Mind control

I was watching an interview with Noam Chomsky where he explains why he is not invited to night talk-shows. In the words of the producer of one of them this is because he is not concise. As a matter of fact this is true, I have watched several interviews with him and he is quite prone to argument for a long time any point he is trying to make. In the same interview he justifies himself with the following argument: you can state anything that goes inline with the current power structures and it will be immediately accepted - Samdam Hussein's was a terrorist that used chemical weapons against his own population - But what happens if instead I use the following sentence, - Samdam Hussein's was a terrorist that used chemical weapons against his own population and was widely supported by the government of G. Bush (father) -

Noam Chomsky argument is that meanwhile both sentences are probably truth, the first one won't require any argumentation to be believed meanwhile the second one will require to show a long list of facts supporting it before it gets even partially accepted.

I guess it does not scape to anybody that there is a always a big effort from the different power centers to create mainstream opinion; newspapers, think-tanks, lobbies, "intellectuals"... all shouting with a single voice and trying to gear our thoughts in the same direction. Propaganda creates those streams of thought that are useful to the power centers to steer people's opinion in their own interest. If this was not bad by itself, as I think it is a coercion of the freedom of thinking, it may get even worse when used by people with obscure intentions.

You may have receive a very popular viral email that shows pictures of massive weddings in Gaza, if you do a search in Google (link) you will find some examples. The bottom line of the email was that girls as young as 11 years were forced to get married with Jihadist and that Hamas was sponsoring the marries with $500. All normal right? The Muslims are these horrible people that when are not killing are raping girls, right?
That is the mainstream thinking, right?

It happens that the pictures are true and the wedding in question took place, but the girls in the pcitures are the daughters of Palestinian death citizens ( soldiers / fighters?, I don't know...) that were killed during the latest Israely invasion of the Palestinian territories. The brides were the mothers of the girls in many cases marrying the brother of their death husbands as it is the tradition in the Muslim word.

The "power" created the main line of thinking so Occident would engage in an obscure war, now it is used by wrecked people like the neocon Dr. Paul L. Williams that has no problem in twisting the truth or showing us the partial bits of his interest and then we may receive one of these emails and we may even forward it, with the best of intentions to all our acquaintances. And then a lie told 1000 times becomes the truth.

As you can see if you reached up to here, if your argument in not the main stream, it is difficult to be concise.

Shylock

I've always had a lot of sympathy for Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare Merchant of Venice. Shylock is a complex character, tormented by the dissapearence of his daughter (who runs away with a young Christian with part of his money), living in the periphery of a society that disregards the Jews, he is obsessed with increasing his wealth using the only art that he knows; money lending.

You may have heard me saying before that life always puts you in front on the same person at least twice, so that is why it is better to have a fiend in Hell than an enemy in Heaven. That is probably what Antonio (the prosper merchant of Venice) may think when he is forced to ask for money to Shylock, money that he will pay back as soon as any of his ships full of goods arrive back to Venice.

This is the part of the story I like. The same Antonio that disdained Shylock when he was the "big dog", is now the "small dog", and he gets smaller and smaller as the news from the wrecks and misfortunes of his ships arrive at Venice. Furthermore, Shylock has signed a quite unusual contract with Antonio, if the merchant does not pay back the money lent Shylock will take a pound of Antonio's flesh. So the tormented Shylock becomes the tormentor and Antonio the target of his ire, Shylock seeks revenge in Antonio for all the unfairness the Venice society imposes in him and his fellow Jews, so when Antonio can not satisfy the bond Shylock demands Antonio's heart.

Finally things end up well for Antonio and bad for Shylock. The wise Portia ( - beautiful, rich and wise - Shakespeare loved his female character's as much as Almovodar does) manages to free Antonio from his bond, leaves Shylock with nothing and furthermore he is forced to convert to Christianism.

Shylock is the ultimate loser, but he is the most human and more credible of all the characters of this play (comedy Shakespeare calls it). As all of us he is exposed by the society to that bi-polarity of sometimes being the servant and sometimes having to be the master and having to change from one side to the other constantly sometimes even without realizing at which side of the social scale we are.

My new big TV

I saw that big screen TV at the local electronics store, and I fell in love. It had so many inches that I can not even remember how many. I have to buy it, I said to myself, looking at the TV from now on will be like looking through the window to a world in real scale. At that time I could not even image the ruin that love affair would cause to my life.

I went home, I prepared a space in my living room for the big TV, the price would be no problem, I can pay it in comfortable monthly instalments, just a couple of hundreds a month for a year or so, what is that, nothing really. I was ready to go to the store when I realized, that the TV will never fit in my car. How could I not have thought about that before? I wanted to have the big window to the world but I was living in a small world on my own, how could I be so blind that I did not think about that before. I rush to the car dealer and saw a big SUV of the right size for my new life, I did not have the money to pay for it, but asking for credit was so easy. I got the credit and I got the car and I drove straight to the electronics shop to pick my new TV. I know that you can get the TV delivered to your place, but my life was growing from that of a small man in a small world to a big sized life and during these processes you have to do the things by yourself.

