El oceano existencial

Si las personas en realidad navegamos el oceano existencial buscando propósito y
comprehensión. Igual lo hacemos en navíos construidos de nuestras experiencias y
creencias acumuladas durante nuestras vidas. Nos compartimos planos para
embarcaciones gigantes o veleritos ágiles y quizás alguien habrá diseñado algún
submarino espiritual.

Quizás alguíen en algún momento decidió que existimos para procrearnos, el mismo
habrá construido un baco poligamista donde la tribú debe cuidar los niños en
conjunto. Para ellos la infertilidad habrá sido el peor posible fracaso. En
cambio, los 10 mandamientos de Moises restringen el cambio de curso y es un barco
dirigido hacia un destino prescrito por alguna deidad idílica; algún tipo de proa
construida en función de los materiales disponibles y el espíritu que habrá
regido en esa época.

De esa manera entiendo que aquellas construcciones donde la razón no es la pura
substancia del navío que toma forma sobre la autocrítica y la experimentación
contra la realidad del oceano son por construcción ineficientes. El catolicismo,
el Tao y el islám no pueden jamás justificarse intentando evitar el naufrago con
sus parchos de lógica y directivas en conflicto, no sólo entre sí, sino también
con la realidad que navegan, inconscientes de la resistencia que les presenta en
su viaje.

Fermi's Paradox and it's insights outside of space-time

The jury is still out on the exact probability with which civilizations arise in a galaxy, but Fermi's paradox is a very true, and important question.

After science feels confident on a more precise estimate for the probability of the development of civilization, and we have either: evidence of other civilizations, or a more accurate calculation of what is expected, I believe the results may be used in connection with the Simulation Argument. That is: If we never find extra-terrestrial life, it should a strong argument to believe we are running inside a simulation.

Yes, I am aware fermi's paradox, and the simulation argument are rather orthogonal, but you must accept there is at least SOME interplay here.

I remember the first time I was challenged to respond: "Why is there something rather than nothing"

I was about 16, and started my answer with: "Why not?"; its been an interesting progression since then. I had just read Stephan Hawkings' Brief History of time, so I was repeating these very notions. Later on, discussing with my grandfather how the anthropic principal was just misguided reasoning. I guess conscious atheists go through this process of liberation and humanization; an emotional situation Andre Comte-Sponville refers to as Joyful Despair.

I Love Life

Its amazing how reality can just dig deep into your bones and wrench existence itself up to the border of your skin, where it sizzles and raises your hairs to the tone of electrified stem cell marrow!

That delicate balance of breathing; of self-awareness, of being able to fight for confirmation of your own objective presence.

To me life is here for its own sake, existence is self-contained, each day is a self-endowed gift to be shared and cherished.

I live to fight, i fight to live, I live to think, I think therefore I am, and I am here to share myself, this glorious day, and this glorious life; no mater how short with who ever chooses to listen; and I will tell you this: I am in love with living, its an intoxicating experience to see the sun rise each day and fuel this greenhouse paradise of bonsai pets and thousand year old oaks!

Book Idea

I have an idea for a book:

Life, throughout death. A chain of events (though a thousand years) in which a begger's exists changed the future world as we know it.

Would you read it?

Of Karma and Justice

First of all, it is important to agree that Justice involves interactions within a group, in a world of 1 justice makes little sense. This would suggest a definition of Justice along the lines of:

Justice is achieved through the optimization of individual well-being throughout the group, i.e. maintaining each individual's well being near the mean of the group.

Game theory, would suggest that in a changing dynamic world, with limited, yet growing resources; the reality of Justice as a virtue allows the group (a species) to profit from behavior such as empathy, and self-sacrifice; which would explain how said emotions have become embedded within many species throughout evolutionary time.

Karma expresses the flow of well-being towards achieving Justice as it relates our evolved emotional responses to events and our actions. It is similar to keeping count of standard deviations from the mean.

Many ways of achieving justice have bean thought out; most religions deal extensively on the subject as do all political systems. In the end; justice as something more complex than even the simplest cooperative games is NP - complete and we will continue forever changing and optimizing our laws and beliefs regarding our communal well-being to our current situations.

As sentient being, I agree the pursuit of justice is a responsibility we hold to ourselves, it is crucial to our survival.

Heart Broken

I remember telling someone, on her porch one afternoon: "That's because you have never really had your heart broken, and I will do my best so it never is."

