Existing

Let me state this at the very beginning, existing is weird. When I really think about it, this whole "alive" thing is really weird. It's pretty cool, don't get me wrong, but it is also pretty weird.

I can do a weird thing that is so hard wired into my self that it becomes hard to actually distinguish it from other things, and when I do that weird thing that meaty thing (my hand) starts moving. I literally just have to look at a thing and then that hand that is attached to that thing that is commonly called a body starts moving and doing stuff. That's actually pretty darn amazing. Me sitting here typing is maybe even a bit weirder. I think a word in an inner voice that resembles what I hear when I speak and essentially at the same time these letters appear on the screen in front of me while the keyboard emmitts this rather nice klicking sound (I am lucky enough to own an IBM model M) while my hands seem to have a life of their own but decided to type exactly what I am saying in my inner voice. They know where all the keys are and can judge all the distances involved. Absulutely amazing.

As now I have written quite a lot I don't even have to look at the keyboard (but give me a german keyboard and this whole thing breaks immediately). I think that is absolutely fascinating. And the list goes on and on and on. This body I inhabit is pretty cool. It also rarely ever breaks down and if it does (or if it receives damage) it simply takes time and then the damage repairs itsself. I don't even have to know how that happens, it simply happens and we as humanity have still not fully understood how that actually happens. It makes me wonder how this all has come to pass.

other humans

Then there is the matter that there are very very many humans out there and they replicate. This replication of unimaginably complex patterns is all around me. As it is getting warmer in recent months (as it seemingly does in summer) and I go and open the bin I am normally greeted by a small flock of flies. That I think is also fairly amazin. In that time since I had thrown peels and apple cores and teabags in the bin these objects have transformed into something that can fly and seems to follow light and has transparent wings and seems to be a lot more complex. My teabag has literaly learnt how to fly. And all that happened fully autonomously, and they also replicate.

But I am a human and as such I seem to feel stuff and for some reason I gravitate towards some feelings and inherently try to avoid others. And as such I gravitate to the feeling I get when I spend time with other humans. And that neccessetates that other people want to spend time with me (don't get me started on this weird thing we call time). This has, for a long time presentet many somewhat insurmountable problems to me. You see it stands to reason that these other humans have similarly complex hidden (or internal) states as I do.

The thing is that somehow to feel this nice feeling I need to have the impression that we mutually understand each other. So that there is a common shared state between us. This is really nice when it happens. I have however only found rather few (on the order of less than a percent or so) people where such a connection could grow. (That's also another thing that we actively need to foster this connection with each other) This makes me wonder if we all are so different and why that should be the case (after all we all look pretty similar). It would also stand to argue that just as most of us have hands and feet and legs and stuff, we should all share the same psychological responses, not neccesarily to the same stimuly but the categories of responses (or feelings). We all seem to have a sense of the esthetic, we can marvel (like I am now) at the complexity and beauty in this universe. We all feel fear of the unknown we all feel hurt if connections to others (and ourselves) are damaged.

Human psychology is probably the weirdest thing I have ever seen. I have seen electrons seemingly go through two slits at the same time (that was an experiment that we had to perform as part of the degree and I did see it with my own eyes). And I have stood in a cave a hundred meters under the ground looking at a 15.000 t machine that does not move when it is working and can see into atoms using unimaginally complicated models full of strange symbols that when converted into 1's and 0' and executed on "Computers" (I heard someone say that computers are essentially the thing we get when we take lightning and stick it in a rock and teach it to think. This is astoundingly close to the truth) can predict with astounding accuracy what will happen in an atom that (in relation to this massive machine) is so unbelievalble absolutely tiny.

But still psychology is in my mind just a bit weirder. I don't know how to measure it and I doubt many people know how. It's terribly complicated because a human not only reacts to what is but also to what they have experienced. To further complicate that fact these experiences vary consierably among humans, making the data that can be gathered essentially useless when not controlling for these shared/differing experiences (which needless to say amounts to a herculean task in it's own right).

I have however made some observations that I think are worth sharing because they may be able to transform some people.

Human thinking is scale invariant dependent

I would like to add a small disclaimer here (after reading the text a few times). I am a scientist by training and as such I know how to look for patterns and my experience makes me beleive that (in the end) individual fates don't matter. This is a harsh statement and I am sure that you can quick to find examples where an Individual has changed the course of history (Hitler comes to mind). But I'd counter that on the timescale (or just general scale) of the universe hitler does not matter. Any individual event, would have to wipe out galaxies to start mattering and even then you would have to wipe out billions of galaxies with billions of stars each and you'd probably still not make a dent in things on the whole. This does not mean that You or I don't entirely matter, we all do in a profound way matter to each other. I would like you to realize here however that you probably can't picture how life is like on a continent you have never been (and I don't mean the footage in travel brochoures or the experience as an All inclusive tourist). I can't picture how it would be like sitting in a boat with dozens of other people that I fled with from my beloved home town of all my cherished childhood memories not knowing if I'll see the next sunrise or if by then I've drowend in the mediteranean because there was a leak.

