Developing country

Do you know the main difference between developed and developing countries? No, it’s not the high income per capita, otherwise the “countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates” would be considered developed countries.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness.

The main difference is, that in developed countries even common people are allowed to live in dignity. Even Joe Sixpack and Sally Soccermom, not that bright, not that well informed, not that rich, not that important, not that perfect – are allowed to live, as if all human life and the laughter of children and happiness are values in themselves.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. – JFK's Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961, 12:11 EST

Because dignity can’t survive without each of them, a basic level of justice, health, food, cleanness, security, privacy, houses, water and electricity is offered to everyone, even when people may not be able to pay for, yes, even when they are <whisper,shudder>pooooooor</whisper,shudder>...

in developed countries.

Not only the rich ones – being able to pay for lawyers, doctors and power supply everywhere on Earth, even in the darkest regions of Africa or Asia – are allowed to walk tall...

in developed countries.

Now the trumpet summons us again... not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need... not as a call to battle... though embattled we are... but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle... year in and year out, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation... a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny... poverty... disease... and war itself.

Hard Times for Proud Americans (2)...

worth more than an update...

because, yes, that's the library of stories Bush's words of the "freedom in Iraq" in front of the best informed audience tells...

The Ballad of ...George: "But this guy is so..."

or...

"There were, by my count, no less than twenty different moments in the last few days where George brought shame and disgrace upon this country."

Proud America, you are still alive and of sound mind...

thank you

Hard Times for Proud Americans...

Know the most dangerous enemy of power?

Laughter.

Remember Spaceballs? Light speed, ridiculous speed, and ludicrous speed?

I guess, the phase of light is over...

Did you ever think about cycles? America began with George, the Moron, the George Who Lost America, embarassing, mortifying for all of his nation..

But may i introduce to you?

The Mocking Bird’s best friend: The President of America...

Babies don’t love him – and the world doesn’t want his gifts...

Bush: “I’ll give you freedom of press and free religion like Iraq”.

Putin: “No, thanks.
We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, quite honestly.”

Bush: "Just wait".

Sounds like an open threat, but that doesn't matter anymore...

Can you hear them laugh?

Update:
"Top Ten George W. Bush Videotape Moments" (Letterman) and some comments ( A - especially about the 'Ewwwwww' moment with Germany's chancellor part 1 and part 2 -, B )

Mules and Hinnies

Yesterday, JasonJ wrote about “Mitochondrial Deoxyribonucleic Acid”, which is really significant for human history.

It reminded me of a problem i had seven years ago. At that time i had found a development system able to do all that stuff i like a system to do like storing whole procedures in texts – which themselves can be stored in databases – and such creating a totally different runtime-system dependent on the individual demands.

I had managed to have a message bus, controlling the interaction and doing all the boring stuff software has to do like popup-lists, error-messages, changing language on the fly, a standard user-interface-window, which offered everything, each usual software window handling databases has to offer and a standard report – all perfectly anonymous regarding the individual, special case of the database-model, this “Kernel”-system had to process.

And it worked.

Dependent on the metadata in a control-file, where the individual surface of the standard-window and standard-print was stored, where the individual checks of the file and its fields could be found, the system could handle anything based on mass data – as long as it was defined in the metadata.

At that time Websites started to become important. And so i started to think about enhancing the system to be able to manage Websites – but then i thought: What will come next?

That’s how i began to look for the “Uber process” – the process, able to handle standard-windows, standard-prints, standard-Websites, everything you want. I had no idea how to do and so i searched for an answer in biology, because no one is as good in programming as Mother Nature.

And in fact, there exists the “Uber process”, biologists say – the egg. Because reproduction is only based on genes, biologists say, and that simply means, that the processes in the egg, the engine, the runtime of the genes, must be totally and perfectly anonymous regarding the metadata (the genes). And that, i thought, has to mean, that the egg must be the “Uber process” – able to manage all the species on Earth (all the “jobs” to be done by reproduction) only dependent on the Metadata “gene”.

But despite the fact, that i knew of the existence of the “Uber process”, i wasn’t able to catch only an idea how to do it or just where to go.

And now, what do you think, did the brazen person do, which didn’t hesitate to search for the definition of information, really genius people couldn’t find for more than 40 years – simply assuming that they all may walk the wrong line?

