practice.

January 28, 2017 //
2

Both are done ‘by hand’.

Apparently, any likeness between these two stops here.

But, if you pull back in earnest, the ugly thing becomes unraveled.
Not only that it is masturbatory, aka self-inflicted, (political) manipulation should also be classified as sado-masochistic.

Manipulation, as a process, can be examined from two perspectives.
A social one and an individual one.
Now, that everybody knows that ‘manipulation is bad for you‘, any individual who allows themselves to be manipulated into anything must suffer from a masochistic disorder while those who actively manipulate others must be cold blooded sadists.
On the social side, since time and time again manipulation has been proven to have had dangerous consequences, any community that sees any form of manipulation as an acceptable practice must have certain suicidal tendencies. Aka suffer from a ‘social form’ of masochistic disorder. While those who manipulate must be, themselves, cold blooded sadists.

As for being masturbatory, something which is brought upon one self by their own hand, that is almost as evident as Polichinelle’s secret:

Bona-fide politics, that made in earnest, involves open discussion between those who are going to be affected by the decisions and those who propose and support them. Discussions which take place before each major decision is made, during its implementation and after its consequences have started to be felt. The interaction between the politicians and the general public is direct, unmediated.
In Nassim Taleb’s terms, in this situation the politicians have their own ‘skin in the game‘.

Which results ‘risk management’ policy which is the complete opposite of the one adopted by those who believe themselves to be insulated from the consequences of their own actions.

The manipulators, on the other hand, window-dress themselves and the propositions they make. Their goal being not as much to contribute to the well being of their community as to ‘sell to the public’ whatever their minds have been focused on, at that moment. They consider manipulation to be a legitimate tool either because they are not fully aware of the great dangers involved or because they have convinced themselves that they will be forever exempt from contributing to the  the eventual price.
Meanwhile, those who allow themselves to be manipulated either do not realize they are being manipulated or have adopted ‘cynicism as a refuge’ in order to mitigate the cognitive dissonance that is eating away their self esteem.

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing was true… The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”

Please note that in this situation the interaction is no longer direct. The manipulator and the manipulated do not ‘touch’ each-other. Therefore neither knows exactly what the other has in mind.
The interaction is mediated by symbols. Which are ‘photo-shopped’ by the manipulators and, sometimes ‘admiringly’, accepted by the manipulated.

It’s exactly this lack of direct contact between the manipulators and the manipulated which determines the whole thing.
The manipulators are, simultaneously, unaware of the true situation and growingly convinced of their ‘impunity’.
The manipulated have initial difficulties in determining that they are subjected to manipulation and, in a second stage, the impression that there is nothing left to be done about the whole thing.

When, eventually, the consequences catch up with both of them, it is usually too late for anything else but ‘damage control’.

People regret that they didn’t wise up earlier, promise themselves they’ll never let something like that happen to them… and forget. Until the next time.

Manipulation: useful tool, mortal sin or what?!?

Hannah Arendt Explains How Propaganda Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Morality: Insights from The Origins of Totalitarianism

Masochistic Personality Disorder

Secret de Polichinelle

Cognitive dissonance

Karma

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Categories authoritarianism, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, corruption, effective communication, man induced fragility, Mutual Respect, Psychology, The kind of world we are building for our children, Trust

The middle class, a functional rather than pecuniary definition.

March 30, 2016 //
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st_2015-12-09_middle-class-03

 

“Middle income or middle class?

The terms “middle income” and “middle class” are often used interchangeably. This is especially true among economists who typically define the middle class in terms of income or consumption. But being middle class can connote more than income, be it a college education, white-collar work, economic security, owning a home, or having certain social and political values. Class could also be a state of mind, that is, it could be a matter of self-identification (Pew Research Center, 2008, 2012).”

OK, so even those who rely heavily on money as an indicator for who belongs to the middle class concede that there are other connotations to the concept.

Let’s consider the situation from a functionalist point of view. As in how the members of  various social strata react to the day to day challenges of the normal life.

