not just that mubarak just went on holiday to sinai (i maintain my expectations on the subject). apparently he just took off with the country’s fortune.
but that’s not the only thing that apparently is old stuff. i also learned that a lot of my work has already been done, from another angle, by the influence of neural darwinism. there are many parallels to what i have been building, with a major difference. i use a more mathematical and physical definition of how information is represented, whereas this formulation is more empirical, coming from medical science which uses different methods.
there is a strong parallel, especially towards subjectivity and how subjectivity emerges in connected networks. i recommend checking out this interview with edelman about this subject. there are many other models on neural networks, and what i’ve been writing isn’t very original beyond the fact that it has sociological outlines beyond the simple pattern recognition. anyway, i’m not planning on sending my work to sinai anyway, but it’s always good to know the existing ideas.
we’ve been having several discussions over at _42 about astrology, mayan astrology, blood type divination and so on. i thought i’d give my opinion on it. i’m going with astrology because i know a bit about it. it is also coinciding with the every-now-and-then wave of “astrology is bullshit” in the media, followed by an uproar of astrologers and other like minded mystics.
but i am not going to talk about how it is wrong, scientifically speaking. let’s be clear. there is no evidence backing astrology whatsoever. read this paper if you want to know more about it, or just google science blogs for it.
this is about a different thing. let’s forget the fact that we are dealing with something that isn’t “real”, in a scientific sense, i.e., there is no possible physical connection between the stars and our own fate. to quote carl sagan, the gravitational effect of mars is nowhere near as big as the effect of the doctor that conducts the birth. most forces in nature fall with r² anyway. but as i said before, we are not driven by fact alone. human beings have other, sometimes more important, ways of asserting truth and falsehood. i call them stories, but they are mostly a way of testing each individual’s cognitive bubble.
to an individual that believes astrology is true, it will be true, not because it is factually correct, but because in their own mind it is true. a falsehood it may be, but since this individual is not willing to question its beliefs, a side effect of confirmation bias and cherry picking, it will work to prove its own perception anyway, regardless of what is testable.
so that individual will conduct its life like as usual, but using astrology as a tool like every other, regardless of whether it is real or not. faith, superstition, are all part of this human tendency to be uncritical. but in practice, being critical is not only rare, it is even misunderstood.
so someone that believes they don’t get along with a leo will, once they know someone is a leo, feel an instinctive, irrational, preconceived notion about that individual. this is a seed for prejudice. prejudice on who they are, what they do, and sometimes, even on how they live and they love. but if the two individuals engaged in this interaction share the misconception, i.e., believe in astrology, they will also believe that there is something beyond them that unites them. in a way, it will promote togetherness more than it would in some other case. in this case, the prejudice is a positive one. like arranged marriages in india, if an astrological culture is ingrained enough, and the fact that individuals share a common (yet false) belief, allows for that belief to have measurable effects on reality. one of my favorites is when two people are attracted to each other, they will cherry pick compatibility points between their signs, and once their relationship gets into trouble, it gets blamed again on some cherry picked points on their chart. the job of the chart itself is neutral. it is an endless pool of nonsense to justify intolerance and self worth.
but this makes astrology real, in the sense that its effects are measurable, but not true, in the sense that it is not the cause of the effect. the cause of the effect is human subjectivity itself. so the effect of astrology is there, but astrology itself is meaningless in this process. it could be zodiac, but it could also be blood types (very popular in japan but not elsewhere), mayan astrology, or just race or hair color.
now, this is interesting and overlooked. critical thinkers will respond to astrology believers with facts, numbers, even by doing simple tests (like the one me and a guest did, by trying to guess each other’s sign, coming out worse than a coin toss). but the fact is that astrology itself, being a story, has little to do with facts. someone that has accepted it as true for years in their life will have tremendous difficulty accepting that it is false. so much, in fact, that realizing it is not true is not enough to change the opinion of the involved. this is smugged as ignorance by critical thinkers. but what are they offering in return? what is to replace years of study of the harmony of the stars and their relationships, how mars in taurus is so different from it being in gemini? how do we tell someone that believes they are on an earthly mission given by the celestial divine, mapped out in constellations and orbits, that in fact they are just another human being on a mote of dust?
