The idea that we live in a simulation has some high-profile advocates.
In June 2016, technology entrepreneur Elon Musk asserted that the odds are “a billion to one” against us living in “base reality”.
Similarly, Google’s machine-intelligence guru Ray Kurzweil has suggested that “maybe our whole universe is a science experiment of some junior high-school student in another universe”.
What’s more, some physicists are willing to entertain the possibility.
In April 2016, several of them debated the issue at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, US.
None of these people are proposing that we are physical beings held in some gloopy vat and wired up to believe in the world around us, as in The Matrix.
Instead, there are at least two other ways that the Universe around us might not be the real one.
Cosmologist Alan Guth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US has suggested that our entire Universe might be real yet still a kind of lab experiment. The idea is that our Universe was created by some super-intelligence, much as biologists breed colonies of micro-organisms.
There is nothing in principle that rules out the possibility of manufacturing a universe in an artificial Big Bang, filled with real matter and energy, says Guth.
Nor would it destroy the universe in which it was made.
The new universe would create its own bubble of space-time, separate from that in which it was hatched. This bubble would quickly pinch off from the parent universe and lose contact with it. (Except these murderous waves of slaughter-hood and kamikaze bombings that are spreading around the globe)
This scenario does not then really change anything. Our Universe might have been born in some super-beings’ equivalent of a test tube, but it is just as physically “real” as if it had been born “naturally”.
However, there is a second scenario. It is this one that has garnered all the attention, because it seems to undermine our very concept of reality.
Musk and other like-minded folk are suggesting that we are entirely simulated beings. We could be nothing more than strings of information manipulated in some gigantic computer, like the characters in a video game.
Even our brains are simulated, and are responding to simulated sensory inputs.
In this view, there is no Matrix to “escape from”. This is where we live, and is our only chance of “living” at all.
But why believe in such a baroque possibility?
The argument is quite simple: we already make simulations, and with better technology it should be possible to create the ultimate one, with conscious agents that experience it as totally lifelike
We carry out computer simulations not just in games but in research. Scientists try to simulate aspects of the world at levels ranging from the subatomic to entire societies or galaxies, even whole universes.
For example, computer simulations of animals may tell us how they develop complex behaviours like flocking and swarming. Other simulations help us understand how planets, stars and galaxies form. (But it explains nothing of why)
We can also simulate human societies using rather simple “agents” that make choices according to certain rules. These give us insights into how cooperation appears, how cities evolve, how road traffic and economies function, and much else.
These simulations are getting ever more complex as computer power expands. Already, some simulations of human behaviour try to build in rough descriptions of cognition.
Researchers envisage a time, not far away, when these agents’ decision-making will not come from simple “if…then…” rules. Instead, they will give the agents simplified models of the brain and see how they respond. (Simplified models are Not the real thing)
Who is to say that before long we will not be able to create computational agents – virtual beings – that show signs of consciousness? Advances in understanding and mapping the brain, as well as the vast computational resources promised by quantum computing, make this more likely by the day.
If we ever reach that stage, we will be running huge numbers of simulations. They will vastly outnumber the one “real” world around us. (And where the energy will come from to run all these simulations?)
Is it not likely, then, that some other intelligence elsewhere in the Universe has already reached that point?
If so, it makes sense for any conscious beings like ourselves to assume that we are actually in such a simulation, and not in the one world from which the virtual realities are run. The probability is just so much greater.
Philosopher Nick Bostrom of the University of Oxford in the UK has broken down this scenario into three possibilities. As he puts it, either:
(1) Intelligent civilisations never get to the stage where they can make such simulations, perhaps because they wipe themselves out first; or
(2) They get to that point, but then choose for some reason not to conduct such simulations; or
(3) We are overwhelmingly likely to be in such a simulation.
The question is which of these options seems most probable.
Astrophysicist and Nobel laureate George Smoot has argued that there is no compelling reason to believe (1) or (2). (And why Not?)
