Saul Steinberg
Um mundo iluminado / The Re-Enchantment of Humanity
Em busca de uma 'fusão' perfeita.
"The biosphere is building its own ways of becoming. And so is the economy. The biosphere is building its own future possibilities. With no selection."
"How much magic do you need for re-enchantment? It's not a Newtonian world at all."
"We live in a network of enablement and opportunity that we don't even recognize. Enablement doesn't mean it's going to be good or bad. Good or bad can happen. That doesn't mean it's not magic. It's up to us to make things work well."
"There is no law that entails the becoming of the biosphere. There is no law that entails the evolution of economy."
"We are beyond the framework of Newton and Einstein and Schrödinger, who said: 'Write down the laws, the initial and boundary conditions. Write the laws in differential forms, now please integrate.' Which is deduction, which is entailment. We can't do it for the biosphere. That means we're beyond the hegemony of Newton, who has dominated our thinking for 350 years. We're even beyond Darwin, because brilliant as Darwin was, he didn't see the radical emergence of the fact that the biosphere is building the possibilities of its evolution with no selection. It's building its own possibilities for becoming. Darwin didn't think of that. I did. Having tea with my wife in Santa Fé."
"I think this is the beginning of being possibly re-enchanted."
"There is a sharp distinction between knowing, being and doing."
"To live the well discovered life. Where what you discover in your life and we live it. You discover new pathways that open before you. New pathways, new possibilities open before us all the time. That is what our life is. I think this is the beginning of a new vision of who we are and how we are, to be put together with an understanding of our evolved social primate humanity."
Mais
Apocalipse NOW / Cisnes negros / Bodes expiatórios
A matter of imagination, maturity and survival.
Mais do que nunca, chegou o tempo em que vamos pôr à prova a nossa capacidade para nos ajudarmos uns aos outros.
"When none of the moral illumination of institutions was present,
kindness was all that remained, and the pale light of the individual
rescuers shone."
Não há dinheiro no mundo que pague a ajuda pronta e desinteressada.
O sabor da gratidão é doce e faz bem à saúde.
"There need not be any compelling reason for concern about life and death, as the Nazi example shows, only a momentary conviction that dramatic action is needed to preserve a way of life."
"Nature has taken some revenge that makes conventional politics seem irrelevant, reducing society to struggle and rescue. The earth’s surface grows wild, humans go feral and anything is possible."
"Hitler was a child of the first globalisation, which arose under imperial auspices at the end of the 19th century. We are the children of the second, that of the late 20th century. Globalisation is neither a problem nor a solution; it is a condition with a history. It brings a specific intellectual danger. Since the world is more complex than a country or a city, the temptation is to seek some master key to understanding everything."
"A problem that is truly planetary in scale, such as climate change, obviously demands global solutions – and one apparent solution is to define a global enemy."
"One of the errors of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the belief that regime change must be creative. The theory was that the destruction of a state and its ruling elite would bring freedom and justice. In fact, the succession of events precipitated by the illegal invasion of a sovereign state confirmed one of the unlearned lessons of the history of the second world war."
"Destroying states without such malign intentions produces more conventional disasters. [...] The invasion of Iraq killed at least as many people as did the prior Iraqi regime. It exposed the members of the Iraqi ruling party to religious cleansing and prepared the way for chaos throughout the country."
"A common American error is to believe that freedom is the absence of state authority."
"Though no American would deny that tanks work in the desert, some Americans do deny that deserts are growing larger. Though no American would deny ballistics, some Americans do deny climate science. Hitler denied that science could solve the basic problem of nutrition, but assumed that technology could win territory. It seemed to follow that waiting for research was pointless and that immediate military action was necessary. In the case of climate change, the denial of science likewise legitimates military action rather than investment in technology. If people do not take responsibility for the climate themselves, they will shift responsibility for the associated calamities to other people. Insofar as climate denial hinders technical progress, it might hasten real disasters, which in their turn can make catastrophic thinking still more credible. A vicious circle can begin in which politics collapses into ecological panic. The direct consequences of climate change will reach America long after Africa, the Near East and China have been transformed. By then, it will be too late to act."
"When states are absent, rights – by any definition – are impossible to sustain. States are not structures to be taken for granted, exploited or discarded, but are fruits of long and quiet effort. "
"Another plurality is between order and freedom: each depends upon the other, although each is different from the other. The claim that order is freedom or that freedom is order ends in tyranny. The claim that freedom is the lack of order must end in anarchy – which is nothing more than tyranny of a special kind."
"In the case of climate change, we know what the state can do to tame panic. We know that it is easier and less costly to draw nourishment from plants than animals. We know that improvements in agricultural productivity continue and that the desalination of seawater is possible. We know that efficiency of energy use is the simplest way to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. We know that governments can assign prices to carbon pollution and can pledge reductions of future emissions to one another and review one another’s pledges. We also know that governments can stimulate the development of appropriate energy technologies."