this is why we fail. this is why i fail whenever i bring up the facts on some long held belief. i have nothing to replace it with. it reminds me of the native american (and chinese) proverb tell me and i will forget, show me and i will learn, involve me and i will understand. showing and telling are easy. this is what i do. and it might even seed doubt in faithful minds. but i can never inject my years of scientific inquiry, or my deep understanding of the marvels of nature. they would have to walk with me, all those years, to understand how astrology is bullshit and how the world is better without it.
but in doing so, they would become a copy of myself, and i couldn’t learn a single new thing from a cognitive clone. talking with like minded people is, essentially, talking to oneself, a covert narcissism. it is easy to out these things as rubbish. what is hard is to understand them, why they exist, why they are necessary, and, more importantly, what can we offer that is a good alternative to it. i called it exuberantism, but there are many ways. but the most important thing is not to dismiss false beliefs entirely, since your employer might some day fire you because of some coming quadrature on his business.
with the ongoing riots throughout the arab world, like yemen or egypt, and an ongoing revolution in tunisia, some of our terms might not apply. when arab nations are better at citizenship, communist nations better at capitalism, and capitalist nations better at oligarchy and feudalism, we can’t use old words that easily, nor our old stereotypes.
so the real free media can now be found in the colonies and the arab world, places where the supposed autocrats wouldn’t let it exist. hell, even wikileaks is led by an australian. and wikileaks was instrumental in these revolutions, as was social media.
these countries remind us of how it is like to rebel, like most european countries (and the us) did, a long time ago. what i am skeptical about is what will be implemented. will these countries use liberal democracy? i would expect liberal democracy as the choice for government, after all people just want new shiny things, unblocked facebook and iphones. if they do, then it’s just a matter of a couple of years until they become part of the oligarchy’s peasants. if, on the contrary, they choose a left wing democracy like what is happening in south america, then maybe, just maybe, it could work and transform the way the world works. let’s see how the new bribes that will come work with the new governments.
so far, the places that have resisted the bribes have done so on nationalist superiority, native pride, and, to some extent, racism (see china). the ones that, on the other hand, chose to join the “global economy” carelessly, became just another peasant on the oligarch’s land.
like the roman empire, that transformed into the catholic church to survive (the pope is the pontifex maximus, which was the title for the roman emperors), the authoritarian regimes are transforming too. the ruler portrait on every home and store is dated now. it is being replaced slowly, and the countries that still live it, like tunisia or egypt, are overthrowing it.
but this is a necessary transition to maintain power. we no longer have a portrait of our ruler in our homes in europe. but we have the jeans, the computers, the music and the stereotypes anyway.
so like the roman empire changed its domain from force to religion, the oligarchy is changing its power from political rule to economic rule. religion is no longer necessary. politics is no longer necessary. consumerism is the new opiate of the masses. so little has changed in essence. as usual, something has to change so everything stays the same.
but i do love these moments where naive citizens fight back, and still wish for a day when their desire is not for democracy, but for something entirely new and unheard of. but where are the other voices? who ever thought a liberal demoracy would become the best thing a liberated people would strive for? where are the new voices for different ways of organizing society?
today, something completely different. the clip has bagpipes anyway so i didn’t break any chain (background song in the end is bagpipes in the bunker).
this is Nico’s tribute to SPCC. he stayed there for 10 days and filmed amazing footage. so he generously decided to make a short documentary about the place. all i have to say is that it is an amazing tribute to what went there. make sure you send him praise through vimeo or other networks.
for anyone who followed the “SPCC saga”, here’s a good picture of the good side of things, of how amazing it all was when we weren’t getting on with our mundane issues. how we made our dreams come true every day with nothing more than will power.
i’m slightly concerned about the slow erosion of interest in wikileaks. the us have now asked for the personal information of all twitter followers of the wikileaks account, including a member of the icelandic parliament. even though twitter refused, this is a new, and even more concerning, perspective. not only the people publishing are being prosecuted, even though they are protected by international an national laws, but even people that read the said documents are now in danger of being put in threat lists, no fly lists, interrogation lists, etc. so not only publishing is a crime, but reading is too.
but what concerns me is not that a state is using every possible way to maintain control over its citizens and neutralize every threat to the status quo. that’s very common historically. i could go back only 40 years in the history of my country to see it play exactly the same way. maybe the us were just a bit naive, thinking a state could ever be different that every other tried in human societies. their rebellion from europe is nowhere to be seen anymore even though other countries still see it as a land of freedom. the power structures are the same, and so are the vices, including their own separatist terrorist groups, popularized recently by yet another shooting. this is, just like most european countries, just another sad truth about democracy that people continue to ignore.