Although I consider the promise was kept, it's easy to falter and maybe believe an impeccable heart to be an unwanted gift. There is a story of an old man whose' wounded, grieving heart he would not trade for that of a boy. A beautifully intact heart which was so naively boasted through the town; the story ends with the boy giving the old man a piece of the suddenly incomplete organ, and is an analogy of giving one's self in love.

In that boys eyes, and specially in these times, Love is a sentiment too often confused with desire, and self-adorement (narcissism), so the phrase: 'you must loose something to understand its real worth' urges one to believe a heart must be broken / given before one can understand its value, yet I believe in empathy. Time has bestowed upon life an infinitely powerful tool of comprehension, of understanding reality not only though our own eyes, but from those around us, of allowing us to share the responsibility of a better world.

It could be argued, that empathy is the root emotion behind the search for Justice (in another post, I quote a French philosopher who state Justice is an invention of man, and as such a responsibility of man unto himself.) So, if Love is a sentiment to be put to good use it must be born though Empathy, Comprehension, Dedication, Patience and Understanding, it must be a sentiment of Sharing, of reciprocal Trust and Cooperative Growth.

I recently heard a song: "What is love without lust" (La Roux - In For The Kill) and its something little short of coming from the black bible and a willingness to over-weigh self-adulation, self-fulfillment above all other things.

In that sense, and living through heart-breaks myself, there will always be choices in life. Choosing to be heart broken, is just as selfish as choosing lust. Evolution has seen to it so that our empathy, and sense of justice, prohibit us from attaining happiness if not through what we have identified as the virtues of life.

Some references:

• LifeScience - Study: People Literally Feel Pain of Others
• Roots of Empathy
• BBC News - Monkeys show sense of justice
• Shareable - Birds do It. Bats do It.
• Love of All Wisdom - Can justice make you happy?
• Suite101 - The Psychopath Antisocial
• Wikipedia - Psycopathy

The Venus Project

Watch live video from Zeitgeist-TV on Justin.tv

It took me a long time to view the Zeitgeist videos, the first one, is a sensationalist exposition of the obvious to me; the second video is rather a critique on the current money system that presents Jacque Fresco and the Venus Project. I find myself agreeing deeply with him, on several fronts, and his ideas far more radical than my own. I'm not sure a 'resource economy' is anywhere close to being achievable. I might believe, we will someday get there, or something very similar to that position, but I see only one serious flaw in his ideas: he gives too much credit to man's intelligence, and seems overly optimistic on man's necesity to advance.

I unfortunately believe that most men, like most other animals, are short sighted brutes who will work for food. This is normal, natural and not meant to be demeaning to our species. This applies to both those who are working for their food, and the elite who does not have to. They are both, as human, too short sighted to understand and care enough for these views. I believe we first need to make every human, at least as smart as him.

Is religion the father of science

Is religious persecution the cause of the formal structure of the scientific method?

Is the fact that it was prohibited to talk about the final cause of reality and 'experiments' the clarifying condition that left us with a 'pure' scientific method?

The dynamics of human behavior, and the unpredictability of complex systems is rather fun. What this would mean, essentially, is that the dark ages cannot be viewed as a setback in humanity. The Renaissance, the scientific method and modern society as we know it, is irrevocably causally connected to this 'incubation' period for humanity and leads me to my definitions for good and evil.

José Abreu’s wish

Este video es algo senchillamente asombroso; me llena de felicidad, honor y orgullo de ser humano. Nuestra capacidad de compasion y sentimiento es hermosa. Video de promosion" Pagina Web del Blog

Canciones por una de las orquestas:

Definition - Maturity

I'm planning on starting a series of posts in which I'll simply write my personal definition for some words.. followed by some sort of quip.

Maybe this will be fun, lighthearted and profound?.. :D Any words requests you might have, or want to know what thoughts they trigger for me?

First experimental word:

Maturity: A complex landscape of peaks and valleys over the surface of social interaction. Said landscape is a function of net utility rendered to self and society over the area of all possible interaction scenarios.

Personality, foresight and past experience in general allow us to maximize said utility. The perceived mean height of this graph is more commonly used to call a person either mature or immature.

How is maturity related to play?!

Why are we more dishonest now?

Why are we more dishonest in the twentieth century, than the nineteenth?



Because we have oversimplified man's social behavior. Economist's models of the human mind, and the trickling of said model to the rest of our interactions have led to 'incentive systems' that override an older finer grained set of social cooperative regulators that have been genetically embedded in most of us.