O sabor da gratidão é doce e faz bem à saúde.
"There need not be any compelling reason for concern about life and death, as the Nazi example shows, only a momentary conviction that dramatic action is needed to preserve a way of life."
"Nature has taken some revenge that makes conventional politics seem irrelevant, reducing society to struggle and rescue. The earth’s surface grows wild, humans go feral and anything is possible."
"Hitler was a child of the first globalisation, which arose under imperial auspices at the end of the 19th century. We are the children of the second, that of the late 20th century. Globalisation is neither a problem nor a solution; it is a condition with a history. It brings a specific intellectual danger. Since the world is more complex than a country or a city, the temptation is to seek some master key to understanding everything."
"A problem that is truly planetary in scale, such as climate change, obviously demands global solutions – and one apparent solution is to define a global enemy."
"One of the errors of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the belief that regime change must be creative. The theory was that the destruction of a state and its ruling elite would bring freedom and justice. In fact, the succession of events precipitated by the illegal invasion of a sovereign state confirmed one of the unlearned lessons of the history of the second world war."
"Destroying states without such malign intentions produces more conventional disasters. [...] The invasion of Iraq killed at least as many people as did the prior Iraqi regime. It exposed the members of the Iraqi ruling party to religious cleansing and prepared the way for chaos throughout the country."
"A common American error is to believe that freedom is the absence of state authority."
"Though no American would deny that tanks work in the desert, some Americans do deny that deserts are growing larger. Though no American would deny ballistics, some Americans do deny climate science. Hitler denied that science could solve the basic problem of nutrition, but assumed that technology could win territory. It seemed to follow that waiting for research was pointless and that immediate military action was necessary. In the case of climate change, the denial of science likewise legitimates military action rather than investment in technology. If people do not take responsibility for the climate themselves, they will shift responsibility for the associated calamities to other people. Insofar as climate denial hinders technical progress, it might hasten real disasters, which in their turn can make catastrophic thinking still more credible. A vicious circle can begin in which politics collapses into ecological panic. The direct consequences of climate change will reach America long after Africa, the Near East and China have been transformed. By then, it will be too late to act."
"When states are absent, rights – by any definition – are impossible to sustain. States are not structures to be taken for granted, exploited or discarded, but are fruits of long and quiet effort. "
"Another plurality is between order and freedom: each depends upon the other, although each is different from the other. The claim that order is freedom or that freedom is order ends in tyranny. The claim that freedom is the lack of order must end in anarchy – which is nothing more than tyranny of a special kind."
"In the case of climate change, we know what the state can do to tame panic. We know that it is easier and less costly to draw nourishment from plants than animals. We know that improvements in agricultural productivity continue and that the desalination of seawater is possible. We know that efficiency of energy use is the simplest way to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. We know that governments can assign prices to carbon pollution and can pledge reductions of future emissions to one another and review one another’s pledges. We also know that governments can stimulate the development of appropriate energy technologies."
"States should invest in science so that the future can be calmly
contemplated. The study of the past suggests why this would be a wise
course. Time supports thought, thought supports time; structure supports
plurality, and plurality, structure. This line of reasoning is less
glamorous than waiting for general disaster and dreaming of personal
redemption. Effective prevention of mass killings is incremental and its
heroes are invisible. No conception of a durable state can compete with
visions of totality. No green politics will ever be as exciting as red
blood on black earth."
Excertos do artigo de Timothy Snyder
da arrogância
"Cinco mulheres alinharam-se entre as tochas. Quatro empunhavam lanternas acima da cabeça e a quinta carregava uma ferramenta impossível de identificar a princípio e que, afinal, era um malho enorme, quase uma caricatura da verdadeira ferramenta, de tão grande que era. Quando apareceu uma pessoa em palco e pousou um objeto que parecia uma otomana à frente deste coro, adivinhei o que aí vinha. O objeto era, na realidade, um segmento com um metro de altura de um tronco de árvore grosseiramente envolto e cosido num invólucro de pele de vaca. A mulher com o malho ia começar daí a nada a espancá-lo. As lanternas estavam acesas e apontadas à Dirang Motsidisi, ainda vestida como estava antes, mas com o véu da cabeça puxado para baixo. Era agora a protagonista. Entregaram-lhe o malho. Adivinhei bem o que aí vinha. Esperava-nos um capítulo de Fim das lamentações das mulheres, ponto final. Esperei e rezei para que fosse apenas um capítulo. Já tinha visto, de vez em quando, alguns capítulos representados, ensaiados. Era uma produção em curso que provavelmente nunca seria apresentada na totalidade, de tão épica que era.