I went home and with some help from my neighbour I got my TV installed in the living room. It was only then that I realized that there was something that did not fit. The living room was too small for such a big TV, I tried to rearrange the furniture to get better angles, but nothing I tried would work. Damm! I need a bigger living room - I thought. Well, after all were not all my acquaintances moving into bigger houses? It was even an investment, they all said. So there I was, moving into a better neighbourhood, what a house, the perfect setting for my new TV... how good did my car look parked outside. Finally my life had gone bigger. And how easy it was, just ask for credit, buy the house on a mortgage and a few months later I was even able to re-mortgage the house which left me with some cash for a very nice holiday. After all that had been a period of changes and I needed some rest.

I have no house now, I have lost my TV and my car, I owe money to a bank that is not even the bank that lent it to me (that one has disappeared). I am writing this from an Internet Cafe, listening to aged New Age music and wondering if any of my friends will give me shelter for another week... the problem is that they all live in these little apartments with almost no free space, small like the one I once had.

The endless violence loop

Polish journalist and writer Ryszard Kapuściński quotes Bolesław Miciński in his book "The Polish Bush " (Busz po polsku)- War does not only deform the soul of the invaders, it also deforms those of the people invaded as their souls get poisoned with hate. -

Anyone that has studied a bit of system's theory should know that in any system with a positive feedback loop as the feedback does not compensate the input (by subtracting to the input) the system becomes unstable. In a situation of war we could translate the previous into; retaliation to an aggression will only bring more aggressions and thus more pain. This basic rule of stability may had not been very clear even to the authors of some sacred books when they wrote things like "an eye for an eye a tooth for tooth".

Trying to figure out who was the one who threw the stone that started the conflict is just the lame excuse of those avoiding to solve the conflict. By the time the hearts are full of hate the reason is not used any more and the positive feedback loop leads to using even bigger stones to retaliate. It may be thought that at this stage the one with the biggest stone will win, but I am afraid that it is not true. Once a system becomes unstable it may be so for ever, even in the absence of an input.

So in the case of an aggression I guess that you should defend yourself, but just up to the point that it is not perceived as a further aggression, because even though you may have the biggest stone, throwing it will prove not to be on your benefit.

Call me an idiot but I am not stupid

Cocktail of the day. A little bit of behavioural economics mixed with genetic evolutionism.

First a well known experiment; €10 and 2 persons, one of the persons makes an offer on how to split the money, the second accepts or rejects the offer. If the offer is accepted both subjects split the money as offered, if the offer is rejected no one gets any money. The interesting thing of this experiment is not that in most of the cases the offer is fair and close to half of the money, the interesting part is that for very unfair offers, for example a 8 / 2 split, the second subject rejects the offer. In this case both subjects loose. Why does not the second subject think that after all €2 is better than nothing? Well it seems that the natural response by human beings is to reject unfairness, even if it does not benefit them in the short term.

So is it just that humans have developed a sense for fairness and punish the unfair, or is it that we know that several behaviours are not good for the group (the apparent altruism described by Richard Dawkins in his book "The Selfish Gene") and as part of the group we punish anyone trying to break the equilibrium in the group? I believe so, by punishing behaviours that are against the group we make sure that in the future selfish behaviours will be less likely to happen.

Under certain circumstances by losing we all win, and thus we are ready to take the pain. But this altruism may have its limits. Take for example the countries were corruption is generalized, it happens at all levels from the top officials to the layman. In those societies the equilibrium is already broken and it makes no difference to punish any individual for her greed as it won't make any difference for the group as a whole. Thus once corruption is installed in a society it is so difficult to eradicate because the cohesion principles of the group are already broken.

Ich liebe es nicht

Advertising billboards in Germany are not very catchy, most of the time a fat guy advertising tools for a DIY shop. The colours are usually as neutral as the message, so it does not hurt passing by. But recently a famous fast "food" company has taken over the billboards for their breakfast campaign, freshly brewed coffee and a burger is their idea of what we should have to start the day.

For me if coffee was a religion, cafes ought to be their temples. A place with the right atmosphere, were you get your cup of coffee, properly done on a espresso machine, maybe pick the morning newspaper if you are alone, or have a quite chat with your colleagues. I firmly reject the idea of lining on the queue in from of the till to ask for a coffee to a teenager dressed in the corporate uniform that will whisper to the microphone "espresso macchiato" to someone behind the wall, and then will ask you - Sugar and milk? -, and after 10 seconds give you the paper cup that magically appears from behind the wall. And after that you pick your "coffee to go" and you rush to your work...