But what I want to say with this is that individual (and somewhat random) behaiviour average out over time, so it is more interesting (and more consequential) to look at the mechanisms that cause any behaviour and see how they influence other mayor causes for behaviour and the dependencies therof I hear you crying "directed cyclic graphs". These larger mechanisms can form feedback loops and these loops can persist over time. If we as humans can start to see these loops and actively engage with them we stand a chance of tuning them to our whishes (If you have read the about page then you may know this but I'll say it again PLEASE DON'T BE EVIL you don't deserve the overall outcome) whatever they may be (this is where the evil thing comes in and I'll be sure to philosophize about that in the future). The individual that drowned in the mediteranian (as sad as that is) does not matter but the fact that there are thousands of them willing to risk their lives for a very very slim chance of a "good life" matters so much.

The problem (as stated in the subtitle) is that we can only really comprehend something on a similar scale to us (which makes sense coming from an evolutionary standpoint) We can't comprehend the atom (even though we can describe it to amazing precision), nor can we comprehend the scale of the earth (let alone the solar system or universe). But (and here's the real kicker) we as humanity have developed models of a whole lot of it. These models can bring all these things into a scale we can understand be it trough plotting graphs of forces or trajectories or comparing electorn to basketballs... AND WE CAN CHECK THE MODELS. We have found a way to bring the vast scales of the universe and the miniscule scale of the atom into something we can print on an A4 sheet of paper (or letter size if you are prone to use that stupid imperial system) and subsequently comprehend.

These techniques can be used to model (and subsequently comprehend) how we as humanity behave and how that overall behaviour effects each and every one of us. This gives us the tools to literaly change the world for the better. We just need to want to do that.

There is a caveat though and that is that these models are terribly complicated (though fascinating) and many people are prone to give up when faced with complicated tasks, or simply start ignoring the predictions in favour of what their (in this case more often than not sadly flawed) internal model anticipates. Others have comprehended the models (at least some aspect of them or to some extent) and have chosen to use that knowledge to advance their own interests (which is in and of itself an understandable thing to do). However I'd argue that they then also use that knowledge to cement their social status (or wealth or whatever) thereby possibly hurting all of the rest of us in the process (I don't know where I have that from but I have an inate sense for "fairness?" and that sense always rings an alarm bell when I see such behaviour). So with this out of the way let's continue.

mechanisms of human behaviour

First of, the mechanism that seems to govern humans (me included) is reinforcement.

I do think that this whole neural network thing that the computer scientists have stumbled upon could very well be the fundamental principle that our brain and by extension our selfe is based upon. The computer model is rough on the edges but the Idea may be, just maybe, right. This is why I will be using words from that jargon but they should be able to be interpreted well with the context given in the text at large.

In other words patterns that exist within the mind of a human will reinforce if unguarded (well actually there can really be no internal guard because that guard itsself is a reinforcing pattern). This is some cause for concern. This means on the one hand we have near infinite potential for good and empathy and understanding, something that I value highly (don't ask me why. I can't really answer that, that's that reinforcement I think) and on the flip side of that we have nearly infinite potential for cruelty if we have ourselves mostly experienced such behaviour. I'm not trying to say that the people being cruel are doing so because they particularly want to be cruel, I think that the people acting in such a manner simply have not experienced positive feedback for not acting cruel (be it by appearing weak to others and subsequently being walked over) and as a consequense that behaviour does not make sense to them.

There may be a strange hook that may have stopped humanity as a whole decending into chaos and that hook is cuteness. We think babies are cute. We need to think babies are cute, otherwise we would abandon them fairly quickly (as we would anyone showing that kind of behavior) which would mean we would not survive many generations (I'd bet there have been and are to this day individual specimens of humans that through the randomness of evolution don't find babies particularly cute. The thing is that the offspring of such parents does normally not really stand much of a chance). This means that it has been hard wired into us all. No matter how badass a ganster may be (I am aware of gross oversimplification here), I'd bet they all soften when a baby is involved.

However I would argue that close to all humans (I say close to because we are talking about 7 billion humans after all) kinda want the same thing here and that is (for me at least) comfort, belonging tenderness (this should extend beyond simple physical tenderness to all kinds of sensitivity towards ones emotions) and appreciation.

