Category Archives: education

Pain does not replace the truth …

Time: Oct 18, 2023 — Oct 24, 2023)
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.d
e

CONTEXT

This post is part of the uffmm science blog. It is a translation from the German source: https://www.cognitiveagent.org/2023/10/18/schmerz-ersetzt-nicht-die-wahrheit/. For the translation I have used chatGPT4 and deepl.com. Because in the text the word ‘hamas’ is occurring, chatGPT didn’t translate a long paragraph with this word. Thus the algorithm is somehow ‘biased’ by a certain kind of training. This is really bad because the following text is offers some reflections about a situation where someone ‘hates’ others. This is one of our biggest ‘disease’ today.

Preface

The Hamas terrorist attack on Israeli citizens on October 7, 2023, has shaken the world. For years, terrorist acts have been shaking our world. In front of our eyes, a is attempting, since 2022 (actually since 2014), to brutally eradicate the entire Ukrainian population. Similar events have been and are taking place in many other regions of the world…

… Pain does not replace the truth [0]…

Truth is not automatic. Making truth available requires significantly more effort than remaining in a state of partial truth.

The probability that a person knows the truth or seeks the truth is smaller than staying in a state of partial truth or outright falsehood.

Whether in a democracy, falsehood or truth predominates depends on how a democracy shapes the process of truth-finding and the communication of truth. There is no automatic path to truth.

In a dictatorship, the likelihood of truth being available is extremely dependent on those who exercise centralized power. Absolute power, however, has already fundamentally broken with the truth (which does not exclude the possibility that this power can have significant effects).

The course of human history on planet Earth thus far has shown that there is evidently no simple, quick path that uniformly leads all people to a state of happiness. This must have to do with humans themselves—with us.

The interest in seeking truth, in cultivating truth, in a collective process of truth, has never been strong enough to overcome the everyday exclusions, falsehoods, hostilities, atrocities…

One’s own pain is terrible, but it does not help us to move forward…

Who even wants a future for all of us?????

[0] There is an overview article by the author from 2018, in which he presents 15 major texts from the blog “Philosophie Jetzt” ( “Philosophy Now”) ( “INFORMAL COSMOLOGY. Part 3a. Evolution – Truth – Society. Synopsis of previous contributions to truth in this blog” ( https://www.cognitiveagent.org/2018/03/20/informelle-kosmologie-teil-3a-evolution-wahrheit-gesellschaft-synopse-der-bisherigen-beitraege-zur-wahrheit-in-diesem-blog/ )), in which the matter of truth is considered from many points of view. In the 5 years since, society’s treatment of truth has continued to deteriorate dramatically.

Hate cancels the truth


Truth is related to knowledge. However, in humans, knowledge most often is subservient to emotions. Whatever we may know or wish to know, when our emotions are against it, we tend to suppress that knowledge.

One form of emotion is hatred. The destructive impact of hatred has accompanied human history like a shadow, leaving a trail of devastation everywhere it goes: in the hater themselves and in their surroundings.

The event of the inhumane attack on October 7, 2023 in Israel, claimed by Hamas, is unthinkable without hatred.

If one traces the history of Hamas since its founding in 1987 [1,2], then one can see that hatred is already laid down as an essential moment in its founding. This hatred is joined by the moment of a religious interpretation, which calls itself Islamic, but which represents a special, very radicalized and at the same time fundamentalist form of Islam.

The history of the state of Israel is complex, and the history of Judaism is no less so. And the fact that today’s Judaism also contains strong components that are clearly fundamentalist and to which hatred is not alien, this also leads within many other factors at the core to a constellation of fundamentalist antagonisms on both sides that do not in themselves reveal any approaches to a solution. The many other people in Israel and Palestine ‘around’ are part of these ‘fundamentalist force fields’, which simply evaporate humanity and truth in their vicinity. By the trail of blood one can see this reality.

Both Judaism and Islam have produced wonderful things, but what does all this mean in the face of a burning hatred that pushes everything aside, that sees only itself.

[1] Jeffrey Herf, Sie machen den Hass zum Weltbild, FAZ 20.Okt. 23, S.11 (Abriss der Geschichte der Hamas und ihr Weltbild, als Teil der größeren Geschichte) (Translation:They make hatred their worldview, FAZ Oct. 20, 23, p.11 (outlining the history of Hamas and its worldview, as part of the larger story)).

[2] Joachim Krause, Die Quellen des Arabischen Antisemitismus, FAZ, 23.10.2023,p.8 (This text “The Sources of Arab Anti-Semitism” complements the account by Jeffrey Herf. According to Krause, Arab anti-Semitism has been widely disseminated in the Arab world since the 1920s/ 30s via the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928).

