Intro LO: A 1 December 2024 SCMP article (see below) caught my immediate interest as I’ve had a similar idea mid 2022 that was based on an earlier idea in my 2018 blog: 2022: Is stupidity the flip side of beliefs? 2018: Knowledge = Power and the Great Filter in civilisations (5) I prefer my 2022 diagram in this specific stupidity context. Source: my 2022 blog...
Many articles argue that human societies look a lot like ant colonies. Ants have a caste system which is similar to our job specialization. "The typical colony consists of one or more egg-laying queens, numerous sterile females (workers, soldiers) and, seasonally, many winged sexual males and females." (Wiki) There are much more ants than humans: one million...
There is a Dutch saying: "A donkey does not bump into the same stone twice." I didn't see foreign equivalents. An alleged quote by Albert Einstein states: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” The key difference between animals and humans is (not) having beliefs. Recently, I noticed this question: If Humans Are the...
Last week, I received a reply to my Facebook post, in which I disputed the alleged neutrality of Dutch public broadcasting. The reply was: "Facts are facts." I asked him if he was aware of the views of Karl Popper (1902-1994) on this subject (eg, 1974 video). His response made clear that he was not. In the view of Karl Popper, facts are objective truths while...
My Thursday night was restless due to the upcoming full moon of 16 May. My mind kept wondering about zero-sum outcomes within the Love, Knowledge & Power domains of the 7 Belief systems. The Power domain always has a zero-sum outcome: one man's loss is another man's gain. How about the other two? The Love domain has various outcomes. For some, there is synergy...
For a long time, I’ve wondered about the Great Filter in civilizations. Why do initial successful civilizations eventually fail? It also relates to the Fermi paradox: if there is any extraterrestrial civilization, why haven't they contacted us by now? All civilizations seem doomed to fail after their initial success; often for unknown reasons (eg, Cahokia, USA)....
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