Tive vontade de me enfiar num buraco e, ao mesmo tempo, senti-me desleal por causa do meu embaraço, achando que estava imaturamente a identificar-me com o Ocidente branco e a virar as costas à pessoa com quem vivia, por tentativa dele para exorcizar e concretizar a voz dos ex-oprimidos ser demasiado arrogante para mim, pelo menos quando eu tinha de assistir à dita tentativa não en famille, mas na companhia de membros instruídos do Ocidente cuja cultura me impressionava. Todos gostamos de uma certa arrogância num parceiro, mas preferimos que seja em grau moderado. Eu sabia o que me estava a acontecer. Havia qualquer coisa no Harold e na Julia que estava a reavivar a minha susceptibilidade por causa da educação que tive. Pareço mais instruída do que sou. Conheço as minhas lacunas e até que ponto uma grande parte do que digo para fazer boa figura não passa de boa memória. O Harold e a Julia estavam a fazer-me regredir. Eram maravilhosamente cultos e eu não, ergo representavam o observador ideal, em conjunto. Era martirizante que o Nelson estivesse a teimar naquela segunda extravagância, cuja inocência e boas intenções não seriam acessíveis ao Harold e à Julia, porque, à superfície, podiam ser tão grosseiras e peculiares."
Norman Rush, Acasalamento
Pensamentos fugazes
Em nome da alteridade.
Nós, o arrogante, narcísico e liberal
Ocidente, berço do Peace and Love, do Naturismo, e do 'Bom Selvagem',
herdeiro de grandes civilizações reflexivas do antigo Oriente, ainda
infectado pelo lado obscuro, pudico, manipulador e prepotente
patriarcado Cristão. Nós, o arrogantes, narcísicos e liberais
Ocidententais, defensores do individualismo e do respeito pelo próximo,
paradoxalmente, incapazes de vergar a cabeça enquanto seres que
se desejam humildes mas, igualmente, incapazes de a levantar desviando o
olhar do seu umbigo… Nós, portugueses, tementes, ainda na sombra de 48
anos de palmatória purista. É isso que queremos? Dar tiros nos pés?
What if...
What if I’m wrong, what if I’ve lied
What if I’ve dragged you here to my own dark night
And what if I know, what if I see
There is a crack run right down the front of me
What if they’re right, what if we’re wrong
What if I’ve lured you here with a siren song?
But if I be wrong, if I be right
Let me be here with you tonight
Ten thousand cars, ten thousand trains
There are ten thousand roads to run away
But I am not lost, I am not found
I am not Dylan’s wife, not Cohen’s hound
But if I be wrong, if I be right
Let me be here with you tonight
And what if I can’t, what if I can
What if I’m just an ordinary man
If there is a will, there is a way
I will escape for sure, I am David Blane
But if I be wrong, if I be right
Let me be here with you
If I be wrong, if I be right
Let me stay here in your arms tonight
And I have been wrong, I have been right
I have been both these things all in the same night
So if I be wrong, if I be right
Let me here, with you, tonight.
What if I’ve dragged you here to my own dark night
And what if I know, what if I see
There is a crack run right down the front of me
What if they’re right, what if we’re wrong
What if I’ve lured you here with a siren song?
But if I be wrong, if I be right
Let me be here with you tonight
Ten thousand cars, ten thousand trains
There are ten thousand roads to run away
But I am not lost, I am not found
I am not Dylan’s wife, not Cohen’s hound
But if I be wrong, if I be right
Let me be here with you tonight
And what if I can’t, what if I can
What if I’m just an ordinary man
If there is a will, there is a way
I will escape for sure, I am David Blane
But if I be wrong, if I be right
Let me be here with you
If I be wrong, if I be right
Let me stay here in your arms tonight
And I have been wrong, I have been right
I have been both these things all in the same night
So if I be wrong, if I be right
Let me here, with you, tonight.
Spooky entanglement / multitasking Qubits / Correlation without causation
O único, eventual, problema é que aquilo (o original daquilo) que é teleportado, é destruído no processo.
Afinal, é tudo uma questão de data (informação)
The end of the economic era as we know it / O novo paradigma da economia
"We are beginning to see a long end game for one of the great economic eras in world history. But we're also beginning to glimpse the emergence of a new economic paradigm so different than anything that we have ever known."
"To understand the nature of this crisis and the opportunity that is now unfolding, we need to grasp how the great economic changes in the history occur."
"When we look at all the economic paradigm shift in history, they share a common denominator. At a particular moment in time, three defining technologies emerge and converge. To create what we call in engineering, a general technology platform. A new infrastructure for changing the way we organize economic with each other in the planet we live in. What are those three defining technologies: new communication technologies (to more efficiently manage economic activity), new sources of energy (to more efficiently power economic activity), new modes of transportation logistics (to more efficiently move economic activity). [...] From an anthropological point of view, it's as simple as that."