Sure, humanity is causing itself plenty of problems at the moment, what with climate change, nuclear weapons and a looming mass extinction. But these problems need not be terminal. (Why Not? What force is keeping the galaxies turning around themselves and around other galaxies?)
What’s more, there is nothing to suggest that truly detailed simulations, in which the agents experience themselves as real and free, are impossible in principle.
Smoot adds that, given how widespread we now know other planets to be (with another Earth-like one right on our cosmic doorstep), it would be the height of arrogance to assume that we are the most advanced intelligence in the entire Universe.
What about option (2)? Conceivably, we might desist from making such simulations for ethical reasons. Perhaps it would seem improper to create simulated beings that believe they exist and have autonomy. (Ethics have never been a critical barrier to discovering what could be discovered)
But that too seems unlikely, Smoot says. After all, one key reason we conduct simulations today is to find out more about the real world. This can help us make the world better and save lives. So there are sound ethical reasons for doing it. (Didn’t get that reasoning)
That seems to leave us with option (3): we are probably in a simulation.
But this is all just supposition. Could we find any evidence?
Many researchers believe that depends on how good the simulation is.
The best way would be to search for flaws in the program, just like the glitches that betray the artificial nature of the “ordinary world” in The Matrix. For instance, we might discover inconsistencies in the laws of physics.
Alternatively, the late artificial-intelligence maven Marvin Minsky has suggested that there might be giveaway errors due to “rounding off” approximations in the computation. For example, whenever an event has several possible outcomes, their probabilities should add up to 1. If we found that they did not, that would suggest something was amiss. (But probability is a logical math concept to rely on for real life existence)
Some scientists argue that there are already good reasons to think we are inside a simulation. One is the fact that our Universe looks designed. (We are the ones looking hard for a design in everything)
The constants of nature, such as the strengths of the fundamental forces, have values that look fine-tuned to make life possible. Even small alterations would mean that atoms were no longer stable, or that stars could not form. Why this is so is one of the deepest mysteries in cosmology.
One possible answer invokes the “multiverse“. Maybe there is a plethora of universes, all created in Big Bang-type events and all with different laws of physics. (That view, I tend to agree with)
By chance, some of them would be fine-tuned for life – and if we were not in such a hospitable universe, we would not ask the fine-tuning question because we would not exist.
However, parallel universes are a pretty speculative idea. (And what is Not speculative?)
So it is at least conceivable that our Universe is instead a simulation whose parameters have been fine-tuned to give interesting results, like stars, galaxies and people.
While this is possible, the reasoning does not get us anywhere. After all, presumably the “real” Universe of our creators must also be fine-tuned for them to exist. In that case, positing that we are in a simulation does not explain the fine-tuning mystery.
Others have pointed to some of the truly weird findings of modern physics as evidence that there is something amiss.
Quantum mechanics, the theory of the very small, has thrown up all sorts of odd things.
For instance, both matter and energy seem to be granular. What’s more, there are limits to the resolution with which we can observe the Universe, and if we try to study anything smaller, things just look “fuzzy”.
Smoot says these perplexing features of quantum physics are just what we would expect in a simulation. They are like the pixellation of a screen when you look too closely.
However, that is just a rough analogy. It is beginning to look as though the quantum graininess of nature might not be really so fundamental, but is a consequence of deeper principles about the extent to which reality is knowable.
A second argument is that the Universe appears to run on mathematical lines, just as you would expect from a computer program. Ultimately, say some physicists, reality might be nothing but mathematics. (we tend to match designs with abstract math concepts)
Max Tegmark of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology argues that this is just what we would expect if the laws of physics were based on a computational algorithm.
However, that argument seems rather circular.
For one thing, if some super-intelligence were running simulations of their own “real” world, they could be expected to base its physical principles on those in their own universe, just as we do. In that case, the reason our world is mathematical would not be because it runs on a computer, but because the “real” world is also that way.
Conversely, simulations would not have to be based on mathematical rules.
They could be set up, for example, to work randomly. Whether that would result in any coherent outcomes is not clear, but the point is that we cannot use the apparently mathematical nature of the Universe to deduce anything about its “reality”.