I didn’t hesitate to think, the biologists must be wrong. There isn’t a way to create a totally and perfectly anonymous process regarding each and every special case through pure representation with metadata, for the simple fact, that the process must “understand” the metadata and therefore both must be strongly intertwined to ensure a working, stable cycle– and only stable cycles are repeatable processes “carrying” information.

(The only totally and perfectly anonymous process regarding any metadata is the quantum noise, i guess, the pure action without repeatability and identifiability.)

Ok, i thought – if you are right and the process has to shape the whole dynamics against the “common knowledge”, you must find something in nature proving the “shaping” against the genes.

But how could i find such a proof? I had to look between the species, because the “kind” of the job, reproduction has to do, could be seen as the offsprings of one kind of “engine”, one kind of egg – and here i found some interesting hints: Species with a variation of about 5% in phenotype shouldn’t be able to unite (==> processes aren’t easy to combine because of their own characteristics), at least in the human species eggs aren’t created by the woman’s body, but by their mothers body (==> the process has to be protected, so better let it go through the generations instead of trying to start it each time), depending on the expectation of women about their future, the birth gender ratio can be changed or the cruel fact about “foetus in foetu” (==>the growth of the body controlled by the genes, but performed by the egg, can be changed and harmed due to external processes influencing the “movement”)...

alas, all those hints were just that: hints.

Then i stumbled across the mule and the hinny, both offsprings of horses and donkeys. Many people think, that both should be the same, because “The genetic inheritance of the hinny is exactly the same as the mule” (American Donkey and Mule Society).

But genes are only metadata – and metadata without a performing engine are meaningless – without any information. Because? Information is process, repeatable, identifable process – and here you see, where the metadata comes into play: in the repeatability and identifiability. But without process, without the action, the ongoing drive to change states there is no information.

So i tried to find something about mules and hinnies – because it is the best known example of mammal hybrids. Problem is, that if they can mate, both kind-defining processes must be similar enough to be able to interprete the metadata of the other species/process: the species must be “closely related”. And because the process defines kind, but the metadata defines the individuality (the title of my first book, btw), you have both elements in each and every individual, and so the more you look at the details, the more inconsistent data you get.

But there is a hint, that there MUST be a general difference – simply because it’s said, that the hinnies are “rarer”. So something controlling the breeding (either humans or nature) prefers mules and to prefer something you have to detect a difference to decide what you want.

And then i found this statement of the American Donkey and Mule Society: “The equine hybrid is easier to obtain when the lower chromosome count, the donkey, is in the male.”

When the donkey is the male, the engine is offered by the kind “horse” – that’s the mule. When the horse is the male, the engine is offered by the kind “donkey” – that’s the hinny. And while some say, there are nearly no differences, other say, the hinny looks more “horselike” or more “donkey-like”, not really consistent, i guess. But there is one hint you can use (Bertrands Paradox) to decide who may be right: the human preference of the horses. The more an animal looks and behaves like a horse, the more it is appreciated – and the mule is preferred.

Why it is so hard to detect the influence of the process? Because the process defines the kind and that simply means, that the process is (nearly) equal for each individual of that kind.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: What can’t be differentiated, is equal. Equality means: no differences, no identifiability – no information...

No distinctness in(side) the process.

You have to compare kinds to compare processes, not individuals, because the individual, the “special case” is dependent on the metadata (btw that’s exactly the same problem, software or ontology has: to differ between system/general services, branches/kinds and single cases/individuals).

Actually, exactly the difficulty to tell precisely the difference between the processes of horse and donkey (similar enough to allow combination of the controlling metadatas) is something like an evidence for the importance of the characteristics of the performing process: Because only nearly equal species/processes can mate/harmonize.

Add to this JasonJ’s “Mitochondrial Deoxyribonucleic Acid, allowing to trace the human movements over the whole Earth by comparing characteristics solely based on the engine.

This proves identifiability – if the mtDNA wouldn’t be identifiable even without the individuality of the genes, you couldn’t trace the march of the tribes.

Btw: i guess, this is one of the basic problems scientists have to understand what information is. They focus on the details of the individuality while ignoring the basic, but omnipresent precondition:

the creating activity.

