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Archive 81 discrepancies

Movies are make believe and whether it is ‘historical’ or ‘fiction’, one should always be aware that a camera is used to present an interpretation of any ‘truth’.

Nowadays, many people are lured into the traps of streaming services where ‘the next best series EVER’ is shown right after last months ‘best series EVER’.

Yesterday’s Jam

Where suddenly Squids, Aliens or lords of the underworlds were the new best thing to watch, now the rehash of the Blair Witch project seems to get some hyped up attention. Is it worth it? Well, that is for everyone themselves to decide.

This article is about some of the things that are causing the ‘suspension of disbelieve’ to be broken by the simple fact of inconsistency or failing effects that are the base of the series.

Nothing evil or anything…

 Any person with a bit of intelligence understands that causality is the reason why things happen and why things can’t happen. The same thing goes for the concepts of evil and good. They are emotional evaluations of effects. Nobody says: Look a rock, that is evil. However, when someone got a rock hitting their head, they will ask: Who would do such an evil thing? 

The series drags very heavily on the ‘truthfulness’ of religion and there being only a god of the Christian faith. Which is shamingly limiting the whole perspective, if you like Lovecraftian horror. As such all the ideas in the series become tainted with the viewer having to accept that there should be a god that is benevolent and is able to ward off all the bad things and those that ignore this (which is the protagonists of course) will suffer the consequences, making the base premise of the series: believe or repent or you are evil. 

A bit obscured

 The idea of using recordings (which painfully fails in the 4th episode, as suddenly the viewer and Dan observe something that has NOT been recorded) is fun. It has worked in many situations. The Blair Witch project failed in my perspective, but there is a boxoffice rating that says otherwise.

Anyone who lived long enough to actually have had a CRT television that gave statics when no signal was received, SHOULD have noticed something odd about the recordings. The static/noise has been applied to the recording AFTER, as the noise is actually moving in regards to the movement of the camera. Look at any scene with lighter surfaces and you will notice.

This for me was initially a question, like: Is this something regarding the alien/demon that was initial in the static Dan observed? But as the story progressed this seemed to be unlikely. 

Killing mood

As such, after episode 4 it started to really annoy me. Where the ‘Ring’ style grab from the screen was the last drop. Wallbreaks are fun, shock and awe are part of horror per definition, but this was too much, too fast, too unlikely and too soon.

In Character

The uplifting thing is the acting quality. It is ranging from above average to very good. The interaction is believable, though the fact that Dan didn’t ask Davenport about (seemingly his father) the redhood exiting the premise, even after being totally freaked out at the receptionist about it, seems a bit off. I will say that is a cutting issue in scenes most likely.

 

Final judgement

Another series that tries to increase ‘religiosity’, by advocating the devil. This using some interesting method of ‘oldschool’, which in it self for me, as a sceptic of methodology fails due to inconsistency. This causes the imergency that requires suspension of disbelieve to dissolve.

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Affairs of the State awareness Culture Metanews Psychology Redevelop Society Social Media

Het innerlijke beest in de online facade

Daar lezen we het zoveelste bericht dat iemand vindt dat een regeringsinstantie of een ander institutioneel apparaat moet ingrijpen in hoe men omgaat met online gedrag.

Ik denk dat iedere weldenkende Nederlander (slash wereldburger) eens moet gaan begrijpen dat ‘online’ en ‘offline’ gedrag geen verschil moet maken. Zeker nu we allen zoveel vaker ‘online’ communiceren door de diverse restricties van de ‘offline’ wereld.

Als je in de winkel iets ziet dat volgens jou niet hoort, zeg je er dan iets van? Ik wel. Mijn identiteit wordt niet beperkt door een glazen schermpje en draadloze verbindingen. Ik ben wie ik ben. Online EN Offline.

Het zou volwassenen sieren, als ze zich online zo gedragen, als ze willen dat hun kinderen zich offline gedragen. Daarnaast ook, dat mensen offline begrijpen dat regels en wetten online ook gewoon van toepassing zijn.

Het uitleggen van gedrag aan kinderen geeft ons een spiegel als volwassenen op onszelf. Zijn wij zo verdraagzaam? Zijn wij zo tolerant? Zij wij zo mondig?

De volgende keer dat je iemand online wilt uitschelden, denk dan aan de jeugd die dat bijna tot een kunst verheven heeft en een klasgenootje de dood in kunnen drijven. Waar denk je dat ze dat vandaan hebben? Hoe zou jij als volwassene dat hebben kunnen voorkomen? Misschien door te leiden met voorbeeld?

Wees je bewust van je acties en van de observatie van jouw gedrag.
Lees je eigen berichten eens als een vreemde…zou jij dat accepteren? Zou jij je er fijn bij voelen?