However, based on his own research in fundamental physics, James Gates of the University of Maryland thinks there is a more specific reason for suspecting that the laws of physics are dictated by a computer simulation
Gates studies matter at the level of subatomic particles like quarks, the constituents of protons and neutrons in the atomic nucleus. He says the rules governing these particles’ behaviour turn out to have features that resemble the codes that correct for errors in manipulating data in computers. So perhaps those rules really are computer codes?
Maybe. Or maybe interpreting these physical laws as error-correcting codes is just the latest example of the way we have always interpreted nature on the basis of our advanced technologies.
At one time Newtonian mechanics seemed to make the universe a clockwork mechanism, and more recently genetics was seen – at the dawn of the computer age – as a kind of digital code with storage and readout functions. We might just be superimposing our current preoccupations onto the laws of physics.
It is likely to be profoundly difficult if not impossible to find strong evidence that we are in a simulation. Unless the simulation was really rather error-strewn, it will be hard to design a test for which the results could not be explained in some other way.
We might never know, says Smoot, simply because our minds would not be up to the task. After all, you design your agents in a simulation to function within the rules of the game, not to subvert them. This might be a box we cannot think outside of.
There is, however, a more profound reason why perhaps we should not get too worried by the idea that we are just information being manipulated in a vast computation. Because that is what some physicists think the “real” world is like anyway.
Quantum theory itself is increasingly being couched in terms of information and computation. Some physicists feel that, at its most fundamental level, nature might not be pure mathematics but pure information: bits, like the ones and zeros of computers.
The influential theoretical physicist John Wheeler dubbed this notion “It From Bit“.
In this view, everything that happens, from the interactions of fundamental particles upwards, is a kind of computation.
“The Universe can be regarded as a giant quantum computer,” says Seth Lloyd of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “If one looks at the ‘guts’ of the Universe – the structure of matter at its smallest scale – then those guts consist of nothing more than [quantum] bits undergoing local, digital operations.”
This gets to the nub of the matter.
If reality is just information, then we are no more or less “real” if we are in a simulation or not. In either case, information is all we can be.
Does it make a difference if that information were programmed by nature or by super-intelligent creators?
It is not obvious why it should – except that, in the latter case, presumably our creators could in principle intervene in the simulation, or even switch it off. How should we feel about that?
Tegmark, mindful of this possibility, has recommended that we had all better go out and do interesting things with our lives, just in case our simulators get bored.
I think this is said at least half in jest. After all, there are surely better reasons to want to lead interesting lives than that they might otherwise be erased. But it inadvertently betrays some of the problems with the whole concept.
The idea of super-intelligent simulators saying “Ah look, this run is a bit dull – let’s stop it and start another” is comically anthropomorphic. Like Kurzweil’s comment about a school project, it imagines our “creators” as fickle teenagers with Xboxes.
The discussion of Bostrom’s three possibilities involves a similar kind of solipsism.
It is an attempt to say something profound about the Universe by extrapolating from what humans in the 21st Century are up to. The argument boils down to: “We make computer games. I bet super-beings would too, only they’d be awesome!”
In trying to imagine what super-intelligent beings might do, or even what they would consist of, we have little choice but to start from ourselves. But that should not obscure the fact that we are then spinning webs from a thread of ignorance.
It is surely no coincidence that many advocates of the “universal simulation” idea attest to being avid science-fiction fans in their youth.
This might have inspired them to imagine futures and alien intelligences, but it may also have predisposed them to cast such imaginings in human terms: to see the cosmos through the windows of the Starship Enterprise.
Perhaps mindful of such limitations, Harvard physicist Lisa Randall is puzzled by the enthusiasm some of her colleagues show for these speculations about cosmic simulation.
For her they change nothing about how we should see and investigate the world. Her bafflement is not just a “so what”: it is a question of what we choose to understand by “reality”.
Almost certainly, Elon Musk does not go around telling himself that the people he sees around him, and his friends and family, are just computer constructs created by streams of data entering the computational nodes that encode his own consciousness.