"The second industrial revolution took us through the 20th Century and it peaked in July of 2008. If you go back and remember that month, crude oil hit a record of 147 dollars a barrel, on world markets, and when that happened every one stayed home, because all the prices for everything we buy were prohibitively high because everything is pegged to fossil fuels."
"This whole first and second industrial revolution is powered by the carbon deposits ofhe previous period of history. We had the bronze age, the iron age. When future generations look back on us they and at the geological record, they will see the carbon people."
"We are now [2015] at the beginning, not just of a great recession, but a long sunset for a second industrial revolution based on centralized telecommunications depending on fossil-fuel energies, and those energies are used to power an internal combustion engine road in rail system. What I would say to you this afternoon, and I say this to every government that I deal with, 'as long as you are still practicing your economic activity on a second industrial revolution platform, based on centralized telecommunications, fossil-fuel, nuclear power, and internal combustion railing road, there is not a single country in the world that is going to move their economy forward from here on. Not a single country.' You can put in austerity and market and labor reforms and all the rest [...] that's why productivity has been stalled for 20 years."
"We are seeing the emergence of three Internets: communication internet, renewable energy internet, automated transport internet, to rethink how we manage power and move economic activity across the value chains. These three Internets are the kernel of the new operating platform called the Internet of things. The Internet of things is not just about big data, broadband and wi-fi. [min 9:38]"
"We're hearing a lot about the sharing economy, everyday, and we're becoming engaged in it. Capitalism is giving birth. This is the little prodigy of Capitalism. This little baby is an important event. Now Capitalism is going to have to nurture this sharing economy, let it grow, let it mature, let it find it's own identity, but if you're a parent you know your child transforms you too. In this case, the sharing economy is going to utterly transform Capitalism."
"We have already seen the impact of what digitalization and communication has done to give us a near zero marginal cost economy. [...] We, now, have 3 billion people on the Internet of things and everyone of them, now, has been a prossumer. We're still sellers, we're still buyers, we're still owners, we're still users, but now we're prossumers. And that is everyone of us at one time or another has produced or shared music or Youtube videos or news blogs or social media or knowledge on Wikipedia or taken massive open online courses, and that's all near zero marginal cost. If you create a video, open source, and whether you send it to one person or a billion people it's the same cost, near zero, the fixed costs are low, the marginal costs near zero. Some of the biggest vertically integrated industries in the 20th Century have been disrupted. The music industry is a shadow of itself. Television... The average millenium in my country is watching 20 minutes of broadcast TV a week. Why do they need that? They're producing and sharing Youtube videos with each other. Newspapers and magazines have gone out of business, they're desperately trying to create blogs... Book publishing... We're taking a hit. My book was out on Piratebay before it was published by my publisher and it even ranked it before Amazon! They've got a hand at it, these kids! They're really good! More power to them." [+/– min 17:10]
The democratization of entertainment, news, knowledge... An amazing thing!
Now we are all players.
A solar watt cost 78 dollars to generate (fixed cost), in 1978. You know what it is today? One watt? 36 cents.
The Sun is not sending a bill. The wind is not charging you. The geothermal heat is not sending you an invoice.
[+/– min 25:00] So what's the role of the power company? What's going to happen is electricity cooperatives around the world will produce the energy locally, share it out in energy Internets, send it back to the power companies, let them run the new energy Internet. They can be the Googles, the Facebooks, the Twitters... And the way they'll make money is selling less and less electricity. They will set up partnerships with thousands of institutions and neighbor associations, home owners, bussinesses, and they will help you manage the big data on your value chain. On the communication, energy and transport Internet so that they will help you with your analytics and algorithms so that you can dramatically increase your efficiencies, reduce your marginal cost and, then, you will share your productivity gains back with the power company. It's called performance contracting."
"Millions of people are, now, car sharing. They don't want ownership. They want mobility. Car ownership is going to die out in the next 25 years. They want acess to mobility in automated networks. Car ownership is an old idea. And what has made this possible is GPS guidance. For every car shared, 15 cars are eliminated from production. This is going to disrupt the auto industry, because we have build the whole global economy on the automobile."
"There's a billion of cars, buses and trucks in the world. Choking us in traffic, wasting our lives and they're the number 3 cause of climate change. Number 1: buildings, and we're turning them into micro power plants. We're putting the green electricity on them. By the way, anyone knows what the number 2 cause of climate change is? It's cattle and meat production and consumption and even Al Gore doesn't want to talk about it, because he doesn't want to offend anyone, which makes us wonder how serious we are about this."