This means that: 'Man as a rational beast will cheat or steal in so far as it is worth the risk'. Now thinks our elite, now think all of us. This simplification has been useful in laying a foundation for more elaborate treatise, theory and social-economic policies; but fortunately for us, the flaws are readily visible and as we continue to perfect our theories, these views are changing.



Behavioral economics, led by people like Dan Ariely (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X68dm92HVI&feature=sdig&et=1243083222.49, http://web.mit.edu/ariely/www/MIT/Papers/dishonesty.pdf) are working on fixing this, by bringing more accurate psychological models of human behavior into economic predictions and economic policy making.



So: books like Freakanomics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freakonomics), as popular as they may be, still miss a very important point: It's not just about money!!!!

Sobre la muerte de Mario Benedetti

"La humanidad ha perdido alguien increíble"

Eso me parece estar al revés! El egoísmo detrás de eso. De querer sacarle más! De que quizás no lo hallamos aprovechado, de que en la humanidad hubo un talento, que nos pasó desapercibido, y ahora estamos arrepentidos de que no lo hallamos aprovechado!

Sabemos que la entropia siempre aumenta, y que las cosas mueren. Los insectos en dias, las personas en años, las familias en siglos, las civilizaciones en milenios, los planetas y las estrellas en un poco más.

Todo muere; hasta que resolvamos el famoso problema de la entropia, hasta el universo en sí esta condenado a fallecer. A mi entender: sucede que este mismo aspecto de la realidad (la segunda ley) nos provee con una dirección en el tiempo, una flecha constante que en esta realidad separa tan firmemente el futuro del pasado; la vida de la muerte.

Nos empuja a cambiar, a avanzar nuestras vidas; a sentir la firmeza de lo afianzado, de lo ya realizado. De lo que fue escrito; de nuestra historia, que me lleva a opinar que la muerte es tanto una bendición como la maldición que nuestro egoísmo e instintos nos sugieren.

Por eso quizás veo la muerte como un sello; a partir de este evento, todas las influencias del ente en cuestión son indirectas; y el ente a firmado todos sus hechos en el tapiz de la existencia.

Decir que se ha perdido algo cuando esta firma se establece me suena tan tonto, es un menosprecio de todo lo que SI hizo frente lo que hubiera quizás podido hacer a continuación o no.

Siempre debemos enfocar lo que SI fuera realizado y gozar de la continuación de esos hecho en el desencadenamiento de las mismas.

Que maravilla la existencia de Benedetti!
Sent via BlackBerry® device.

Are Human Beings Organisms Or Living Ecosystems?

Hugh Pickens writes "Every human body harbors about 100 trillion bacterial cells, outnumbering human cells 10 to one. There's been a growing consensus among scientists that bacteria are not simply random squatters, but organized communities that evolve with us and are passed down from generation to generation. 'Human beings are not really individuals; they're communities of organisms,' says microbiologist Margaret McFall-Ngai.

A ver, como logramos dejar de ser tan egoistas.
Me encanta la noción de que poco a poco iremos cambiando la manera en que pensamos. Y el ego vaya disminuyendo su influencia sobre nuestro pensar.

Me encanta aceptar que no somos el centro del sistema solar, ni de la galaxia, que hay muchos otros planetas como este, que el universo es un axidente, y que no hay un proposito predestinado para la existencia.

Verlo ahora en direccion inversa es igual de satisfactorio: no somos un cerebro racional y pensante, estamos afectados por hormonas y emociones, no somos fisicamente entidades únicas; nuestros cuerpos son una comunidad, cada celula es una fabrica que escoge que va a producir y tiene una copia completa de la comunidad.

Como leí una vez sobre los sistemas complejos: es perfectamente comprehensible que emergan sistemas complejos sobre otros sistemas. Con caracteristicas y cualidades que no se encuentran en el sistema base.

Asi somos, y nos consideramos quizas estar en el medio: que hay sistemas por arriba, y que hay sistemas por abajo. Pero no me sorprende que eventualmente conoscamos la magnitud de sistemas que hay por encima de nosotros. Lo pequeño que somos. Quien sabe...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/eoBKe-e6YOo/article.pl

Peter Reinhart: The art of baking bread

I simply loved the four ways to understand something. Oh god, we are such a dynamic species. Oh, there's even a mystical understanding towards bread baking. There are mystical interpretations to everything we do, isn't there.. :P even numbers: 7, 13, 21, 42, PI, PHI, E, I. The stars, the sky, the moon. It's all about mystically growing, and expanding ourselves. Cross references and cross pollination of thought. We are such a beautiful species.