No!, that is not how it should be. Ich liebe es night!

Let the masses think freely

I have been reading recently about the capability of groups to find solutions to certain types of problems. It came as a surprise to me that under certain conditions groups are better at solving problems than most of the individuals of the group, regardless of the individuals level of experience.

Examples of tasks at which groups are good solving them; when a class was challenged to estimate the number of balls in a jar (that actually contained 850 balls), the average of the answers was better than 94% of the individual answers.

Another good example of problem solving at which crowds perform well is betting, a bookie's job is to try to get as much betted money for a favourite than for an under dog because the margin he wins depends on this. If a lot of people bet for a favourite the booker will incentive bets for the under dog by modifying the odds, betters will see the improvement in the cost of opportunity of the under dog and will start betting for them. Let this system (bets - odds correction) run for a while and the average of the bets will give you a very accurate prediction of what is going to happen. In horse racing most of the time the bets reflect the order of arrival of the horses.

There are some conditions for the crowds to make good predictions; as the second example shows an incentive for the individuals is always good, but also it is important the independence of the individuals, and seems that more heterogeneous groups will lead to better solutions. But it is also important that there is a mechanism that takes the opinions into account and processes them (the bookie or the person doing the mean of the estimations of balls in the jar, the stock market is another aggregating mechanism, in this case it estimates the future value of companies).

It seems as if the human being has the gift to be able to take good collective decisions, but it also seems that the best collective decisions are taken if not in isolation (there is a need of a mechanism to put all the information together) at least with independence. All of this comes as a surprise to me, I have always doubted of the sensibility of the 'herd', and there are numerous examples of crowds going wrong. But I had never considered under which conditions the herd is able to make sound decisions. Maybe that is the fundamental lesson for us to learn, to be able to identify when are the conditions ideal for the group to make a decision or when the conditions have been naturally or forcefully altered so the group may not decide independently. After all isn't this what marketing is all about?

Tell me, tell me, tell me.

"Tell me, tell me, tell me how you do that trick", started the song by The Cure. Nobody now will deny that we live in the age of information, but how is that information shaping the world?

In 1985 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, senator by New York was talking to his friend Scott Miller (from the Sawyer Miller political consulting company) and made a bold statement - Russia's time is over -. Remember these were Reagan and Brezhnev 80's, the cold war was at its peak, so this sentence was completely against common wisdom. But Moynihan reasoned that the future of economy was information, and Russia will only have two ways; stay out of the economy or stay out of the information. Staying out of information would cause economical chaos, letting in information would cause political chaos. We all know what happened to Russia, but the reasoning can still be applied to some other countries were chaos or changes are happening at the moment; North Korea, Zimbabwe... as examples of countries were locking information out has locked the economy or China as an example were important social changes are happening due to a better flow of information (in spite of the efforts of the government to control this information and these changes).

More than 20 years later history has proven that Moynihan was right, information may not only make us freer, but also wealthier, or the other way around.

Spin, Spin, Spin!

Where have all the ideas gone long time passing... The tide of the BIG election is over and a sense of emptiness is filling all the news editions as the waters go back. What to talk about now, wonder the editors all over the world. oh yes, there is an economic crisis, we forgot!. Taking advantage of the quietness I started to wonder what was all about. And I arrived to two conclusions; politics are not about policies any more and you can win an election if you can put a good show.

Elections are not about parties they are about candidates and spin doctors know that people don't care much about the capabilities of a politician as much as how do candidates make people feel. It is not the message as much as how the message is delivered. They are packaging all our feelings, gathered from study groups into magic pills of spin that are being given to political candidates. And they know what to say to make us feel right.

There is no left or right any more, there is no conservative or liberal. It is all about how you feel about that guy you see on TV, or the internet, and your feelings will tell you who to vote. It's all spin, spin, spin.

To know everything about nothing

My friend likes to say; "There are people who think they know everything, and this makes us who know they don't very angry." It is sad in how many occasions you see stupidity and an absolute lack of humbleness hand in hand.

Lots of years ago the economist Carlo Maria Cipolla wrote a little divertimento "The Fundamental Laws of Human Stupidity", compiled in his book of essays "Allegro ma non troppo". In his text he argues that we always underestimate the number of stupid individuals around us and that the probability of someone being stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person. Then he goes into the definition of a stupid person; those whose actions are harmful to others without providing any benefit for themselves. In other words he separates stupid from evil persons. (i.e. those whose actions are harmful to other at their own benefit). Worst is that non stupid people always underestimate the harm that stupid people can do (just because they can not understand such a "stupid" pattern of behaviour) and finally concludes that the stupid people is the most dangerous type of person, because you can not protect yourself against stupidity.

Why all of this? I don't really know, I wanted to start a blog and this was the first thing that came to my mind.