A society in decline

When truth diminishes and hatred grows (and, indirectly, trust evaporates), a society is in free fall. There is no remedy for this; the use of force cannot heal it, only worsen it.

The mere fact that we believe that lack of truth, dwindling trust, and above all, manifest hatred can only be eradicated through violence, shows how seriously we regard these phenomena and at the same time, how helpless we feel in the face of these attitudes.

In a world whose survival is linked to the availability of truth and trust, it is a piercing alarm signal to observe how difficult it is for us as humans to deal with the absence of truth and face hatred.

Is Hatred Incurable?

When we observe how tenaciously hatred persists in humanity, how unimaginably cruel actions driven by hatred can be, and how helpless we humans seem in the face of hatred, one might wonder if hatred is ultimately not a kind of disease—one that threatens the hater themselves and, particularly, those who are hated with severe harm, ultimately death.

With typical diseases, we have learned to search for remedies that can free us from the illness. But what about a disease like hatred? What helps here? Does anything help? Must we, like in earlier times with people afflicted by deadly diseases (like the plague), isolate, lock away, or send away those who are consumed by hatred to some no man’s land? … but everyone knows that this isn’t feasible… What is feasible? What can combat hatred?

After approximately 300.000 years of Homo sapiens on this planet, we seem strangely helpless in the face of the disease of hatred.

What’s even worse is that there are other people who see in every hater a potential tool to redirect that hatred toward goals they want to damage or destroy, using suitable manipulation. Thus, hatred does not disappear; on the contrary, it feels justified, and new injustices fuel the emergence of new hatred… the disease continues to spread.

One of the greatest events in the entire known universe—the emergence of mysterious life on this planet Earth—has a vulnerable point where this life appears strangely weak and helpless. Throughout history, humans have demonstrated their capability for actions that endure for many generations, that enable more people to live fulfilling lives, but in the face of hatred, they appear oddly helpless… and the one consumed by hatred is left incapacitated, incapable of anything else… plummeting into their dark inner abyss…


Instead of hatred, we need (minimally and in outline):

  1. Water: To sustain human life, along with the infrastructure to provide it, and individuals to maintain that infrastructure. These individuals also require everything they need for their own lives to fulfill this task.
  2. Food: To sustain human life, along with the infrastructure for its production, storage, processing, transportation, distribution, and provision. Individuals are needed to oversee this infrastructure, and they, too, require everything they need for their own lives to fulfill this task.
  3. Shelter: To provide a living environment, including the infrastructure for its creation, provisioning, maintenance, and distribution. Individuals are needed to manage this provision, and they, too, require everything they need for their own lives to fulfill this task.
  4. Energy: For heating, cooling, daily activities, and life itself, along with the infrastructure for its generation, provisioning, maintenance, and distribution. Individuals are needed to oversee this infrastructure, and they, too, require everything they need for their own lives to fulfill this task.
  5. Authorization and Participation: To access water, food, shelter, and energy. This requires an infrastructure of agreements, and individuals to manage these agreements. These individuals also require everything they need for their own lives to fulfill this task.
  6. Education: To be capable of undertaking and successfully completing tasks in real life. This necessitates individuals with enough experience and knowledge to offer and conduct such education. These individuals also require everything they need for their own lives to fulfill this task.
  7. Medical Care: To help with injuries, accidents, and illnesses. This requires individuals with sufficient experience and knowledge to offer and provide medical care, as well as the necessary facilities and equipment. These individuals also require everything they need for their own lives to fulfill this task.
  8. Communication Facilities: So that everyone can receive helpful information needed to navigate their world effectively. This requires suitable infrastructure and individuals with enough experience and knowledge to provide such information. These individuals also require everything they need for their own lives to fulfill this task.
  9. Transportation Facilities: So that people and goods can reach the places they need to go. This necessitates suitable infrastructure and individuals with enough experience and knowledge to offer such infrastructure. These individuals also require everything they need for their own lives to fulfill this task.
  10. Decision Structures: To mediate the diverse needs and necessary services in a way that ensures most people have access to what they need for their daily lives. This requires suitable infrastructure and individuals with enough experience and knowledge to offer such infrastructure. These individuals also require everything they need for their own lives to fulfill this task.
  11. Law Enforcement: To ensure disruptions and damage to the infrastructure necessary for daily life are resolved without creating new disruptions. This requires suitable infrastructure and individuals with enough experience and knowledge to offer such services. These individuals also require everything they need for their own lives to fulfill this task.
  12. Sufficient Land: To provide enough space for all these requirements, along with suitable soil (for water, food, shelter, transportation, storage, production, etc.).
  13. Suitable Climate
  14. A functioning ecosystem.
  15. A capable scientific community to explore and understand the world.
  16. Suitable technology to accomplish everyday tasks and support scientific endeavors.
  17. Knowledge in the minds of people to understand daily events and make responsible decisions.
  18. Goal orientations (preferences, values, etc.) in the minds of people to make informed decisions.
  19. Ample time and peace to allow these processes to occur and produce results.
  20. Strong and lasting relationships with other population groups pursuing the same goals.
  21. Sufficient commonality among all population groups on Earth to address their shared needs where they are affected.
  22. A sustained positive and constructive competition for those goal orientations that make life possible and viable for as many people on this planet (in this solar system, in this galaxy, etc.) as possible.
  23. The freedom present within the experiential world, included within every living being, especially within humans, should be given as much room as possible, as it is this freedom that can overcome false ideas from the past in the face of a constantly changing world, enabling us to potentially thrive in the world of the future.

