donderdag, oktober 20, 2011

Nothing new, but we need to get organised

It is already on the web elsewhere, but now Zurich scientists confirm our fears: Alle wealth is owned by a very small fraction of the people. This is a system risk.

Amplify’d from www.newscientist.com
Any engineer or programmer knows the hazards of a tightly-coupled large system. Economists should have seen the same problem when the Soviet empire collapsed, but they didn't because economists are frauds.

The solution is simple in concept. Decouple as much as possible. Break up the EU, eliminate multinational trade organizations. Return to the pre-1970 condition of sovereign nations making bilateral trade arrangements. Eliminate every incentive that favors cross-border flows of goods, capital and jobs; those should only happen when they give a real advantage to the PEOPLE of BOTH nations in the transaction.




Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

Newcomers to any network connect preferentially to highly connected members. TNCs buy shares in each other for business reasons, not for world domination. If connectedness clusters, so does wealth, says Dan Braha of NECSI: in similar models, money flows towards the most highly connected members. The Zurich study, says Sugihara, "is strong evidence that simple rules governing TNCs give rise spontaneously to highly connected groups". Or as Braha puts it: "The Occupy Wall Street claim that 1 per cent of people have most of the wealth reflects a logical phase of the self-organising economy."

Read more at www.newscientist.com
 

woensdag, oktober 19, 2011

We use our brain NOT to think

Since I read Stuart Sutherlands 1992 (!)book "Irrationality" I felt incomfortable about how we ineffectively we use our intelligence.

Well... It got worse since. There seems no hope for improvement. Biology forbids. Just maybe we can build machines smarter then us to make the right decisions for us. Because we fail. Terribly.

(Ah we already have them. But we do not like using them, do we)

Amplify’d from www.wallstreetjournal.com

Here's a simple arithmetic question: "A bat and ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?"


The vast majority of people respond quickly and confidently, insisting the ball costs 10 cents. This answer is both incredibly obvious and utterly wrong. (The correct answer is five cents for the ball and $1.05 for the bat.) What's most impressive is that education doesn't really help; more than 50% of students at Harvard, Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology routinely give the incorrect answer.

The Science of Irrationality

A Nobelist explains our fondness for not thinking

When people face an uncertain situation, they don't carefully evaluate the information or look up relevant statistics. Instead, their decisions depend on mental short cuts, which often lead them to make foolish decisions. The short cuts aren't a faster way of doing the math; they're a way of skipping the math altogether.

In Mr. Kahneman's important new book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow," his first work for a popular audience, he outlines the implications of this new model of cognition. What are the most important mental errors that we all make? And can they be overcome?

This shouldn't be too surprising. The stock market is a case study in randomness, a system so complex that it's impossible to predict. Nevertheless, professional investors routinely believe that they can see what others can't. The end result is that they make far too many trades, with costly consequences.

What's even more upsetting is that these habits are virtually impossible to fix. As Mr. Kahneman himself admits, "My intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions and the planning fallacy as it was before I made a study of these issues."

Read more at www.wallstreetjournal.com
 

vrijdag, oktober 14, 2011

Taking response ability

Complaining is waning your way out of real cooperation. You join in howling to the moon but you leave real change to the bolder ones. This way you try to have it both ways: Be part of the 'coalition' of the willing without leaving your comfort zone... I feel I am talking to myself right now!

Amplify’d from www.imd.org

If everyone is complaining all the time, we may mistake the resulting chatter for a genuine culture of constructive dissent. When the purpose of complaining is primarily social, the amount of new information contained in each complaint typically approaches zero. Spending all day listening to people moaning in well-worn ways may make you think that your ideas have been tested in the fires of disputation when in fact they have only been lightly toasted over the warm glow of comforting complaint."


Weeks observed that, to be heard over the chattering din of social complaint, those wanting to complain in a bid actually to improve things must work hard and speak loudly. They must break the cultural norms of polite social complaint and raise their voice in a way that will seem rude, illegitimate and out of bounds.


"We have a name for people who are willing to take this risk: leaders. We have other names for them too, though: cranks, loudmouths, loose cannons and troublemakers.

Read more at www.imd.org
 

donderdag, oktober 13, 2011

This is the (r)evolution

This will be the big change. Not from the technology, but from cocreation. The consiensness of all those separate individuals that they ar IN power just as log as they autonomously handle the balance between their own interest and the wellbeing of the whole community of man.

Amplify’d from www.barrypopik.com
Entry from October 03, 2011
People’s Microphone or People’s Mike (using voices for amplified sound)

The September 2011 “Occupy Wall Street” protests didn’t have a permit to have amplified sound (such as a bullhorn). Instead, a speaker would speak a few words and the crowd woud act as a “microphone” by repeating them. The name “people’s microphone” (or “people’s mike") has been cited in print since at least September 21, 2011.
ABC News Protesters Vow to Camp Near Wall St. Indefinitely
By MEGHAN BARR Associated Press NEW YORK September 21, 2011 (AP)
In a small granite plaza a block from the New York Stock Exchange, a group of 20-somethings in flannel pajama pants and tie-dyed T-shirts are plotting the demise of Wall Street as we know it. Forbidden from using a microphone — they don’t have the proper permits — the group got creative. “What we do is a people’s microphone,” Reed said. “So the person who’s speaking says a couple of words and then the whole crowd repeats it so everyone can hear. It’s actually beautiful.”

Read more at www.barrypopik.com
 

een ontwerpweekend over een wereldprobleem

lijkt me erg leuk.

Mijn agenda is eigenlijk bezet... kijken wat ik kan doen...

looks cool and useful! see what I can do...

One weekend in October, creative, passionate people will meet, form teams & get to work in an energetic, global, face-to-face event. They'll have fun creating brand-new real-world designs, projects and initiatives which might make a difference... join us!
Read more at www.globalsustainabilityjam.org
 

maandag, oktober 10, 2011

We are the trinity of mind, heart and body

Once again I encounter this division in three, in yet another field. It becomes time to unite alle this in one big picture...

Amplify’d from integrationtraining.co.uk
Somatic means the study of the conscious body (rather than the body as an object).

Somatic Assessments

somatic assessments as an essential leadership, communication and life skill
the key thing is to be working with people rather than doing it “to” them. The best somatic assessment is still just a gues
It is easy to see if people are unstable and off centre of “have got themselves together.”
re you centred reading this? Physically, mentally, emotionally?
head (intellect), heart (emotions) and hara (a Japanese word for the centre of the body, refers to body and intuition).
Read more at integrationtraining.co.uk
 

woensdag, oktober 05, 2011

Kindness is not always good

One more insigth from evolutioanary biology. Timely I hope.

It's Darwin AND Margulis, guys. Please combine this with David Sloan Wilson's work. http://evolution.binghamton.edu/dswilson/

Amplify’d from www.barbaraoakley.com
Cold-Blooded Kindness is a terrific book. It combines old-fashioned narrative skills with new insights from science and a tough-minded view of good and evil that is neither sentimental nor cynical
fresh perspectives to fascinating subjects by applying knowledge from many different disciplines.
real world insights by working in lots of different places and doing very different things
Pathological Altruism
one of the few books in evolutionary biology I've read in the past ten years that taught me something completely new
Read more at www.barbaraoakley.com
 

zondag, oktober 02, 2011

idee voor 2060

ik wil in de klapei een avondje met 2 films: Les Barons + rabat