what is worrying is that nothing happens. nobody is being prosecuted for the crimes published, nobody has stood up for the defense of the publishers, and especially, no state has intervened to stop the sweden/us love affair that is going on, or the fact that sweden is deliberately denying rights to someone so that the us can prosecute them. or that the us have kept a citizen under solitary confinement for 6 months without trial (also illegal according to international law).
i expected it, and as i see it unfold, it is almost too surreal. business as usual. we have crossed the bounds of legality and proven there is no such thing. laws are made to starve the hungry and feed the elites. if freedom of speech exists, it exists only to allow those in power to say the most obscene, down right horrible things, and to leave those that question them and seek the truth helpless in their own demise. it is not a crime for a president to decree a genocide but it is a crime for a citizen to denounce it.
how could we fix it? how could we pretend to want to live in such a world? how could we possibly believe that living in such a system would allow us to change it from the inside? it is a joke. fighting for a better society through standard politics and law is a joke. all judges are bought by money, influence or even just blood ties. all power remains in the hands of the few.
there is no future in the society we’ve constructed. i’ve been saying this for too long. we can do better. our failure as “good people” is to try to change a “bad system”. let it be bad and let it go on in a downwards spiral until it self destructs. let’s focus on building something independent and good. a place where law is for the common good, where power is for the best decision, a place where fame and power is not a goal but a consequence of ones devotion to a cause.
it isn’t hard to build these places. we’ve done a few so far with nothing more than our will power and bare hands. but it takes everyone to stop allowing this to happen. and i’m not naive to think it will.
the most oppressed are the ones that are the most essential to society. but when a farmer sells his food, or i sell my work, i do not care who it is sold to. this leads to an unfair advantage on the ruling class side. they have more money, they will always guarantee their own survival, because money doesn’t show the blood stains it costs.
so what would happen if a farmer was to refuse selling to rich? what would happen if i was to refuse to code immoral apps? what would happen if we decided not to be hypocrites for survival? a sure social collapse. but we can’t. we can’t because we are too afraid we’ll lose what we have. and yes, one could argue we can strive to have nothing. but almost no one is capable of that anymore. i know i’m just as guilty.
one could argue we must change everyone’s life. i don’t. i’m tired of this nonsense of everyone trying to force everyone else into being part of some kind of utopian political system, just because they were brought up or read that that would be a perfect society. no. this is exactly what is wrong. that we don’t leave each other alone. we don’t let differences be differences, we don’t let people be people. what unites us as humans is the fact that we can’t agree on anything. from the color of our shirts to the music we should hear, all the way to the food we eat and the people we love.
we force everyone into being part of a big mess called a globalized society. we use all tools possible. markets, politics, laws, bills of rights, music. everything because we want to spread our own personal “we them” mentality, our own narrow minded view of a problem and our specific solution that is inapplicable to other societies.
the problem is that we want to fix what is none of our business. that we want to have what isn’t ours. that we want more of what we don’t need.
like an old troubadour from the countryside used to say, playing his junkyard guitar made of a petrol tank, the only problem is that everyone wants to live without doing any work.
it would be easy to “steer” this behemoth away. all our upperclass activists would remain in their bubbles, no loss, all gain. but that’s exactly what sinks the ship. the fact that the ship itself is poorly designed. you can steer it in any direction, it will still sink.
we are seeing an erosion of all the rights fought for in the past century, and a slow return to feudalism, this time as a capitalist oligarchy. and all activism seems focused on specifics, instead of referring to the big elephant in the room. has it gotten so big that people don’t know there are other ways to live?
why aren’t we building cities with our bare hands like our ancestors, and making them resilient enough to be an example? why are we all trying to be neutral, when neutrality is systematically instrumentalized by our rulers and employers?
we need city states again, resilient so that nobody starves while refusing to sell to the highest bidder. we must learn to refuse business. to refuse selling our work forgetting about morals, selling our research for grant money, selling our crops for blood money.
i’m not naive. i know it is not going to happen. that’s why we started the places we started, and that’s why i won’t stop. i have seen a better world in the communities we lived in. they don’t scale up, but they can be independently applied.
i’ll be continuing this topic when we unravel the series on things. for now, just a silly bagpipe with a king’s head on it, i found it appropriate.