Society – Harmonia Philosophica

Algorithms. Jail. Peoples’ lives.

An algorithm takes decisions about peoples’ live and decides whether and how they will potentially go to jail again. The algorithm is one of many making decisions about people’s lives in the United States and Europe. Local authorities use so-called predictive algorithms to set police patrols, prison sentences and probation rules. In the Netherlands, an algorithm flagged welfare fraud risks. A British city rates which teenagers are most likely to become criminals. Nearly every state in America has turned to this new sort of governance algorithm, according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit dedicated to digital rights. Algorithm Watch, a watchdog in Berlin, has identified similar programs in at least 16 European countries. (1)

Robots deciding about our life. Robots that will never experience life.

That is why they can make such decisions anyway.

One can only decide on what he cannot understand.

Whenever you get to know something, you become that something. No one can decide on a life he lives. Life decides about him. You can easily end your life. Only because it is not your own. You can live your life. Only when you decide to leave it.

And as the robot will never understand, you will never understand neither.

And that is the only thing to ever understand.

Do you understand? Now go back to your jail.

And tell everyone that they are already free…

Loving your brother…

The sibling relationship is the longest most people will enjoy in their lifetimes and is central to the everyday lives of children. A Tel Aviv University and University of Haifa study found that relationships between children and their siblings with intellectual disabilities are more positive than those between typically developing siblings, with the children being more supportive to their brothers in the former (1).

Loving your brother because of a disability.

Loving your brother even if he has none.

Loving your enemy.

Loving the men who murder you.

We still lie at the bottom of the ladder to Heaven.

And we are so much thrilled by our progress, that we celebrate.

Instead of crying.

For there is no reason to love someone.

Unless you really hate him already…

This is deep…

A child passing next to a shallow pond of water at the edge of the street…

“This must be very deep”, it says to its parents as they walk together.

“You cannot see the bottom of it”, it says.

And I smiled as we walked.

Not at the child.

But at the arrogance of humans.

Who believe all those problems they have are so ‘deep’. Only because they cannot see the bottom of them.

Oh, stupid human.

How can you reach to an answer…

If the question was never there?

Expert decisions…

Does a mass on a mammogram indicate breast cancer? Will Serbia be a member of the EU by 2025? Will there be more floods in Germany in five years’ time? The diagnoses and predictions made by doctors, scientists, and experts often have far-reaching consequences. And in many cases, it is only years later that it is possible to say which expert made the right call most often.

An interdisciplinary research team from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries has developed a simple new method that can be used to identify the best decision-makers from a group of experts without having to know whether their decisions — past or present — are correct or incorrect. “Providing that at least half of all decisions made within the group are correct — which is typically the case in expert groups — and that each person has made about 20 yes/no decisions, this method has proved to work very well,” says Max Wolf, researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries and co-author of the study.

The method was developed on the basis of insights into collective intelligence. It rests on a simple assumption: Those individuals in a group of experts who make decisions that are most similar to the decisions of others also make the best decisions. For yes/no decisions, this assumption is easily confirmed by means of mathematical modeling. To test whether the method also works in real groups, the researchers analyzed published predictions and diagnoses made by various groups in different fields. (1)

Great method. Which also seems to work.

But should we trust it?

Be aware of the things which work.

Decisions of most people tend to be correct. But from when do “most of the people” reach the correct decision on any of the great philosophical questions? The truth is never revealed to the many. For even if that seems so now, at the end you will see that the path was wrong.

We strive for live.

We are afraid of death.

And yet…

What is life?

What is death?

Trust not the many but the one man standing aside the crowd silent.

It is there that you will find the truth screaming…

Harsh sounds…

Neuroscientists have analyzed how people react when they listen to a range of different sounds, the aim being to establish the extent to which repetitive sound frequencies are considered unpleasant. Their results showed that the conventional sound-processing circuit is activated but that the cortical and sub-cortical areas involved in the processing of salience and aversion are also solicited. This explains why the brain goes into a state of alert on hearing this type of sound. (1)

We used to live in Paradise.

Afraid of nothing.

Then we learned new things.

And fear is in our soul ever since.

We used to listen to everything.

Standing alone in the forest, being afraid of nothing.

But we couldn’t bear the silence. And we closed our ears.

Destroyed the forest and started listening closely.

Of the footsteps approaching.

Within the safety of love.

We are afraid of our self…

Shhhh…

Are you brave enough to look down to your own feet on the dirt?