ENGINEERING AND SOCIETY: The Role of Preferences

eJournal: uffmm.org,
ISSN 2567-6458, 4.May 2019
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

FINAL HYPOTHESIS

This suggests that a symbiosis between creative humans and computing algorithms is an attractive pairing. For this we have to re-invent our official  learning processes in schools and universities to train the next generation of humans in a more inspired and creative usage of algorithms in a game-like learning processes.

CONTEXT

The overall context is given by the description of the Actor-Actor Interaction (AAI) paradigm as a whole.  In this text the special relationship between engineering and the surrounding society is in the focus. And within this very broad and rich relationship the main interest lies in the ethical dimension here understood as those preferences of a society which are more supported than others. It is assumed that such preferences manifesting themselves  in real actions within a space of many other options are pointing to hidden values which guide the decisions of the members of a society. Thus values are hypothetical constructs based on observable actions within a cognitively assumed space of possible alternatives. These cognitively represented possibilities are usually only given in a mixture of explicitly stated symbolic statements and different unconscious factors which are influencing the decisions which are causing the observable actions.

These assumptions represent  until today not a common opinion and are not condensed in some theoretical text. Nevertheless I am using these assumptions here because they help to shed some light on the rather complex process of finding a real solution to a stated problem which is rooted in the cognitive space of the participants of the engineering process. To work with these assumptions in concrete development processes can support a further clarification of all these concepts.

ENGINEERING AND SOCIETY

DUAL: REAL AND COGNITIVE

The relationship between an engineering process and the preferences of a society
The relationship between an engineering process and the preferences of a society

As assumed in the AAI paradigm the engineering process is that process which connects the  event of  stating a problem combined with a first vision of a solution with a final concrete working solution.

The main characteristic of such an engineering process is the dual character of a continuous interaction between the cognitive space of all participants of the process with real world objects, actions, and processes. The real world as such is a lose collection of real things, to some extend connected by regularities inherent in natural things, but the visions of possible states, possible different connections, possible new processes is bound to the cognitive space of biological actors, especially to humans as exemplars of the homo sapiens species.

Thus it is a major factor of training, learning, and education in general to see how the real world can be mapped into some cognitive structures, how the cognitive structures can be transformed by cognitive operations into new structures and how these new cognitive structures can be re-mapped into the real world of bodies.

Within the cognitive dimension exists nearly infinite sets of possible alternatives, which all indicate possible states of a world, whose feasibility is more or less convincing. Limited by time and resources it is usually not possible to explore all these cognitively tapped spaces whether and how they work, what are possible side effects etc.

PREFERENCES

Somehow by nature, somehow by past experience biological system — like the home sapiens — have developed   cultural procedures to induce preferences how one selects possible options, which one should be selected, under which circumstances and with even more constraints. In some situations these preferences can be helpful, in others they can  hide possibilities which afterwards can be  re-detected as being very valuable.

Thus every engineering process which starts  a transformation process from some cognitively given point of view to a new cognitively point of view with a following up translation into some real thing is sharing its cognitive space with possible preferences of  the cognitive space of the surrounding society.

It is an open case whether the engineers as the experts have an experimental, creative attitude to explore without dogmatic constraints the   possible cognitive spaces to find new solutions which can improve life or not. If one assumes that there exist no absolute preferences on account of the substantially limit knowledge of mankind at every point of time and inferring from this fact the necessity to extend an actual knowledge further to enable the mastering of an open unknown future then the engineers will try to explore seriously all possibilities without constraints to extend the power of engineering deeper into the heart of the known as well as unknown universe.