Wanted: A New Concept for Society – or – Why Philosophy matters

Philosophy...

most people think of it as a luxury of the educated – but it is much more, because the science called “Philosophy” is nothing else than the description of what people think, believe and hold for truth – the description of the foundation of their minds, of the philosophy of everbody, on which (s)he decides everything in life, the big and the small, the important and the forgettable.

That’s why i couldn’t stop to write in reply to Robert’s post “The American/Israeli War Against Islam”. But making too many words kills each comment (except for the brave mannning, defending the genuine american superiority) i decided to reply on my own blog – where the flood of words doesn’t wash away Roberts readers...

Robert said:
Will it always be this way?
Will it always be that even the peaceful and the innocent will become twisted by the violence they are forced to commit to simply keep their homes and keep their families alive?
Why is it that mankind's history is one of conquest?

that's the myth they tell us – since our birthday, that's called "train the pavlov-dogs". Why they tell it to us? Because if you believe that something is "natural", you simply think that you cannot change it

as i was young i thought it to be "natural", too – that man kills man, that the strong hurts the weak and grows fat of their work while their children have to starve – and so you are handicapped, because if you can't see how to win you mostly will not start to fight...

but then i stumbled across books about early humankind – and i realized that all what we are made to think wasn't valid at that time – and that simply means: it is not natural to kill each other, it is not natural, that the strong beat the weak, it is not natural that one commands and the others obey.

Actually, that is our Original Sin – to have allowed it because it was so convenient. We need someone to judge between us, we need someone to teach us and the best and brightest did it for us – alas, only in those long forgotten times it were the best and the brightest (because they were chosen due to their mathematical skills) – nowadays only the “pathological personalities”, attracted by power (Frank Herbert), are the big bosses...

and so, nowadays we have to pay the price

Robert said:
Why is it that mankind's history is one of conquest?

conquest needs defense – needs “ministries of defense”, needs warriors and commanders-in-chief, needs elites to be paid by the peasants – that's why "mankind's history is one of conquest?" – and it needs fortresses: walls, strong, high walls of stone.

so you see, it had a beginning, because the first cities had no walls.

Accept it, that humankind could be peaceful once! Sure, there were always private struggles or thieves, but all in a tit-for-tat-manner. You can see it in the Egyptian Maat – the ancient principle of justice higher than the Pharao...

but as time goes by, Pharao "grew up" and in the end, the power had won and Maat had lost.

Robert, i can tell words and words and words and will probably never be able to make someone else understand what a huge difference it was for me simply to see the existence of another world: that neither brutality nor the law of the strongest are natural.

Because “self-evidence” doesn’t exist.

At least it is not natural for humans – the banana-heap-behavior of the greedy alpha-male and the obedient whores (either male and female) is a behavior of chimps and lesser apes, but not humans

you can see it everywhere when you look beyond the Iron Curtain of the Warmongers – the winners, who write history, as you know. But there are so many hints that they are not the natural way for humans – and looking back it seems to me that the great progress of humankind ended at the time of the Original Sin...

because the only lasting inventions of the “modern” cultures were weapons – and our time may soon be gone equally, as any other high peaceful culture, the only ones creating knowledge via science.

Greece? Was divided – a more peaceful part, where math and philosophy prospered – and the part our culture particularly loves: the winners and warriors.

Rome? Most of her inventions were known long before, at least in the Indian reagion (which wasn’t as far away at those times than later in the Middle Age).

Egypt? The Pharao, Ramses III, we so heartily adore because of his “great wars” – was nearly the last one, not able to create a survivable dynasty. The high culture, lasting for thousands of years, consumed mostly the knowledge of the early times – it simply ended with “the greatest warrior” – the last step of the decline.

War is destruction – it will never create something, the only thing, you can say about it is, that scorched earth forces people to create things new, to try another way of life.

There never was a good war or a bad peace. – Benjamin Franklin

Robert said:
Yeah, these are all freshman-year-sitting-around-the-bong sorts of questions, but they are on my mind these days. It's hard to be optimistic when everything on the international scene seems to be going to shit.

that’s the reason why they tell us the story of the “natural winners” – you see?

but you also can see, that your brain knows exactly, that this myth isn’t true – because it is “on your mind these days”. There is a big contradiction and your brain is optimized to solve problems, particularly by analyzing contradictions...

to let you survive. It is its job – and if it cannot solve the problem within a given system, it has to change it. And that is, to question everything.