Partly, he does not do so because it is impossible to hold that image in our heads for any sustained length of time. But more to the point, it is because we know deep down that the only notion of reality worth having is the one we experience, and not some hypothetical world “behind” it.
There is, however, nothing new about asking what is “behind” the appearances and sensations we experience. Philosophers have been doing so for centuries.
Plato wondered if what we perceive as reality is like the shadows projected onto the walls of a cave.
Immanuel Kant asserted that, while there might be some “thing in itself” that underlies the appearances we perceive, we can never know it.
René Descartes accepted, in his famous one-liner “I think therefore I am“, that the capacity to think is the only meaningful criterion of existence we can attest.
The concept of “the world as simulation” takes that old philosophical saw and clothes it in the garb of our latest technologies. There is no harm in that. Like many philosophical conundrums, it impels us to examine our assumptions and preconceptions.
But until you can show that drawing distinctions between what we experience and what is “real” leads to demonstrable differences in what we might observe or do, it does not change our notion of reality in a meaningful way.
In the early 1700s, the philosopher George Berkeley argued that the world is merely an illusion. Dismissing the idea, the ebullient English writer Samuel Johnson exclaimed “I refute it thus” – and kicked a stone.
Johnson did not really refute anything. But he may nevertheless have come up with the right response.
Adonis Diaries 
Comments and snippets posted on FB: part 2
Posted by: adonis49 on: September 30, 2016
FB comments: part 2
High rates of dynamic social mobility reduce social norms, class consciousness and class conflicts. The plight of racism in the USA toward the Blacks and Latinos is that these minorities (soon to become majority) do Not enjoy the same job and financial opportunities wherever they decide to settle down in different cities. Hence, their dynamic mobility rate is very low.
Racism is virtual among the rich, regardless of color, religion or origine. The only difference is Old and New wealth.
Racism spans all the spectrum of differences among the poor people.
One exception in Lebanon: White colonial citizens are highly welcomed and treated like VIP, even if they are practically poor or pretty stingy.
Can’t write because you are going through a period of many doubts? Great opportunity to note down the many facets of your doubts.
In your next period of confidence, you can re-edit your notes.
Many lazy reflective people might benefit of your doubts.
Revolution occurs when conditions get better, Not when they are getting worse. (Tocqueville)
A revolution in Lebanon would wait until social services improve and the Lebanese regain their dignities in better services and opportunities conditions.
Let’s work on that
Becoming a specialist in the numeric propaganda with the Islamic State must have been a close initiation and cooperation with foreign secret services to foment the atrocious upheavals in the Middle East.
The Individualistic problem in the current USA is that the citizens are no longer trying to properly understand what “self-interest” means to the community
Le danger d’appartenir a une religion ou a un sect, c’est que ce qui devait etre “une echapatoire temporaire”devient permanent. La paresse de notre esprit ne trouve jamais une alternative de reflection aussi paresseuse
“Soldier mindset?”, “motivated reasoning?”
It’s this phenomenon in which our unconscious motivations, our desires and fears, shape the way we interpret information.
Some information, some ideas, feel like our allies. We want them to win. We want to defend them.
And other information or ideas are the enemy, and we want to shoot them down.
“What do you most yearn for? Do you yearn to defend your own beliefs or do you yearn to see the world as clearly as you possibly can?”
Saint-Exupéry in “The Little Prince.”:
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up your men to collect wood and give orders and distribute the work. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
Do You feel that most of our fumbling in life is the Fear of missing the shortest road to happiness?
In the Tomb of the Fireflies, Nosaka Akiyuki describes the plight of the orphaned children as the US B29 carpet bombed entire villages and cities before dropping the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Most of the children roamed devastated landscapes and died of malnutrition. Japan was on its knees and lacking of everything, even rice. And yet, the US dropped 2 A-bombs on Japan
Dynamic social mobility? High turnover of politicians, low turnover of financial bosses, rare turnover of holders of capital
Le danger d’appartenir a une religion ou a un sect, c’est que ce qui devait etre “une echapatoire temporaire“devient permanent. La paresse de notre esprit ne trouve jamais une alternative de reflection aussi paresseuse
Can’t write because you are going through a period of many doubts? Great opportunity to note down the many facets of your doubts.