I have until now also forgot another mayor thing that may seperate humans and other "highly intelligent?" animals from "less inteligent" ones. (Don't get me started on the whole intelligence notion (I am slowly beginning to think that I need to start a philosophy blog as well as build all kinds of flying computers, another thing on my faaar to long list)) We understand stories. We can feel empathy and imagine ourselves in the place of a fictional character in a made up universe and we can make sense of it! We can also (and this is the part that is way more important) incorporate the "experience" that we had imagining ourselves as this fictional being into our behavioral patterns as if we had ourselves been there (because in a sense we where there). This means that not only are we capable of learning and responding to outside stimuly, we can generate these stimuly in a sort of "human simulator", or well lets maybe borrow the term from computer science and say "human emulator", to learn from instead.

I use this human emulator all the time. I'd argue that possibly the emulation capability started of as a fluke of random evolution and proved so successful that it eventually made it into the gene pool of every human on the planet. In social settings we as social creatures don't need to be good at judging some physical property of the world around us (well in the end everything boils down to that but that's not quite the point I'm trying to make) but need to be good at judging the internal state of the other humans we interact with. An increased emulation (and by extension empathic) capability greatly increases the chances that we bond with other humans to the point that we procreate increasing the chance that this capability lives on one generation down the line. We can also (this is a rather scary thing come to think of it) start to anticipate behaviour of others to try and deceive them, setting up plots (some more and some less elaborate) that benefit us at the cost of another participant.

This last point is probably more important to the spread of the emulation capacity than the former. In a lot of species there seems to be this hirarchy of (mostly male?) members of social groups that have to prove themselves fittest and only then get to procreate with the female members of the group (I am by no means a biologist so please correct me if im wrong (see the contact page) as this knowledge comes from watching to many bbc documentaries). So as a result the ability to trick your way (as a male at least) into that position is vital. The more and more independent the group becomes from outside influences like food supply or predators, the more emphasis can be placed in intra and inter group standing and what we now call "social status".

Because we can tell stories we start to create and judge a member by the imagined properties that only exist in the "shared conciousness" of the group. As a result of that and in combination with the near total decoupling of modern human society from the "environment" (that's a whole nother topic) nearly all value is placed on these imaginary properties (hell the largest concern for many people is how many of some (rather fancifully ornamented) paper slips they have that in and of them selves are utterly worthless but because we all believe their worth something one can go through life in the utmost of luxury without ever moving a finger (this gets even more interesting if we start getting into the financial system and boy is that going to be fun)) (I am using a code editor for writing this (vim) and I really am starting to appreciate the ability for it to check for matching braces).

our imagined reality

The thing with all this imagined things is that they have real consequences. We are maybe the only being that can shape the world around it in such a fundamental way, that we can make our imagination (and be it the image of flying like a bird to the idea that small slips of paper can actually change something) reality. Heck humans have been on a celestial body. We have touched the heavens. This means that we can allready change the world, the only thing (and I really don't think it will be easier than changing the world (we have all ready been able to do that after all)) we need to do is to change what we beleive in or what we can imagine.

This capability of simply imagining, the freeing of conventions, expectations and norms seems to be terribly difficult (don't ask how I got to where I am now. It may be a bit of a miracle in itsself that I have found the audacity to write such treacherous thoughts). Everywhere I look I can see people saying that I can't do this or can't think that. History is littered with systems and cultures that oppress and subdue human imagination to accumulate wealth (or really whatever seems to be all the rage in any given time period) in the hands of very few (lucky?) individuals. (Sadly I think I am seeing a similar trend in todays world, but that's probably just another article).

If we can however think for ourselves and adequately reason about the consequences that arise from any given action, we as humanity are able to wipe out all things that we deem underneath our dignity probably within a year or so. (Ok I was thinking more along the line of humanitarian problems and less along the line of climate change, I'd give climate change a timespan of around 10 years until we would at least have a feasable interim plan in place to then have the time the more time consuming things like R&D and such)

It is terribly frustrating to see People think they are advocating for their own cause and then figure out that in fact they where, through the use of some ingenious propaganda (others may call that marketing), made to beleive that what they are advocating is furthering their own cause. The far more dangerous thing is that people can also be made to beleive that the (scientific consensus duck) opposing view is the truly manipulative side of the argument and that, no matter how good their arguments and how seemingly sound their approach is, they are ultimately their enemy.

I'm not even against advocating for your own interests if they fly in the face of general consensus (a lot of my views do that and to me the consensus is just stupid sometimes). I can understand and think that it is reasonable that the Oil and fossil fuel industry defend their investments and point out that they are indeed still the lifeblood of the economy at large. They know things that I as a climate activist could never know. I have not operated a powerplant. I have not been subjected to a harsh energy market with prices fluctuating by the second and having to pay thousands of employees and make Investments on the order of many billion Euros that will only start turning a profit 10-15 years or so down the line.