‘Day to day’ meaning not only ‘normal’ things – waking up and brushing your teeth – but also things that we wish will never happen, although all of us know they are ‘normal’ occurences. A car accident, a broken leg or even having three children in one go when you were praying for one.

Usually the wealthy take them in one stride, those belonging to the middle class manage to cope – sometimes welcoming some help from their friends, relatives or even insurance company, while the really poor almost certainly sink under the burden. But not always.
Sometimes even the wealthiests loose it when faced with adversities they were not accustomed with while some of the poorest find it in themselves to rise from the ashes.

Then how about setting a slightly different system of ‘classes’: the extremely resilient, the ‘middle class’ and the very fragile?

As a rule of thumb it’s true that a certain amount of wealth does miracles when some resilience is needed so, roughly,  these two classifications look more or less the same, but, on a qualitative rather than quantitative level, we are speaking of two different things here.
When we are speaking of ‘money’ we are dealing mainly in ‘resources’ while when we’re speaking about resilience we have to take into account the attitude of the concerned individuals. It is true that the above mentioned attitude is, more often than not, heavily influenced by the affluence of the respective individuals but the function is hardly a direct one.

Based on these considerations – and on my personal experience of dealing with people, I’m going to propose the following synopsis.

The ‘resilient’ are those convinced they are able to cope, more or less on their own, with almost everything life can throw at them. Unfortunately some of them grow ‘spiritual callouses’, simply because they have never experienced any real hardships.
Or because they have over-compensated after dealing with those hardships, sometimes after succeeding to do so without receiving significant outside help.

The ‘fragile’ are those who, by lack of material resources, spiritual stamina or both,  behave more like leafs driven by the wind than like masters of their own fate – as every human being should.

By now you’ve probably figured out that  ‘my middle class’ is composed of individuals who have a certain degree of resilience but who, on the other hand, are perfectly aware that there are things on this world that they wouldn’t be able to face on their own.

In a sense, possession of money – or other resources, ‘encourages’ an individual to reveal his true nature.
If a person is naturally inclined to grow ‘callouses’ then being ‘insulated’ from the outside world by a thick wad of money will provide him with enough space to let those callouses grow but if his skin is ‘in the game’ then those callouses will be constantly shaven while interacting with his peers.
But if the stakes of the game are very meager – and the insulation provided to the players by their respective possessions is practically nonexistent,  then instead of growing callouses most of the players will be rubbed raw during the intercourse. Mind you, neither  the ‘stakes of the game’ nor the ‘individual possessions’ need to necessarily be of a strictly material nature.

In conclusion, the ‘callously resilient’ will tend to mind to their own – simply because their sensitivity towards the outside world is dampened by their callouses, the ‘fragile’ will tend to mind to their own raw wounds while those belonging to the ‘middle class’ will be the only ones really interested in maintaining the well being of the social organism. The one to which they ‘knowingly’ belong.
Because they are the only ones with enough time/energy/resources on their hands to consider the matter, the real interest to do so and the willingness to put some effort into this endeavour.

pent up anger

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Categories Choices we make, collective identity, cooperation, Frames of mind, limited rationality, Mutual Respect, Psychology

Is there any conflict between capitalism and democracy?

March 21, 2016 //
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It depends on the meanings we attach to these two concepts.

Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s ex finance minister, is convinced that ‘Capitalism will eat democracy – unless we speak up.‘

Since he has some experience in this matter I’ll follow his line of thinking – for a while.

His point being that you can have successful capitalism in undemocratic societies – like Singapore and China – and that effective power has slowly shifted from the political sphere of the society to the economic one – which is undemocratic by definition.

Can’t say he’s entirely wrong, can we?

But we can say he’s somewhat confused…
So, he mentions Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore and China as capitalistic success stories and then says that  the political sphere is gradually falling  under the yoke of the economic one… Well, last time I looked, in China the state was still in full control of everything that moved and the state was firmly in the hands of the politicians. Same thing was happenning during Yew’s tenure as Singapore’s good willed dictator.