"The young people are 3D printing. They are infofacturing not manufacturing, and they're all using open source software. So it's free. Because they realize that if they share together with crowd sourcing, they're going to learn a lot. If someone is going to hold on to their little property, so what? They're left behind. They can't catch up with crowd sourcing. And they're using garbage for their filament, at zero marginal cost."
"The first printed car is out. It's called the Strati."
"President Obama wants every school to have a 3D printer, which is a laugh, because in 10 or 15 years every kid is going to come to school, every where in the world, and in a little nap sack they're going to have a little iPhone for $25, and on the other part of their nap sack they're going to have a little startup printer for $25, and they're going to start collecting the garbage around the school site and they're going to Skype in global classrooms millions of them and they're going to become a savvy in printing out physical goods and services at near zero marginal cost, as their millennial parents became savvy at developing software from Napster to Newsbox."
"The best way to understand this revolution is toys." [+/– min 36]
"Aggregate energy efficiency is the ratio of potential to useful work. There's a dirty little secret in economics, which is: 'What is the nature of productivity?' We used to say, better machines, better workers. Robert Solow, Nobel prize in economics let the little secret out. He said we got a problem. When we take every year in the industrial revolution, better machines and better workers only account for 14% of the productivity. Where's the other 86%? Don't know. Are you amazed that the economist didn't know? The reason they didn't know is a little esoteric. It's that classical economics is based on Newton's physics as a metaphor, because that's when Newton was alive, they all wanted to be like Newton. So for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Adam Smith came out with the invisible buy and supply. He borrowed the metaphor. A body in motion stays in motion. Baptiste Say came up with the idea that supply generates demand which stimulates supply... Unless disrupted by an outside force. The only problem of pending all of economics based on Newton's physics is that Newton's physics has nothing to do with economics. That is why the system is starting to unravel. Economics is based on the laws of thermodynamics." [+/– min 40]
"This is the next stage of the European journey. To create the most competitive capitalist market in the world and actually nurture a sharing economy."
"We're seeing already the migration of employment. It's migrating from more and more automated work force to the social economy. But not for profit sector, because that where we create social capital. You need humans. Healthcare, education, environment, taking care of the babies, senior citizens, cultural. It's the more expansive way to use the human mind mind because it's about humans engaging humans. 52 million people are payed for fees for services already in this sector and it's 10% of the employment in the U.S. It's Higher in Germany. And this sector employing is groing much quicker than the capitalist market. So we're going to be able to free up successive generations for more creative task of creating our social capital and getting on with the journey of what we are about in this planet. Does anyone think that human beings are going to have to be doing all this mindless work in 50 years if we get any of this right? I hope not."
"The reason I wrote this book, even though there's only a few pages in the book on it, is what I believe is the only shot we've got of, maybe, reducing our ecological footprint in time to address climate change. I got it wrong for 40 years. I underestimated the speed of the feedback loops and we are terrified. I don't know how to say this to a parent. You should be terrified. But we are going on in 'business as usual'. And here is the terrifying thing about climate change, that no one ever explains, it changes the water cycle of the Earth. That's what this is about." [+/– min 48]
"You know that 99% of all forms of life that have been on this Earth have come and gone? What does this have to do with an Internet of things platform and a zero marginal cost society? It's the ultimate method of reducing the ecological footprint."
"If we can have analytics and apps and programs every day, all day long, in our value chains, monitoring and helping us increase our efficiencies, it means we're extracting less of the Earths resources and optimizing it's use. That's the great wonder of this technology."
"Share the vehicles, share the clothes, share the homes."
"Eurasia is the largest land mass in the world. Contiguous. It represents two thirds of the human race and 29% of the wealth in the planet. There has been a tradition of trade across Eurasia for a thousand years. Independently, both the EU and China are moving in the respective political domains to lay out an 'Internet of things' platform for a third industrial revolution."
"We now know, in neurobiology, in our neural circuitry designed to express empathic distress. A spider goes up your arm. I'm watching. I'll think it's going up my arm. Not my brain. My neural circuitry creeps out! If we look at the big sweep in history we see the evolution of empathic consciousness accompany our great changes in the way we manage power and move in economic activity."
"The digital revolution is biosphere consciousness."
"What limits democracy is secrecy and control, from the top down."
"I see the generational shift in two ways: how we define freedom and how we define power. My generations, World War II and Baby Boomers after us, all the way back, we always believed freedom is the ability to be an autonomous agent. To be self-sufficient. Not be holding on others. that's how we accumulate wealth so that we can be our own sovereign. That was a way to fight off the Monarchy so that we weren't dependent on it. Right? For a young person, in a digital generation, they see freedom not as exclusivity and autonomy. For them, freedom is inclusivity and relationships. For them, autonomy is death. For them, freedom is the ability to be included in access to more and more networks where they can share their talents with eachother. It's a totally different idea about freedom. And power? My generation absolutely believes power pyramidal. End of story. There's no such thing as powerful as a pyramid. Apparently, the younger generation doesn't believe that because they believe power is lateral. By being engaged in a distributive collaborative transparent setting, they actually increase the power by sharing it in a pear to pear production network."