In your next period of confidence, you can re-edit your notes.
Many lazy reflective people might benefit of your doubts.
Becoming a specialist in the numeric propaganda with the Islamic State must have been a close initiation and cooperation with foreign secret services to foment the atrocious upheavals in the Middle East.
In the Tomb of the Fireflies, Nosaka Akiyuki describes the plight of the orphaned children as the US B29 carpet bombed entire villages and cities before dropping the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most of the children roamed devastated landscapes and died of malnutrition. Japan was on its knees and lacking of everything, even rice.
Virtual reality? Using several accounts under various pseudonyms and feeling free to express everything that comes to mind. It is these virtual communications in social media that excite the prospective potential racists and extremist jihadists to bloom and expand
The military coup in Turkey was a textbook operational success and no military units came out to confront it. NATO idea was to strike at least two birds in one shot and decided to call off the operations:
1. NATO wanted to remind Erdogan that he should not sign deals with Russia and Iran without prior agreements and negotiation with the USA and Europe
2. Preserve a “Democratic” image of Turkey and force Erdogan Not to slide faster into a Theocratic system of Moslem Brotherhood control of all the institutions
My conjecture is that this tactics (of shooting more than one essential bird) will fail in the medium-term:
1.Erdogan will Not cancel his agreements with Russia or Iran: The NATO will pressure Erdogan to reduce these agreement into a skin-deep understanding
2. The democratic processes will enhance the power of the Moslem Brotherhood in election and erase whatever objective NATO wanted of a secular Turkey
The benefits of this Turkish military coup:
As after each coup, whether successful or Not, Turkey will need a couple of months to regain a semblance of internal control. This period will witness the withdrawal of Turkish troops outside its borders (read Baashoka in northern Iraq or within northern Syria) and demanding foreign troops inside Turkey (airfields) to reduce their activities,. The consequences for this necessary isolation will give a breathing period for the neighbouring States such as Syria, Iraq, the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabach enclave of Azerbaijan. The benefits are:
1. Reduction of military activities against the Turkish, Syrian and Iraqi Kurds
2. Syria will finally get the green line to recapture all of Aleppo and its surrounding towns, since no Turkish supplies in arms and jihadists will flow inside
3. Iraq will complete surrounding greater Mosul by taking the Turkish positions in Ba3shouka.
4. Syria and Iraq will launch a joint operation to take the border city of Abu Kamal, thus denying daesh any logistical routes to Mosul and Rakka.
5. Syria will have to retake Deir el Zour in these joint military operations
6. A serious negotiation for a political settlement in Syria
If each individual has Assurance-Game preferences (universal cooperation to free-riding), while falsely believing that others have Prisoner’s -Dilemma preferences, they will all act in ways confirming that false belief. (Alexis De Tocqueville)
Petit Frere reve de bagnoles, de fringues, de thunes
De reputation de dur, pour toutes, il volerait la lune
Il collectionne les mefaits sans se soucier
Du mal qu’il fait, tout en demandant du Respect
(L’Ecole du micro d’argent, l’album d’IAM)
Ce petit frère est devenu un radical solitaire and veut devenir un hero, et obtenir le plus grand respect de tout, “martyr” pour Allah des Islamists
Easy and affordable public transportation in cities and across the country is a necessary condition for social mobility, but Never a sufficient condition.
In the medium-term, for any increase in the rate of dynamic social mobility, two basic requirements are needed:
1. Equal individual rights for voting and participating in decision making wherever you decide to settle in across the State
2. Equal economic and social opportunities in the region you settle in
All ministries and public institutions in Lebanon have their accounts in the Central Bank (account #83), except three:
1. Ministry of communication: Within a decade, the revenue dropped by half while the number of communication units doubled and also the cost.