Unfortunately there is some truth in his words when we look at what’s going on on the both sides of the Atlantic and that’s why I’m going to examine whether we have the same kind of capitalism in both situations.

By Google-ing the word I got two definitions for the concept.

The first definition that was offered by the search engine came from Oxford Dictionaries, “An economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state” and the second one came from Merriam Webster: capitalism is “an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market“.

Putting them together we have private ownership, private decision, free market and profit as a goal.

Are these enough to describe a reasonably well functioning economic system?
I’m afraid not.

Let me give you some examples.
The French state has a controlling interest in Renault and the land of Bavaria quite a sizeable one in VW. Renault is in good shape and VW was too, until very recently. So private ownership is not an absolute necessity.
In the US we had quite an interesting situation. Two out of the three big car manufacturers  had to be bailed out by the state. All three were privately owned so we must look somewhere else: the Ford family still has a powerful word in the management of the single one which didn’t had to be bailed out. In Europe the best run auto company seems to be BMW – again controlled by a single family, the Quandt’s. It seems that it helps a lot if those who call the shots have a long time interest in the well being of the company versus the situation in which the top management has (short time) profit as the single/obsessive target.
Coming back to Renault and VW, they can be compared to Singapore, China and, maybe, Spain. Singapore was able to develop a ‘capitalistic’ economy despite it being an authoritarian society simply because Lee Kuan Yew was a very special kind of ‘dictator’ – one that not only cared sincerely for the greater good of his people but also didn’t loose his head during his long stage at the helm. A similar thing happened in Spain – Franco was the sole dictator who had made preparations for a democratic evolution after his demise, while China had to wait for another good-willed dictator to grab the power – Deng Xiao Ping – before it could steer towards the present course. No other authoritarian regimes but these two have ever managed to replicate this feat – we still have to wait a little before pronouncing Vietnam as the third, and very few other publicly owned companies fare so good as Renault does.

So, we have rather strong evidence suggesting that ‘skin in the game‘ trumps blind insistence on short time profit and that a free, democratic, society offers greater chances for economic development than a authoritarian one. In fact the politicians that need periodic confirmation from the people they govern do have some skin in the game while the authoritarians are in a position that is somehow equivalent to that of the CEO’s of the huge corporations whose stock owners are so disspersed that practically don’t count much – the members of the board practically slap each-other on the back and are able to do practically what they want with the companies. Look what happened at GM, Chrysler and, for example, ENRON.

But how free should be that society in order for capitalism to thrive?

Could it be so free that a guy could come from the street and claim your house as being his own? No?

So we need a free but orderly society. One where private property changes hands only when its owner says so – or has previously entered into a contract which stipulates that in certain conditions that transfer has to take place.

Meaning that in order to have a functioning capitalist society we need not only private ownership but also private owners who have enough trust in each other to start making business together.

You see, the feudal lords of the Dark Ages did have a lot of private property but capitalism couldn’t take hold in earnest as long as the (absolute) monarch could strip a man of his property and give it to somebody else. They couldn’t enter into (longish time) contracts because the era was dominated by huge uncertainties regarding various aspects of the social and economic life.

In fact it is exactly this well tempered freedom that is the crux of functional capitalism. Enough freedom so that everybody could feel confident that he is his own master but tempered by rules enforced in a pwerfully enough manner to give everybody sufficient trust that most contracts will be executed faithfully.

In this sense for capitalism to work properly we need to have a market that is free in more dimensions that one.

It has to be free from political intrusion in the sense that the government should leave it alone as a rule of thumb but also that the same government should keep it free from becoming cornered by a single group of interests.
In fact there is no difference from a market that is run by a governmental agency or by a monopolistic corporation – no matter if the latter is private. As soon as decision making becomes concentrated in too few hands mistakes starts happening. And their effect accumulate until the system finally collapse. Or is dismantled by some ‘exasperated’ more powerful agency – as Standard Oil and  ‘Ma Bell’ were dismantled by the US government. Which, by doing so, created the premises for  the huge development of those two respective markets – oil and communications.