"When a young person looks at power, and they judge a government or a political party or a school system or a business, they ask: 'Is the institutional behavior centralized, patriarchal, top down, proprietary and closed, or is the institutional behavior distributive, collaborative, transparent and laterally scaled? So we are really beginning to see different definitions, culturally of what we believe is a human being's role in relationship to our fellow human being in the planet we live in. This is good news."
The Zero Marginal Cost Society
FOET
Matemática e poesia
Final proof that maths and poetry have a special relationship.
"From pi to the Fibonacci sequence, poets' imaginations have been fired by the elegance of numbers – and mathematicians have returned the compliment."
Aqui
Pi
The admirable number pi:
three point one four one.
All the following digits are also initial,
five nine two because it never ends.
It can't be comprehended six five three five at a glance,
eight nine by calculation,
seven nine or imagination,
not even three two three eight by wit, that is, by comparison
four six to anything else
two six four three in the world.
The longest snake on earth calls it quits at about forty feet.
Likewise, snakes of myth and legend, though they may hold out a ............ bit longer.
The pageant of digits comprising the number pi
doesn't stop at the page's edge.
It goes on across the table, through the air,
over a wall, a leaf, a bird's nest, clouds, straight into the sky,
through all the bottomless, bloated heavens.
Oh how brief - a mouse tail, a pigtail - is the tail of a comet!
How feeble the star's ray, bent by bumping up against space!
While here we have two three fifteen three hundred nineteen
my phone number your shirt size the year
nineteen hundred and seventy-three the sixth floor
the number of inhabitants sixty-five cents
hip measurement two fingers a charade, a code,
in which we find hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert
alongside ladies and gentlemen, no cause for alarm,
as well as heaven and earth shall pass away,
but not the number pi, oh no, nothing doing,
it keeps right on with its rather remarkable five,
its uncommonly fine eight,
its far from final seven,
nudging, always nudging a sluggish eternity
to continue.
Wislawa Szymborska
Freedom does not exist. It's either determinism or randomness.
The Rise of the Data Religion
"The word 'freedom' simply has no meaning in the life sciences of today."
"If an organism is just a collection of algorithms, and these algorithms are not free in any sense, this means that, at least potentially, an external system, an external entity, can understand me perfectly. It just needs to understand all the algorithms that come together to build this machine, this structure."
"Feelings are just biochemical algorithms calculating, either of two things: probabilities of survival and probabilities of reproduction. That's it."
"Sexual feelings are biochemical algorithms."
"The algorithms of your feelings have succeeded, for millions of years, to pass the most rigorous tests of natural selection."
"Liberalism is listening to your feelings. Going with your heart. It was a practical guidance. It was not just a theory. Now, we move to the next stage, where people say, 'don't listen to your feelings, what do they know?' Listen to Google, listen to Amazon or to Facebook or whatever. They understand how you feel, better than you know how you feel, because they have much more information and they have much better algorithms than what natural selection gave you. They have information, not only about your emails and your books and so forth."
"Does life really mean nothing more than just information processing? What about consciousness?"
"Maybe the life sciences have got it wrong. Maybe the humans and other
animals are not reducible to algorithms. however, in historical terms
it's not as important as you might think, because a religion or ideology does not have to be correct in what it says, in order to take over the world. We have many cases, previously in history, where religions and ideologies, which said, what we think today, to be completely erroneous things about the world, nevertheless managed to take it over. In scientific terms the story, for example, that Christianity tells about the world [...] it's not true. It's simply not true. At least according to science. But this did not prevent Christianity from taking over most of the world. So you don't need the truth to take over the world. Similarly with these new data religions, maybe, they're based on a misunderstanding of life, but this will not necessarily prevent them from taking over the world."
