abril 15, 2024
abril 10, 2024
Self-inflicted myopia
Por João Neto às 16:27 0 comentário(s)
abril 04, 2024
Bondage
Por João Neto às 16:25 0 comentário(s)
março 31, 2024
Truth
Por João Neto às 13:22 0 comentário(s)
março 25, 2024
Simplying Assumptions
The purpose of a system is what it does. There is after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do. -- Anthony Stafford Beer
Por João Neto às 16:02 0 comentário(s)
março 22, 2024
One rule, two standards
Por João Neto às 16:00 0 comentário(s)
março 20, 2024
Selection Bias
Por João Neto às 13:33 0 comentário(s)
março 18, 2024
Then we are doing science.
The truth lies directly before us in the reality surrounding us. However, we cannot use it as it is. An unbroken description of reality would be simultaneously the truest and most useless thing in the world, and it would certainly not be science. If we want to make reality and therefore truth useful to science, we must do violence to reality. We must introduce the distinction, which does not exist in nature, between essential and inessential. In nature, everything is equally essential. By seeking out the relationships that seem essential to us, we order the material in a surveyable way at the same time. Then we are doing science. -- Jakob von Uexküll
Por João Neto às 15:55 0 comentário(s)
março 12, 2024
In the end
In the end,
we will remember
not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Por João Neto às 14:07 0 comentário(s)
março 09, 2024
no moral guarantees
The correct decision, given a trolley problem, is to switch the track, then wonder for the rest of your life whether you made the right decision. Anyone who could confidently switch the track and then never think about it again is a sociopath, as is anyone who fails to switch the track and believes his decision entirely exculpates him. Trolleys and certain deaths don't reflect moral decisions in the real world. Not only do you not know precisely the consequences of your actions ahead of time, you certainly don't know the consequences of the counterfactual. [...] The universe offers no moral guarantees. We make decisions, and live with them, and never know the results of the decisions we didn't make. This is the best we're offered. -- Andreas Schou
Por João Neto às 14:00 0 comentário(s)
março 04, 2024
Applied Stoicism
Stallone turned down the huge sum of money [for another actor to be Rocky] because he had "establish[ed] business relations with poverty," as the Stoic philosopher Seneca put it. "The trick is,” Tom Rothman (CEO of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group) says, “to be fiscally responsible so you can be creatively reckless." [As Bill Cunningham said:] "If you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do, kid… Money’s the cheapest thing. Liberty, freedom is the most expensive.” -- Billy Oppenheimer [link]
Por João Neto às 15:13 0 comentário(s)
fevereiro 29, 2024
Ecology, not Economy
The earth has, in principle, unlimited resources. They are just limited in the rate of sustainable extraction. And, of course, extraction costs put a limit on useful access to mineral resources -- Charles St Pierre
Por João Neto às 15:10 0 comentário(s)
fevereiro 26, 2024
Fascism
Fascism is a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place. -- The School for Dictators, Ignazio Silone
Por João Neto às 08:30 0 comentário(s)
fevereiro 22, 2024
School
School is mostly about indoctrination into the national identity. It is also about child care, and for older children, about keeping them out of the labour force. If we were honest we could talk about education policy with this in mind, though no one does (okay, there are some exceptions) -- Cameron K. Murray
Por João Neto às 15:06 0 comentário(s)
fevereiro 18, 2024
Assertions
People have an unfortunate habit of assuming they understand the reality just because they understood the analogy -- Echopraxia, Peter Watts
Por João Neto às 15:04 0 comentário(s)
fevereiro 13, 2024
Internalities
«Externalities» is a funny econ word that unintentionally identifies the root of the problem, imagining that there's an outside, external world upon which society acts, rather than being embedded in, a component of, even an expression of, the Earth's biogeochemical systems -- Peter Brennan
Por João Neto às 08:15 0 comentário(s)
fevereiro 08, 2024
Words matter
There has been a lot of discussion using words like «war», «terrorism», «war crimes», «human shields» [...] The problem I wish to highlight is that words matter and, when discussing those topics, the vocabulary many of us have has been bent, twisted, and manipulated by various forces for their own benefit.
I’d like you to stop using fungible terms like «war crime», «ethnic cleansing», «collateral damage», etc., and stick strictly to the vocabulary used in International Humanitarian Law (IHL). There’s a simple reason for that: the vocabulary of IHL is extremely clear and deliberately freed of nuance and gray areas.
When does international humanitarian law apply?
International humanitarian law applies only to armed conflict; it does not cover internal tensions or disturbances such as isolated acts of violence. The law applies only once a conflict has begun, and then equally to all sides regardless of who started the fighting.
This wording is extremely carefully made. There is no reference to aggressor or invader or any of the terms that might indicate who started it. Because who started it is invariably a topic of discussion when someone is trying to minimize their side’s crimes against humanity, i.e.: those noncombatants wouldn't have gotten hurt if we hadn't had to do this awful thing.
