Posts Tagged ‘superstitions’
Superstitions as RISK MANAGEMENT? A PROJECT
Except that it is hard to know beforehand what is useless and what is not, what is “irrational” and what has a hidden implicit rationality that helps navigate opaque systems.
But it suffices that a tiny proportions, say only .01%, of superstitions protect collective or individual survival for these superstitions to be necessary.
And for the very notion of superstition to be rational.
Beware of the probability-fool scientist a la Pinker judging superstitions with primitive tools
In fact we can show that some of these superstitions are most sophisticated in complex systems.
Clearly superstitions might have calming effects in helping us make sense of uncertainty (I never fight harmless superstitions), allowing us to be rational elsewhere.
But let us ignore these functions, just focus on survival. Recall that rationality is survival.
To prove the point that superstitions are risk management tools, extremely “rational”, all we need is
1) show that superstitions do not increase risk of ruin ,
2) show only a few seemingly “anecdotal” examples (they are not) of risk-mitigating superstitions that we only understood ex post, such as the belief that ghosts haunt coastal areas ending by protecting people against tsunamis and pushing indigenous populations to settle in elevated areas.
I am asking all the French educated Jews…
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 25, 2015
I am asking all the French educated Jews…
Why a nationalist in France is considered by the French Jews as a criminal, while a nationalist Jews of the worst kind in Israel merit all the respect?
Why a French patriot is considered an ugly fascist by the French Jews, but a respectable Zionist in Israel?
Why the most secular educated jews in Europe are transformed fanatic mystics when they step in Israel?
In what way the Wall of Lamentation in Jerusalem denotes a race freed from the yoke of superstitions?
All these spectacles reminiscent of the Middle Age.
This eternal seesaw story of Doubt and Faith
We spend most of our existence in a succession of acts of faith.
Not that we have no doubts: We have legitimate excuses for lack of time, of energy, of knowledge and of talent to act on our doubts.
The greatness of human spirit are represented in moments when people act on one of their doubts that they consider harmful to mankind by proving, demonstrating and disseminating their findings that dispel our accumulated superstitions.
It does not make any sense to link faith with religious beliefs or any religious teaching.
It is the elite classes, the bourgeois classes, the political classes, whose interests are tightly linked to the clerics jobs of disseminating to the lower class of the masses the glory of submitting to their destinies and fate, that propagate this linkage of faith with religion.
Bertolt Brecht in his play “The Life of Galileo” let this famous physicist and astronomic scientist say, while in house confinement by the Catholic Pope,
“The battle for rendering the sky measurable is won because of doubt.
Because of faith, the struggle of little people in Rome for their due rights will still be and forever lost.
I support the notion that the only goal of science consists in reducing the pains of existence for mankind.
The schism between science and you (the scientist) may one day become so deep that as you scream in joy for one new discovery you’ll hear in response a louder scream of universal horror.”
The concept of “science for science sake” and “Art for art sake” have never been uttered by genuine scientists and talented artists.
These saying have been disseminated by pseudo scientists and artists with the purpose of avoiding their responsibilities in the outcome of their exploitation process.
Can we join forces so that we give new technologies and new scientific discoveries a sabbatical?
Let mankind enjoy a period of bliss from new technologies that are exploited by the military and multinational corporations in order to keep the little people in a state of misery and hopelessness?
Mankind has already accumulated enough knowledge and know-how to eradicate miseries in health, safety, and life conditions, if we apply science for the well-being of all the human kind and animal kingdom.
Until the activists in political organization and communities reclaim the proper budget, away from the military and subsidies of the big corporations, more scientific discoveries and new technologies are going to make matter worse for the little people.
We cannot stop new discoveries, but we can put enough pressure to rob the deep pocket entities of their might to exclusively exploit the discoveries at the detriment of the real needy people.
Adonis Diaries 