"For me, the most beautiful tension and connection is between biology and computer science. Very often, when people think about the ideas I raised in the last part of the lecture, they give all the importance to the advances in computer science, to our ability to create better and better algorithms and computer programs. But in my eyes the real revolution is actually from the life sciences. The really big revolution is when the life sciences are telling us that animals are basically biochemical algorithms. If they didn't tell us this, then you can have all the advances you want in computer science, it won't impinge on humanity. You will still have humans which is something completely different and all the advances in robotics and computers... ok, we'll have better computers, we'll have better robots, but it won't really make much of a difference to us. When it becomes really amazing and really frightening is, that once you realize (and this is a contribution of the life sciences) that humans actually work in the same way, then you can make the connections and this is the really frightening stuff. This is also why I think, more and more companies like Google, that started simply in the computer business, are moving more and more to the biotechnology business, and then the two industries are merging into one. The most fundamental idea in this respect comes from the life sciences, which says: organisms are algorithms. This is the most important insight of our age, and also the most important question, because we don't have any proof of it. Currently it's just dogma. We don't have any explanation of how any kind of algorithm can create subjective experiences. Indeed in the field of computers, we're not even close to creating subjective experiences in computers. It's just the dogma, the people say: yes, it's the same. To give another historical reference, back in the 19th Century, when they tried to understand humans and the human mind and the human soul or whatever you like to call it, one of the main theories was that humans were not algorithms, humans were steam engines. This is the basic metaphor that standed (?) the basis of Freudian psychology. Humans usually tried to explain themselves in terms of the most sophisticated technology of the day. In 1900 the most sophisticated machine, the most sophisticated technology which was the basis for all economy, was the steam engine. Even today, when we want to unload our angst, we pick up the telephone and we release some steam. The idea is that the human being is built like a steam engine, it has all these pressures inside, and if you block it here it goes there. And much of Freudian psychology is built on this. [...] Now we say human beings are not like steam engines, they are like computers. But at present, at least, this is just a dogma. We don't have the hard facts to actually prove it."
Na fase das perguntas e respostas, é muito interessante a reflexão que YH faz acerca de quando se terá iniciado o patriarcado [+/- ao minuto 1:00:00]. Apesar de fisicamente inferiores aos homens, as mulheres sempre tiveram melhores competências sociais. Não se compreende, então, por que razão o patriarcado se impôs. Isto fez-me lembrar uma das histórias do livro SUM, de David Eagleman, acerca de uma deusa, tão compassiva, tão compassiva, que não se conseguia decidir sobre quem enviar para o inferno.
E a propósito de questões levantadas na parte final das Q&A, lembrei-me desta palestra.
E ainda a propósito da Finlândia
" [...] Kyllönen explica que o
plano é mudar o foco, sair do ensino tradicional que forma indivíduos
prontos para obedecer e partir para uma solução inovadora que ajude no
progresso da sociedade finlandesa. A representante de Helsinque detalha
ainda mudanças no modo de avaliar professores, que passariam a ter
feedback da própria classe. Medo de dar errado? “Eu não tenho medo. Esse
novo jeito de ensinar permite resultados muito melhores em diferentes áreas, porque você passa a aprender sobre determinado tema para a vida e não somente para a escola”.
Aqui
Lembrei-me de Simón Rodríguez [tutor de Simón Bolívar]
"Rodríguez defende que as crianças aprendam a pensar, e quanto antes, porque aprendendo a pensar poderão aprender todas as demais coisas e, em particular, a conviver uns com os outros. [...] Rodríguez é muito mais complexo. Seu método não é bem um método: exige um professor que pense, que invente, que se preocupe com todos e cada um e que não aplique cegamente alguns preceitos para transmitir calmamente um saber, mas que seja um leitor reflexivo, que tenha uma relação pessoal com seus alunos [...] Rodríguez propõe um professor que seja um artesão e um artista do seu trabalho: um mestre inventor. [...] Também por isso aprender a ensinar a falar e a pensar estão antes do aprender e ensinar a ler e a escrever: porque o ensino e a aprendizagem primeiros, mais significativos, não são técnicos, mas críticos, de fundamento, e só podem ser realizados em diálogo com os outros. São, em última instância, a aprendizagem e o ensino de uma vida pensante, cuidadosa, que se examina a si mesma, de uma vida que merece ser vivida por todos os habitantes desta terra."
Walter Omar Kohan, in O Mestre Inventor. Simón Rodríguez
"Rodríguez defende que as crianças aprendam a pensar, e quanto antes, porque aprendendo a pensar poderão aprender todas as demais coisas e, em particular, a conviver uns com os outros. [...] Rodríguez é muito mais complexo. Seu método não é bem um método: exige um professor que pense, que invente, que se preocupe com todos e cada um e que não aplique cegamente alguns preceitos para transmitir calmamente um saber, mas que seja um leitor reflexivo, que tenha uma relação pessoal com seus alunos [...] Rodríguez propõe um professor que seja um artesão e um artista do seu trabalho: um mestre inventor. [...] Também por isso aprender a ensinar a falar e a pensar estão antes do aprender e ensinar a ler e a escrever: porque o ensino e a aprendizagem primeiros, mais significativos, não são técnicos, mas críticos, de fundamento, e só podem ser realizados em diálogo com os outros. São, em última instância, a aprendizagem e o ensino de uma vida pensante, cuidadosa, que se examina a si mesma, de uma vida que merece ser vivida por todos os habitantes desta terra."