2. The Bureau of wheat and shamandar sukkary with a budget of over $60 million while no one grows wheat or betterave. The imported stuff are much cheaper but end up more expensive when entering the internal market.
3. Oil and gas import: Run by a collective of all former militia leaders during the civil war. No public or private competitors allowed to enter the fray.
The Port of Beirut import over $20 bn of goods. $4 bn are contraband goods that are never inspected (20% of all containers unloading in the port). The government is robbed of over one billion in TVA and tariff cost.
Apparently, China is the main exporter to Lebanon with over $2 bn, followed by Italy $1.7 bn, France 1.7, USA 1 bn, Turkey, England, Spain…
You must commit all kinds of error, if you are a normal person. What is important is at a later phase, you start inventing yourself: Start listening intently to people’s plight and desires.
All the stories are basically the same, but each person considers his story a galactic novelty.
Listen passionately to people’s story: they want a listening ear.
Great works of the human mind were produced during centuries of liberty of expression and publishing the works (Tocqueville). What a tremendous span of luck to keep liberty flourishing for even a decade in current world affairs
If you have Not been asked to help, no altruistic person will volunteer to come forward to aid
Short-lived preferences (joining a guerrilla movement) may be impossible to undo when preferences return to original state (impossible to get out when emotions are back to normal)
People tend to discount the future at the same rate in dealing with financial investment as with health decisions
Je veux partir pour mieux revenir? Mais mes “revenirs” n’ont jamais etes fameux, meme suffocantes. A quoi donc partir si ce nest pas pour ne jamais revenir?
Des fourmis courant en tous sens sur une petite boule suspendue dans l’espace et tournant autour du soleil pour un temps. Et qui s’envoient des missiles, des Patriots, des A- bombs, des assassins centures de bombs…
We are wracked by 2 warring passions:
the desired feeling to be led and the desire to remain free. Democratic processes can resolve these tensions by subjecting ourselves to a power that we freely elected. The requirements are:
1. Elections laws are fair and transparent and
2. The voter is made to feel free to vote for his candidate.
Democratic systems dangle the image of instability which also induce short-term horizon. Americas come to love all undertakings in which chance plays a role. An American experiences all of life as a game of chance, a time of revolution, a day of battle. The Americans take habits formed in trade and carry them over into the world of politics (Tocqueville)
Democracy is to be valued Not for what it does in the political sphere (usually, bad management of short-term projects by less skilful politicians and civil servants and short-term horizon in planning), but democracy is valued for what it causes to be done in the economic sphere (many varied projects, restless activity, abundance of energy, plenty of social activity, acquiring a general taste for association, good communication toward a common understanding…)
Explanation of Tocqueville of why the USA do Not stigmatize bankruptcies:
For Americans, industry is like a vast lottery, in which a handful of undertakers risk their fortune and lose daily, but the State constantly win (the casino, always win). Americans who make a kind of virtue of commercial recklessness cannot in any case stigmatize the reckless
Le loup solitaire des n’existe pas. Il y a une grande difference entre vivre dans un culte d’isolation et agir en solitaire. Il ya toujours une personne pres de vous ( le presumé loup solitaire) qui vous formate et vous encourage jusqu’au passage a l’acte.
Neither God, nor Master? Same as Neither Freedom, nor Authority.
If you have no faith, you eventually get to serve. And if you think you are free, you will eventually believe in something. When faced with the opportunity of being independent on both counts (religion and political leadership), man will feel fatigued and pretty anxious to shoulder all these responsibilities as an independent person.
One or the other (religion or politics) will fluctuate in holding power over the sway of a restless life for survival. Many in the new generation are living in a shell of self-satisfaction, steering away from anything that the media label “politics”. Soon, politics will catch up with them and reduce them to bewildered and hapless smart-asses.
Justice in Fairness? That’s No justice to fairness: the legal system will still apply the book of laws. Rather fairness in Justice: legal system and judges would be given a wide latitude to heavily weight in fairness in what the law commands. Knowing the predicaments of the poorer classes in inability to secure all the necessary records and the legal documents, the legal system should let these hapless people enjoy comprehensive measures that balance out the unfair system toward the well- to-do.