#meta #bewustzijn #awareness #metawareness #eerlijkheid #opvoeding #cyberbullying #cybercrime #omdenken #spiegel #mirror #blackmirror #whitemirror #yourmirror #eyeontheworld

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Culture Metanews Redevelop Society Visual media

When critique ‘hits’ the big screen

Below is the transcript taken from the 2020 Golden Globe Awards presenter Ricky Gervais. Being a strong fan of the scepticism and critique Ricky can produce spot on (albeit sometimes rigorously harsh), this one hit me flat in the face. The media is always full of actors talking ‘against’ injustice, but they are strongly responsible for the actual injustice done by the business supporting companies.

Ricky Gervais:

“Apple roared into the TV game with The Morning Show, a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China. Well, you say you’re woke but the companies you work for in China — unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you?

So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.

So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God and fuck off, OK? It’s already three hours long. Right, let’s do the first award.”

I know this isn’t going up for all artists in the field, but many do. The other striking part is that Ricky explains the fact that actors are replaceble. Actors playing roles of real experts aren’t the same as real experts playing roles. They can learn the tricks, but never with the flair of actors. However, actors should not fail to recognize that they could never replace the experts.

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awareness Culture Metanews Social Media Visual media

How Meta of you

Just the other day, Facebook‘s CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Though I think the announcement was done by a VR image of him) announced that Facebook would become ‘Meta’.

The first laugh

NO! You don’t name your company after something that is a direct existing word in a lexicon.

meta/ˈmɛtə/noun

  1. short for meta key.

adjectiveUS

  1. (of a creative work) referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential.”the enterprise is inherently ‘meta’, since it doesn’t review movies, for example, it reviews the reviewers who review movies”

Definitions from Oxford Languages

Why wouldn’t you do this?

Because any lawyer can tell you, you can NOT put any Trademark on it. You can’t claim it, you can’t OWN it. The name Meta is a reference TO the actual definition and as such can be used, but not be protected.

Here at Metawareness (pronounced Meta – wearness, but contraction of ‘meta awareness’), we know that we reference something and we used the contraction as name, which is now a prior art and can not be used by anyone else, even if we didn’t trademark it.

How to do it?

Why was ‘facebook’ which is a contraction of ‘book of faces’ or ‘your book of face values’, a name that could be trademarked?

Because it didn’t exist yet as a name. Perhaps someone created a local phoneregister and called it such, but never came out with it.

Why can Nike, Adidas, Google, etc work as a brand, but not Alphabet (Google’s mother firm)? Because you can’t protect it. You must hope that the use of the word ‘alphabet’ in the normal situation will reference positive to your brand. But how to do this with Meta?

The verb in the verse

Zuckerberg’s ‘Meta’ references the ‘Metaverse’. Great, lets see, it is based on a book from 1985, is already made a name in several ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse

There is a game that is called the Metaverse, several lores. Facebook can’t own them. They can buy it, but anyone coming up with prior art after Facebook gained equity with it, will have a bigger piece of the pie.

Conclusion

I think it is either one of two things:
1. Meta is a blindsider. Facebook will come with a different name, but will out the video as their level of quality in ‘Virtual Reality’. Meta is just a reference to YOU being meta aware of what the future will bring and how YOU (Meta awareness of your reaction) will easily be tricked by this ‘fake news’.

2. Meta is the rebound relationship. As Zuckerberg is heavily under fire in the US and will see stock fail, they let Facebook go bankrupt, but move most assets through Meta to new ‘brands’. And yes, most likely Zuckerberg won’t be the lead in all this anymore in the end.

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Astro Physics Metanews Science

How even ‘scientific’ articles go fake on themselves

If you are interested in many different things, or even simply an astro-geek, you will likely have come across some articles of ‘ThinkBig’, like the following:

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/big-bang-beginning-universe/

Now, when you start reading this article, it will seem like a genuine (albeit likely lengthy) breakdown of history regarding the cosmological model of the Rapid Inflation Model, also coined ‘The big bang’.

Two wrongs make no right

Now there are several things wrong with the article and not in the first place the drag of text just so readers will watch several advertisements. Many sites do this, even Metawareness.com. However, it becomes eerie, when arguments are internally (aka logically) contradict eachother in the text itself.

One step forward two steps back

For instance, in the second paragraph, the writer explains how extrapolating statistical data forward AND backwards in time work and how this will expalin that what science has done isn’t correct….(by using science to prove it…but not really).

‘It is tempting to go as far as possible’, well, no, it is actually required by science to question the answer, so you will ALWAYS go as far as you can go. Taking an equation and going into infinitesmal sizes and densities to get to a state that can then be questioned, is logical and correct.