EXPLORING COGNITIVE POSSIBILITIES

At the start one has only a rough description of the problem and a rough vision of a wanted solution which gives some direction for the search of an optimal solution. This direction represents also a kind of a preference what is wanted as the outcome of the process.

On account of the inherent duality of human thinking and communication embracing the cognitive space as well as the realm of real things which both are connected by complex mappings realized by the brain which operates  nearly completely unconscious a long process of concrete real and cognitive actions is necessary to materialize cognitive realities within a  communication process. Main modes of materialization are the usage of symbolic languages, paintings (diagrams), physical models, algorithms for computation and simulations, and especially gaming (in several different modes).

As everybody can know  these communication processes are not simple, can be a source of  confusions, and the coordination of different brains with different cognitive spaces as well as different layouts of unconscious factors  is a difficult and very demanding endeavor.

The communication mode gaming is of a special interest here  because it is one of the oldest and most natural modes to learn but in the official education processes in schools and  universities (and in companies) it was until recently not part of the official curricula. But it is the only mode where one can exercise the dimensions of preferences explicitly in combination with an exploring process and — if one wants — with the explicit social dimension of having more than one brain involved.

In the last about 50 – 100 years the term project has gained more and more acceptance and indeed the organization of projects resembles a game but it is usually handled as a hierarchical, constraints-driven process where creativity and concurrent developing (= gaming) is not a main topic. Even if companies allow concurrent development teams these teams are cognitively separated and the implicit cognitive structures are black boxes which can not be evaluated as such.

In the presupposed AAI paradigm here the open creative space has a high priority to increase the chance for innovation. Innovation is the most valuable property in face of an unknown future!

While the open space for a real creativity has to be executed in all the mentioned modes of communication the final gaming mode is of special importance.  To enable a gaming process one has explicitly to define explicit win-lose states. This  objectifies values/ preferences hidden   in the cognitive space before. Such an  objectification makes things transparent, enables more rationality and allows the explicit testing of these defined win-lose states as feasible or not. Only tested hypothesis represent tested empirical knowledge. And because in a gaming mode whole groups or even all members of a social network can participate in a  learning process of the functioning and possible outcome of a presented solution everybody can be included.  This implies a common sharing of experience and knowledge which simplifies the communication and therefore the coordination of the different brains with their unconsciousness a lot.

TESTING AND EVALUATION

Testing a proposed solution is another expression for measuring the solution. Measuring is understood here as a basic comparison between the target to be measured (here the proposed solution) and the before agreed norm which shall be used as point of reference for the comparison.

But what can be a before agreed norm?

Some aspects can be mentioned here:

  1. First of all there is the proposed solution as such, which is here a proposal for a possible assistive actor in an assumed environment for some intended executive actors which has to fulfill some job (task).
  2. Part of this proposed solution are given constraints and non-functional requirements.
  3. Part of this proposed solution are some preferences as win-lose states which have to be reached.
  4. Another difficult to define factor are the executive actors if they are biological systems. Biological systems with their basic built in ability to act free, to be learning systems, and this associated with a not-definable large unconscious realm.

Given the explicit preferences constrained by many assumptions one can test only, whether the invited test persons understood as possible instances of the  intended executive actors are able to fulfill the defined task(s) in some predefined amount of time within an allowed threshold of making errors with an expected percentage of solved sub-tasks together with a sufficient subjective satisfaction with the whole process.

But because biological executive actors are learning systems they  will behave in different repeated  tests differently, they can furthermore change their motivations and   their interests, they can change their emotional commitment, and because of their   built-in basic freedom to act there can be no 100% probability that they will act at time t as they have acted all the time before.

Thus for all kinds of jobs where the process is more or less fixed, where nothing new  will happen, the participation of biological executive actors in such a process is questionable. It seems (hypothesis), that biological executing actors are better placed  in jobs where there is some minimal rate of curiosity, of innovation, and of creativity combined with learning.

If this hypothesis is empirically sound (as it seems), then all jobs where human persons are involved should have more the character of games then something else.

It is an interesting side note that the actual research in robotics under the label of developmental robotics is struck by the problem how one can make robots continuously learning following interesting preferences. Given a preference an algorithm can work — under certain circumstances — often better than a human person to find an optimal solution, but lacking such a preference the algorithm is lost. And actually there exists not the faintest idea how algorithms should acquire that kind of preferences which are interesting and important for an unknown future.

On the contrary, humans are known to be creative, innovative, detecting new preferences etc. but they have only limited capacities to explore these creative findings until some telling endpoint.

This suggests that a symbiosis between creative humans and computing algorithms is an attractive pairing. For this we have to re-invent our official  learning processes in schools and universities to train the next generation of humans in a more inspired and creative usage of algorithms in a game-like learning processes.