Trust no one, especially don’t trust the strong in our days – they are only PPs, as Kurt Vonnegut called them: “the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences” or Prostitutes of Power, as i call them.

Robert said:
How does this violence in Iraq and Palestine affect us here?

You know the answer – some years ago i watched a report about Nepal, as far as i remember. Those people used domesticated animals for milk and wool, but usually didn’t kill them for food, except in hard winters, when nothing was left to eat, neither for the humans nor for the animals.

Suddenly i asked myself if there could be a connection.

A connection between how you treat life in general and how you treat humans. I asked myself if a person who can feed an animal and then easily can kill it hasn’t sold some of the ancient wisdom of humanity – and without understanding it, has sold the respect for life in general. I asked myself if a person “professionally” slaugthering animals isn’t as easily able to “professionally” slaughtering humans (except maybe for the ones the butcher knows)...

Justice.

It is not a myth. It is an equilibrium of physical actions, surely complex in human relationships, but nevertheless – in principle – measurable.

Simply because of that, simply because justice is a physical state with clear physical conditions, Mother Nature was able to program it in our brains to protect the human society, the stabilizing Uber-Body of the weak species of losers, needing creativity and intelligence to survive.

And that’s the reason why everybody pays if (s)he deranges the equilibrium, dares to upset the balance – because the brain knows how important it is to have a just society and only three kinds of brains can ignore that: the ruthless, the stupid or the sick.

Any other will know that something went wrong and will wait for the punishment, getting more and more paranoid...

and Robert, isn’t it true, that all those “People keep looking at me like I have three eyes because these things concern me”, as you call them, really do that? Get more and more paranoid?

Because...

Robert said:
Do they think the violence done in their names will go unpunished?

No, they don’t. It’s even so, that they clearly know, they will not go unpunished – and so they try hard not to think about, but it’s always somewhere beyond the consciousness, waiting....

making them fearful for anything and anybody, because they know

– it (fate, physics, justice) will hit back.

Robert said:
No, I'm not happy about it. No person with anything to lose should be happy. I would dearly love for our nation to turn itself around, and for the first time in history become that beacon that it claims to be. But I'm a realist. I think the time for learning is past us. Now is the time of the gun and the blade and there's little you or I can do about it but watch.

Me, too.

But looking at history and at the sad state of Earth, it’s much more at stake than only America, Robert.

We talk about life as we know it, exactly as Prof. Lovelack said. “civilisation as we know it is now unlikely to survive”

Robert said:
It doesn't depress me anymore. The transparent lies still enrage me because so many of my fellow citizens believe them. But the actual facts, understanding that this is all going to end very, very badly.....it's only the cold, inescapable truth.

Yes, problem is, that it is inevitable – because no system can progress forever. It’s one of the myths of the non-thinking alpha-apes they tell us to make us the “dumb livestock” eager to feed them and obey them, that progression will always continue, that the way of humankind always leads upwards...

that’s not true.

Each and every system of information processing has its inherent limits. Limits, kids, not just something fading away while whispering the mantra: “i can do it, i will succeed”.

And the only way to overcome the limits is to change the system.

Mother Nature started it long ago.

How?

Look at the true difference between humans and apes: the language.

It is the competence to intensify the communication between individuals to create the Uber-body “Human Culture”. Mother Nature went this way once ago.

From the single cell to the multicellular organisms, even sacrificing individual immortality.

But as complex as this step might be – the architecture of passive intelligence is much easier than the architecture of active intelligence, based on unique experiences. And because Mother Nature would not waste the definite advance of the individual intelligence, the Uber-Body of Humankind will be of nearly infinite complexity, i fear.

And therefore there are many reasons to think that we, humankind, with the fast pace downwards to chimp-behavior, back to non-intelligent violence with only counterproductive results simply are no longer be capable of reaching that point.

Every day, we ignore the laws of Nature, the decency and justice, Mother Nature tried to program in our brains (our human brains), every day, we prefer the more older, more deeper and so, alas, more stronger apish behavior in our interbrain...

each of those days we lose a little more capability to manage the needed complexity of the Uber-Body, which would allow us to survive...

and to develop further...