Happiness depends on Freedom

A friend commented on a discussion she had with another friend whether or not freedom was a precondition towards happiness.

She commented on some points of the debate, and we then proceeded to have two other debates on the same subject, in which many opinions from different were presented.

Curiously enough, we all agreed that yes, it seems freedom is indeed required for happiness, at least the our species.

I'll sum up my own opinion, feel free to comment:

1. The human species, through evolutionary accident, developed an innate curiosity and 'un-satisfaction' that requires us to take action.
2. Freedom is the ability to successfully satisfy this "instinct"
3. The level to which we must explore, move about or act in order to satisfy "freedom" is genetically variable between humans, as well as there is evidence that it is physically extirpable, as seen with certain brain traumas
4. And, although the very same brain is moldable or educatable with societal requirements and actions are indeed individually interpreted though culture, the inability to satisfy the underlying physical instinct to explore does cause anxiety, and eventually unhappiness

Dan Gilbert: Exploring the frontiers of happiness

He starts off a little misguided (in my opinion, and as a later commenter points out), but then gets to very important core principals... Foresight its a doosy, ain't it?! :P

epigenetic -> genetic

It is confirmed by simulation that learned attributes (like responses to specific stimuli, or other aspects of behaviour) can be taken up into the genetic code base of a species.

The other day I was trying to find a particularly good example of this ever occurring in nature, but couldn't think of any.

I present the following possibility:
      Human curiosity.

I want to write a lot more on the subject, and present the references from where I get this idea, and how it branches / fits with other observations, but am a bit busy, anyone care to opine? help?

United Nation Report the Worlds current state and its ability to continue sustaining life as we know it.

"The human population of planet Earth is, in effect, maxed out on its credit cards and soon will have problems paying the mortgage. Unless concerted global efforts are made to address these mounting problems, GEO-4 concludes that we shall shortly pass the point of no return."

The authors—388 scientists reviewed by roughly 1,000 of their peers—view the report as "an urgent call for action" and decry the "woefully inadequate" global response to problems such as climate change. "The amount of resources needed to sustain [humanity] exceeds what is available," the report declares.

"The systematic destruction of the earth's natural and nature-based resources has reached a point where the economic viability of economies is being challenged," Achim Steiner, UNEP's executive director, said in a statement. "The bill we hand our children may prove impossible to pay."

Can you hear the cries of rationalized hate!

World-renowned geneticist draws fire for claims that Africans are intellectually inferior: Sciam Observations

Nothing like stirring the pot--not to mention selling books--with an incendiary claim, in this case that one race is intellectually superior to another. Dr. Watson, we presume? Bingo. World-renowned geneticist James Watson, 79, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his role in helping break the DNA code, is being widely criticized after telling The Sunday Times of London that he's "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours--whereas all the testing says not really." He went on, reports the newspaper, to say that "people who have to deal with black employees find...it is not true" that all humans are equal.

The Independent reports today that Watson is currently on a swing through Britain to publicize his latest book Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science due out next week in which he apparently makes similar such claims. "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically," the London newspaper quotes from the upcoming book. "Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

Opinions? Beware the Cyber Communists Plotting Red Revolt...
Update:

• Employer disassociation from the statement
• Scientist Apologizes

As you can see with the Home DNA test kit soon to be out, the last thing humanity needs is to fuel fascism...

Then again, doing an actual study and concluding once and for all, race does not determine intelligence would be very useful! Just as studies point out that race does not determine height... I mean science should not be scared of taboos, in my opinion scientists, or science in general, has a very delicate subject in its hands...

From a comment to the apology article:

When scientists are influenced by the fear of being labeled as racist, politically incorrect, socially inappropriate, or any of a multitude of other labels an often overly sensitive public is poised to slap onto them at first sign of error, they stop being scientists and start being 'yes men' to political correctness. Whatever Watson's intent in making the statements he was quoted as making, the net effect of those statements will be for all scientists to check their scientific results against what they perceive the public wants to hear. To me, this is just a feeding frenzy on scientific opinion at the expense of an open scientific forum. Given Watson's peer group's inclination towards political correctness over scientific pursuit, maybe he should have devoted his life to comedy instead. Obviously his peer group's priority is whether Watson can make them feel good as opposed to Watson's contribution to the mundane, such as genetics.