Within the carnage of all authority in the social world, the hierarchy, the family, in the politics… how can a hapless citizen manage to navigate a life without seeking any kind of leader to put at rest his countless decisions. Any figure, a feudal, a sect, a movement… will do.
Beware of the vast free-schools (civil associations) to learn the general theory of associations: They usually steer away from encouraging citizens to take an interest in public affairs. At least in commercial joint venture, you have to risk something
“Art and science cannot exist but in minutely organized particulars” William Blake’s dictum. If you succumb to the countless excuses to deny yourself the necessary leisure time to study and reflect, then you tend to stick to your old worn out opinions and positions
Worker-managed firms? That pay lower wages than capitalist style firms do? Are the workers that stupid to be paid lower wages while shouldering the burden of administration and management? These Worker-managed firms, even paying higher wages, are unable to compete efficiently in market economies: They can fool the workers’ emotional desires to be in control. But emotions for control are quickly swayed by the desires to be led. And the workers are pressured to elect a less skilled leader who didn’t risk much in the enterprise.
Worker-managed firms can become success stories after graduating skilled and experience in-house managers. The Capitalist, owning the means of production, can be paid what he actually reimbursed the bank, and the State taking the slacks of what the bank demands as subsidy. The State win on two counts: It is getting the taxes and also negotiating better deal with the bank.
“Dans la peau d’une djihadiste: Au Coeur des filieres de recrutement de l’Etat Islamic”, Anna Erelle nous donne l’impression que les malheurs de la Syrie sont causes par les combats entre Daesh et Al Nousra pour les gisements de gas.
Daesh is supported by the USA and Israel. Al Nousra is backed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. As for the weapons, every one is willing to sell to any one.
What happens when a political system denies and prohibits its citizens to concretely (fact researching and investigative reporting on scandals and mismanagement) criticize the government and its institutions? The intelligentsia will revert to abstract models of government. Once in power, this intelligentsia will lack all the necessary facts on the ground to make judicious decision and rely on already mind-fixed models
Formal preferences: attitudes toward risk and time preferences
Substantive preferences: Garden-variety of preferences such as preferring Billie Holiday to Ella Fitzgerald
Spill-over effects in social sciences: Habit formation, a pattern of behaviour in a sphere of life X will follows in sphere Y
Compensation effects: Need satisfaction where pattern Not following in sphere X will follow in sphere Y
Satiation effects: Need satisfaction where pattern follows X but will Not follow in Y.
Spheres of activities: Religion, literature, Arts, politics, warfare, civil society movements, private life, economic relations…
Language “djeun” in social media: LOL (lots of laugh), MDR (mort de rire), PTDR (pete de rire)
Constitutions of Nations should adopt the UN human rights in their integrity and apply medium-term laws in order to fill the gap toward satisfying UN general laws. Each nation should be entitled to apply short-term laws for current exigencies with definite expiration time. Unless the law-makers revise these laws before their expiration date, these short-term laws must be scrapped from the books and registers and be considered as Non valid.
Only stable laws with definite expiration dates can stabilize the social and economic processes
I cannot confirm that knowledge diminishes the frequency of crazy decisions or their level of serious consequences. What I know is that knowledge takes time to be acquired, and by the time we are in power, we are old enough Not to commit that many lousy decisions.
Droit de l’homme? Ca veut dire droit a la faiblesse. Dans ce sens, droit au male faible, qui comprend bien que ces droits sont a son intention, mais refuse publiquement, et farouchement.
La plupart des jihadists venus de l’Occident et de Tunise ont passes par la Libye avant de grosser les rangs de Daesh en Syrie
L’eternel retour: Ce que je considere comme acquis est redecouvert par les nouvelles generations. Surtout en matiere de literature.
Si tu Detache la sexualite de l’affectivite: Le term un “sexuel” vous serez applique
On est plutot l’objet d’une vie que nous n’avons pas choisie.
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