Only this freedom of the markets can seldom be preserved by an authoritarian regime. Yew’s Singapore and contemporary China are exceptions, not the rule. Most authoritarian regimes cannot resist temptation and start meddling in the economic life of their countries. By doing so, they introduce a lot of ‘noise’ into the system. Eventually, this noise drowns the useful signals and ‘blinds’ the decision makers.

Same thing happens – and here Varoufakis has a valid point – when economic agents become so powerful that they can dominate the policy makers. The politicians can no longer preserve a balanced stance towards the economy and give in to ‘special interests’. This way the markets loose their freedom, with all the malign consequences that come with this situation. Among them, the lack of trust that slowly creeps in the souls of those who have to do business in the no longer free markets. Which lack of trust is very bad for all those involved.

And another thing about which Varoufakis is absolutely right. A lot of money are not being moved through the ‘front doors’. Not that they are not invested at all but because they are kept somewhat hidden they do not contribute as much to the well being of the world economy as they could/should.

– 2.1 $ trillion have been accumulated, as of  October 2015, in off shore accounts by the top 500 American companies in order to avoid taxes and
– Between $21 an $32 trillion have been hiding in 2012 in various offshore jurisdictions.

Why is that? Simply because those who are called to decide about these money do not ‘trust’ that by bringing these money home and by investing them there, after paying the taxes, will be able to generate profits equivalent to those produced by leaving them off shore?

So what should we do? Tell them ‘democratically’, by electing somebody who is crazy enough to implement such a measure, to bring them home? Or even  confiscate them, one way or another?

I’m afraid that here I part again ways with Mr. Varoufakis. And with Aristotle: the way I see it democracy is not ‘the constitution in which the free and the poor, being in majority, control government‘. That would be ‘mob rule’.
A truly democratic process starts before the vote. When every stakeholder can make its point known to those who are going to cast a ballot so they’ll be able to do that having a reasonably clear understanding about what’s going on.

Frankly I’d rather rephrase Varoufakis’ message. ‘Corporatism has a tendency to disembowel democracy and transform it into ‘mob rule’ – the situation where the poor are no longer that free simply because they are convinced through ‘unholy’ methods to vote one way or another.

What can be done? Explain, loud and clear, that if jobs disappear the same thing will happen with the aggregate demand?
Explain that by giving their workers as little money as they can in reality the results are way worse than if the wages were as high as the companies could afford?
Ford didn’t give his workers more money because he loved them but simply because he had understood that in the long run he would be better off himself by doing this, you know!

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Categories 1989 and the Global Financial Crisises., authoritarianism, Choices we make, democracy, Economy, Frames of mind, limited rationality, Money as goal, Mutual Respect, Politically induced fragility, Rule of Law, The kind of world we live in

Loose ends

September 26, 2014 //
0

This morning I came across a Stratfor analysis.
Two brief excerpts:

“This influence, especially among Sunni locals in not just Iraq but also Syria, will be critical if Turkey is going to be able to manage the jihadist threat long after the United States declares mission accomplished and moves on.”
“Not only does Turkey feel that it will have to deal with the mess in Syria long after other stakeholders have moved on, it also knows that the United States expects Turkey to manage the Syrians as well as other regional matters. Turkey has not forgotten how, during the days of President Turgut Ozal, Ankara cut Iraq’s export pipeline in 1990 at the behest of the United States in the run-up to the 1991 Gulf War but was later left with the aftermath as promises of aid disappeared with the subsequent change of U.S. administrations. This bitter experience informed Turkey’s 2003 decision to refuse Washington access to Turkish territory for a northern invasion of Iraq. At the same time Turkey is deeply worried about being caught between Saudi Arabia and Iran, who are engaged in a vicious proxy sectarian war.”

Am I wrong in detecting here a fresh understanding?
About the need for genuine effort to tie all loose ends that were caused while solving a problem before declaring that problem solved?

You can read the whole article here, it is well worth the effort:

“Turkey Must Tread Carefully Against Islamic State is republished with permission of Stratfor.”

 

 

 

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Categories politics, Respect Mutual., The kind of world we live in
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