Walter Omar Kohan, in O Mestre Inventor. Simón Rodríguez
A minha praia. Definitivamente. Agora só falta encontrar a tribo.
Aqui
Preso por ter cão e preso por não ter
E, lá está, tristezas não pagam dívidas.
" I was often taken to the cloakroom and shaken by my second grade
teacher, who left fingernail marks in my arms every time; she lost no
opportunity to catch me in a mistake and ridicule me in front of the
class--”and you think you're so smart!” ...And as my mother said, when
she refused to take my part and go to the school to defend me, “You let
your eyes show how you feel about her and what she does--so what do you
expect?”"
Isto
deve ser muito doloroso [digo eu]: "My mother never wanted me to feel
superior, so she always told me that I was not terribly smart, just good
at taking tests. Perhaps that explains why I had such a distorted view.
My mother told me, as an adult, that she didn't praise me [as a
child] because she thought it was obvious that I was outstanding and she
didn't want me to get a swelled head."
"The
theme of strangeness and loneliness ran throughout the case studies.
During the formative early years of school, most of the gifted children
learned that they did not seem to fit in and that something must be
wrong with them.
At
least half the subjects did not discover until adulthood that the
oddness and alienation they were feeling were due to a difference from
their age-mates in intellectual functioning."
"Abstract: A reasonably clear perception of self appears to be one
prerequisite to advanced emotional development. For people who are
outside the norm in any significant way, as gifted people are, obtaining
accurate feedback about their abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and the
acceptability of their personality characteristics is difficult."
Aqui
Muito, muito interessante
A — What you are saying offends common sense.
B — So does relativity and quantum mechanics. That's the way nature works.
A — But your story doesn't fit into nature as we know it.
B — But we know so little. How many of you know geniuses in your field who you disagree with?
Este filme é fantástico!
(e está legendado em pt!)
(e está legendado em pt!)
Pensamento Crítico
"There’s a common conception that an opinion cannot be wrong. [...]
However, before you crouch behind your Shield of Opinion, you need to
ask yourself two questions.
1. Is this actually an opinion?
2. If it is an opinion how informed is it and why do I hold it?"
Aqui
Do patriarcado / da psicologia social / a propósito de Ressentiment, de Schoeck*
"Portanto, recomeçou ele, digamos que temos um conjunto médio de
africanos pobres, agricultores, e eis que aparecem uns especialistas
brancos para induzirem o desenvolvimento, por exemplo, instalando um
projecto de desenvolvimento rural integrado com o máximo de
sensibilidade de que alguém foi capaz até à data. O tempo passa. As
coisas começam a funcionar. Mas acontece uma coisa curiosa: os melhores
de entre os pobres, os mais competentes, os que estão a sair melhor e
inclusive os que são mais parecidos connosco espiritualmente, são
aqueles que nos vão brindar com grinaldas e ramalhetes de ressentimento.
Porquê? O que é que devemos fazer para o evitar?
E olhe que estou a falar de um projecto de desenvolvimento absolutamente normal.
A Conversa dele pareceu-me ter um certo tom de cripto-entrevista de trabalho. Disse para mim própria que não.
Nenhum adulto quer ser ajudado, disse eu. Por definição. Provavelmente devia especificar "homem adulto", em vez de dizer só "adulto", porque o caso das mulheres é diferente. Mas basta pensar nos Franceses, nos Britânicos e em nós. Seria de pensar que, no mínimo, eles fingissem que gostavam de nós ao longo de uma parte de uma geração, uma vez que os salvámos de se transformarem em províncias do Terceiro Reich. Podemos ajudar as mulheres, mas cuidado com a ideia de ajudar os homens. As nações são masculinas."
Norman Rush, "Acasalamento" — um romance, escrito por um homem, em que a figura central, e narradora, é uma mulher.
* Ressentiment, vem da Sociologia francesa e significa ressentimento expresso em segredo, em especial contra quem nos faz bem.
Nenhum adulto quer ser ajudado, disse eu. Por definição. Provavelmente devia especificar "homem adulto", em vez de dizer só "adulto", porque o caso das mulheres é diferente. Mas basta pensar nos Franceses, nos Britânicos e em nós. Seria de pensar que, no mínimo, eles fingissem que gostavam de nós ao longo de uma parte de uma geração, uma vez que os salvámos de se transformarem em províncias do Terceiro Reich. Podemos ajudar as mulheres, mas cuidado com a ideia de ajudar os homens. As nações são masculinas."
Norman Rush, "Acasalamento" — um romance, escrito por um homem, em que a figura central, e narradora, é uma mulher.
* Ressentiment, vem da Sociologia francesa e significa ressentimento expresso em segredo, em especial contra quem nos faz bem.