When I speak and write about these issues, I try hard, in my words, to stick to simple concepts. There are no «terrorists», or «freedom fighters» and I barely acknowledge the existence of states – there are just combatants and noncombatants and their actions are either legal or they are crimes against humanity. [...] Noncombatants' actions are always legal, because they are not engaging in violence. Combatants' actions are extremely problematic, especially when combatants begin killing noncombatants as a matter of operations – then we're down to arguing whether the death was necessary or justified and that is extremely problematic. -- It's Just Words Marcus Ranum
Por João Neto às 10:30 0 comentário(s)
fevereiro 01, 2024
a deal with humanity
You do not get to target civilians because somebody else has targeted civilians. It’s nonreciprocal because your obligations are to the civilians. It’s not a deal between fighters. It’s a deal with humanity. -- Sari Bashi
Por João Neto às 07:30 0 comentário(s)
janeiro 29, 2024
Why the universe wasn't full of mysteries, but now it is
Psychologists have a name for this tendency to think we understand things better than we do: the «illusion of explanatory depth». [...] Think of it this way: for most of human history, we didn't know why things fall down. People trip, cups spill, buildings topple, and nobody had any good explanations for this, or at least not any true ones. If you didn't have an illusion of explanatory depth, you'd spend your days dumbfounded: “Why do things fall?? Why do you return to earth when you jump?? What's up with clouds—they don't seem to fall at all!!
You can't live your life if you're always getting stuck on mysteries like this. You'd get so mesmerized by the inexplicability of your porridge falling into your bowl and bubbles rising in your water that you'd forget to eat or drink and you'd die. That's why we need the illusion of explanatory depth: most things have to feel like they make sense, even if they don't, so that we can get on with the business of living.
And indeed, people born before the discovery of gravity understood this whole falling business exactly as well as they needed in order to survive. They knew that they'd fall and die if they walked off a cliff, that the things they throw in the air will fall down on people's heads, and that houses tip over if they aren't built properly. Maybe they thought they understood it better than they actually did, but for their purposes, they understood it perfectly well. [...] Okay, so an illusion of explanatory depth is extremely important to staying alive. It does, unfortunately, have a downside: it fools you into thinking the universe isn't full of mysteries.
This, I think, explains the curious course of our scientific discovery. You might think that we discover things in order from most intuitive to least intuitive. No, thanks to the illusion of explanatory depth, it often goes the opposite way: we discover the least obvious things first, because those are things that we realize we don't understand. That would fit with our incredible ancient progress in mathematics, because math is not obvious. -- On the importance of staring directly into the sun Adam Mastroianni
Por João Neto às 22:44 0 comentário(s)
janeiro 25, 2024
Stilts everywhere
Por João Neto às 08:35 0 comentário(s)
janeiro 17, 2024
Coping
Por João Neto às 08:00 0 comentário(s)
janeiro 09, 2024
Where the buck stops
Por João Neto às 16:00 0 comentário(s)
janeiro 05, 2024
Unmixing the unmixable
Por João Neto às 08:34 0 comentário(s)
janeiro 03, 2024
Analogy Rot
Por João Neto às 09:30 0 comentário(s)
dezembro 28, 2023
Out of the Boxes
Por João Neto às 15:50 0 comentário(s)
dezembro 21, 2023
Uniforms
Por João Neto às 09:23 0 comentário(s)
dezembro 14, 2023
Science vs. Scientists
Por João Neto às 09:21 0 comentário(s)
dezembro 10, 2023
Mapping
No map represents all of its intended territory [...] Every map is at least a map of the map-maker (his assumptions, world-view...)
**
A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. If the map could be ideally correct, it would include, in a reduced scale, the map of the map; the map of the map of the map; and so on, endlessly, a fact first noticed by [Josiah] Royce. If we reflect upon our languages, we find that at best they must be considered only as maps. A word is not the object it represents; and languages exhibit also this peculiar self-reflexiveness, that we can analyze languages by linguistic means.
Por João Neto às 18:43 0 comentário(s)
dezembro 06, 2023
Intelligence and Wisdom
Por João Neto às 09:18 0 comentário(s)
novembro 30, 2023
Language Corrections
Essentially PC [Politic Correctness] is a correction from language that developed in an oppressive context and achieved mainstream usage, Doublespeak must be corrected in order to understand what is really being said. Both concepts can be said to use euphemism as their mechanism, but there's an important distinction. PC uses value neutral terms to replace inherently and unfairly derogatory ones. Doublespeak uses ironic terms to hide their motives and cynically cast them as the opposite. If I speak of sex workers rather than "whores" it is not because I am trying to hide any truth about them. It is that the "acceptable" term holds no deeper truth and only insult. If I speak of "creative bookkeeping" rather than theft, I am trying to hide or minimize guilt. @absurdistwords
Por João Neto às 09:08 0 comentário(s)