I would also accept the argument that in order to produce "real change" blocking the railroad tracks for some Nuclear waste transport actually hinders productive cooperation because it builds the picture of enemies that have to be fought at all cost in stead of accepting them as humans and as partners on this planet. I doub't that the CEOs of BP or Shell really wan't a world that has to rebuild many major cities every decade or so because some tsunami or hurricane has destroyed large part of them. The simple fact is that they are working according to their incentives. (Shell does pay them a large amount of money in compensation for their behaviour and other decisions) If we are able to change the incentives we can make shell build ofshore windparks and even pay for them with their own money. However if we want them to simply stop what they are doing tomorrow we would be inciting a large resistance because their investments would all go down the toilet. Companies (sadly really) are there to do a single thing: make profit. This is their weekness and their strength. Weakness in the sense that they don't hold themselves responsible in any other measure than monetary value. So that means they are not going to invest into environmental technologies that only up the cost of operating their facilities or they are not going to enact healthcare programs that cost more than they either legally have to or are forced to offer to attract the type of worker needed to fulfill the job. This however is also their great strength. The only thing that needs adjustment is how this monetary value is computed. If the cost for pollution goes up then the machines and processes that are meant to reduce these pollutions are the more profitable rout so as a consequence that route is chosen. It's that simple.

The more complicated thing is to formulate a system that forces the companies that can afford that kind of tech or procedure to adopt it while still enabling smaller companies not to be drowned by rules and regulations, in the end cementing the few large companies in any sector because they have the recources to spend on legal teams and experts that can guide them to compliance with these rules (an investment that on the scale of a large company would bankrupt any startup in days). The larger companies will try to subert these measures. And they will be very eager to do that (as that would give them a competative advantage).

We are however still talking about entirely imagined systems. Rules, regulations and laws are entirely made up. They live in the mind of all of us and they provide a framework for our actions and our thinking. And they can also lead to another effect that can also be dangerous.

Mental inertia

People don't like change. Or maybe more precicely, people don't like loosing a sense of control, because that in turn activates fear and we are hard wired to avoid that sensation. There are many responses to fear and they can be influenced by our surrounding. I seem to see many women act pacifying and in a sense surrender when they feel fear. They retreat. Men on the other hand seem to become aggressive and defensive. As both genders in the end are human, this large discrepency in response indicates that the response are trained into us and can then be retrained.

The sense of safety or comfort (and the associated lack of fear) is very important to acheive a cooperative environment where the other people act in a self empowered way. The art is now to give people in tough situations the feeling that they can solve the problem posed to them and "gain back" the control over a situation that seemed to be in control of them. Then other people are back in their comfort zone and willing (and mentally able) to participate cooperatively.

The problem is mostly that this art requires a large amount of selfe reflection and a good degree of control over your own emotions (sometimes you have to swallow your pride and show empathy towards a highly hostile counterpart) and this leads to the other person defending their position and building mental intertia.

The above situation describes a single person to person interaction. It seems to be possible however to also build the same mental inertia by being subjected to the same procedures and rules for a long amount of time. These procedures become so engrained into us that we wonder how anyone can do the thing in question any differently, forgetting that they have not been subjected to all the conditioning (think about the processes in a large corporation for example, suggest a resturcturing (from below or above) and you'll probably encounter much resistance along the line of "but we've allways have done it this way").

I'd argue that this mental inertia is one of two reasons that we have not yet been able to transform our society and subsequently the planet into some sort of utopia. The other is our seeming ability to ignore (or frankly more often than that) be unaware of the needs of the people we interact with. As a consequence we are scared over the course of our life and these scars carry over into our behaviour fostering an us (meaning like minded people) against the rest. This can put conflict and differentiation at the hart of our own Identity.

how to define Identity

This mental inertia could also be coupled to Identity (and I do think that is the case even though I can only produce anekdotal evidence). We need Identity as part of our existence. Identity is the mental construct that to a point satisfies belonging (and I think that that is a basic psychological need (at least I know that for myself)). As such something that contradicts this mental inertia can be threatening to our identity and that in turn can make us highly defensive (think Motorbike gang on E-motorbikes). This teathering of our Identity to things and rituals and customs has to be respected in order to acheive long lasting and sincere change.

People also seem to be utterly incapable of articulating their own want's and needs. They hide behind conventions and norms. They externalize threats and are highly biased towards their own point of view. (This is totally normal and I do these things on a regular basis (not that I think that this is a good behaviour of myself but it is in a sense neccesary for me to keep my sanity)). It is of utmoast importance that the people that wan't to enact change empathise as much as they possibly can. This will build our connection to each other and let's us realize that in deed we are not enemies but are all humans and we all deserve a happy life without fear of being overlooked or thrown under the bus by someone else in a rush to further their own cause without thinking about others. We have to try and build trust in each other so that we can abandon the shackles of fear and suspicion and come together to make this world we inhabit a garden of eden for all of us.