I often ponder about Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. "A nation of millions of people, spread over an area of some 1,250,000 km²...The culture's sudden appearance appears to have been the result of planned, deliberate effort" – creating well-planned, well-constructed cities for tens of thousands of individuals, bigger than Egypt and Sumer, but caring for anybody. Each house had access to fresh water, all the “houses were protected from noise, odors, and thieves”, the “urban plan included the world's first urban sanitation systems, ... far more advanced than any found in contemporary urban sites in the Middle East and even more efficient than those in some areas of modern India and Pakistan today”....

there were no temples, no palaces...

There is no conclusive evidence of palaces or temples—or, indeed, of kings, armies, or priests.

but wealth for everybody.

Although some houses were larger than others, Indus civilization cities were remarkable for their apparent egalitarianism. All houses had access to water and drainage facilities. This gives the impression of a vast middle-class society.

How could they do so?

How did they escape the Alpha-males, the ones full of greed and violence, grabbing all the wealth, creating poverty for others to get rich themselves, creating suffering for others to be able to dominate?

"The people of the Indus Civilization achieved great accuracy in measuring length, mass, and time. They were among the first to develop a system of uniform weights and measures. Their measurements were extremely precise. ...Brick sizes were in a perfect ratio of 4:2:1, and the decimal system was used...In addition, Harappans evolved new techniques in metallurgy, and produced copper, bronze, lead, and tin. The engineering skill of the Harappans was remarkable, especially in building docks after a careful study of tides, waves, and currents....that the people of Indus Valley Civilization, even from the early Harappan periods, had knowledge of medicine and dentistry"

How did they escape the death of science and democracy, so often be seen in ancient cultures? How could they do it? How could they protect peace and science and humanity and wealth without regressing into barbarian chimps, as all others had done?

Our predecessors included.

If we can solve that riddle, we may have a chance to survive.

And my bet – it was their philosophy.

They didn’t believe in the strongest – they can’t have done it and all their relics show, they didn’t do it.

And they are the most developed ancient culture of all – more developed than Egyt, more developed than Sumer, far, far more developed than the warmongering younger cultures later on.

Remember the myth of the strong leaders, who “where needed to trigger the stupid masses to high cultures”?

The Indus civilization appears to contradict the hydraulic despotism hypothesis of the origin of urban civilization and the state. According to this hypothesis, all early, large-scale civilizations arose as by-product of irrigation systems capable of generating massive agricultural surpluses. To build, maintain and coordinate the operations of these systems, one or several despotic, centralized states emerged that was able to suppress the social status of thousands of people and harness their labor as slaves. It is very difficult to square this hypothesis with what is known about the Indus civilization. There is no evidence of kings, slaves, or forced mobilization of labor.

You see it?

Fact is: The Philosophy of the Strongest is less capable of anything than the Philosophy of Decency.

And so, Robert...

don’t support the Alpha-Apes by believing their myths, that humankind was “always” a race of “slaves and victims”. It’s just not true, it’s only convenient for the slavemakers and victimizers.

Cui Bono: This myth has just one reason: “Resistance is futile” - to make you accept your “inferiority”, to stop resistance. Like the snake hypnotizing its victim before it strikes.

Like the Borgs.

Btw: You see the dominance of philosophy over the human brains in an earlier version of the above article as well: It is, as if modern people aren’t capable of accepting anything else than the law of the chimps:

“Unlike other ancient civilizations, the archaeological record of the Indus civilization provides practically no evidence of armies, kings, slaves, social conflict, prisons, and other oft-negative traits that we traditionally associate with early civilization, although this could simply be due to the sheer completeness of its collapse and subsequent disappearance.”

... although this could simply be due to the sheer completeness of its collapse and subsequent disappearance...

We found little toys and bathrooms, knifes and tools – but the proofs of the all-conquering armies, kings, slaves, prisons with their eagerness to build the strongest and biggest things should be vanished?

You see, those words don’t make sense (and i guess, that's the reason why they were deleted) – they are only proof for the power of philosophy.

“What must not be, cannot be.”

We have to go back to the roots, to the basic foundation of all our convictions and “truths” to find the concept of a true civilization.

And the first thing to do so – is to realize, that the law of the strongest is not a human law – and to obey it and to accept it is to regress to our animal history.

We cannot create a humankind with apish rules – forget it.