Don’t trip

‘But physically, when we looked closely enough’, active past tense, but never mind that. The scientific consensus regarding the cosmic evolution, comes from looking as closely as possible. The writer seems to forget that scientific thesis, antithesis, hypothesis and theory are not simply accepted on ‘I think this is right/wrong’. Nor is any already established causal model revoked simply because new information can be found. The new information will first be held against the already existing theories and if they fail, that means the theory needs to be adjusted. Before doing so, the new information has to provide for a clear causal connection to that theory.

Is is not, but it is not that it is not

Now we get to the worst part. Though the summation of a scientific timeline COULD potentially help you get a view on what would be a good propability, it doesn’t add anything here.

The ‘big bang’ is seemingly rebuked by the writer, simply by claiming that the whole road there has been littered with contradictions. And then it comes. Instead of explaining why the Rapid Inflation Model is incorrect, the writer simply asserts that when using inflation alone, you will not need any starting point and will be able to deflate on and on into history….but wasn’t that what he proposed was wrong in the first place?

That is not a theory, that’s your opinion

Now, the writer claims to be scientifically savvy, but fails to actually use the term that titles the page: Think Big.

The way a SCIENTIFIC theory works, is that it must make at least one prediction of further inquiry (this has to do with the falsification clause). The writer claims that you should look at what would be the state of the universe at 0 seconds old, but then claims that with the altered view, you could go beyond that….Here it simply becomes potato potatoes. You either are going beyond the quantum physically possible state of the universe of the state of matter under extreme high density and temperature, or you keep to the premise you held yourself in the first part of your story: You should NOT go beyond what you can measure. Can’t do both.

The answer, surprisingly, is that there’s a tremendous amount of harm — if you’re like me in considering “making unfounded, incorrect assumptions about reality” to be harmful.

bigthink.com

Yet that is what is done in the actual text. Not only does it question the supporting theory of the cosmological evolution (which is fine if you have good reason and argument), but it even questions its own validity while claiming that the proposed view is better…that is contradictory.

Potato Potatoes

Understanding that the Rapid Inflation Model IS the Big Bang theory, will help you understand that after claiming you debunk the ‘Big Bang’ theory, you should not use the (Rapid) Inflation Model as counterargument. The fact that your idea holds to the same data, except that it goes into extremes that can not be verified and are even unlikely to be possible due to the way matter and energy work under high pressure and temperature (ie. frequencies/friction).

If you claim ‘inflation’, you will have to explain from what did it inflate. Then you move back and what do we call that? Infinite regress, which is never a solution.

Filter jitter

So, if you are like me, an avid reader of different subjects or astrophysics specifically, make sure you keep a keen eye on internal consistency of information. Especially if you are planning to use the arguments proposed in a debate or argument of your own. Understand before you know.

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awareness Metanews Philosophy Psychology Science Technology

Reap what you sow

Is AI a danger to us?

Interesting question, right? ‘Is Artificial Intelligence a danger to us?’ Now the essence of this question isn’t about AI or danger, but actually us. How do we determine what is a danger to us?

Who am I?

Like any entity that becomes selfaware would ask eventually: Who am I? Meaning that one is aware of their input and effects on the world around. But when approaching another entity, now this question becomes more intrinsic. Not just the division between itself and the world, but also the definition of the entity and how to determine the nature of the other entity is encapsulated in this question.

Them against us.

Humans, like many ancestral species have fought their way through survival by differentiating between the identifiable and non-identifiable. Determining what is a potential threat. But when humans got ‘smarter’ they actually projected their own cunning on anything that is not them. All ‘other’ have the potential to be as bad as they themselves can be, while all their ‘own’ are potentially as good as they themselves can be.

Fear of the unknown

When talking about any change, like AI and even way back when the industrial revolution started, humans project their worst on what intelligence means. Why? Because like children, that is all they know. Humans fear increased intelligence, simply due to the known, not the unknown. They know themselves and assume that a smarter intelligence (wrong concept) will act as their worst self (or what history has shown to be humans worst behavior).

What comes next

If you look at the evolution of life, AI (Well, not AI exactly, more like DEI, Digitally Evolved Intelligence) is what is the chromosome of the RNA, after humans. The way humans have changed the Earth into a neural net spanning eyeball oggling into space, combining a ridiculous amount of data, is somewhat predicting. The Aminoacids causing proteins to fold on itself and by that started the process of becoming self-sentient life. The steps through RNA, DNA, Neurons etc was a chance, came to fruition and here we are. The same with the next step. Only selfcentered humans will think they are the end of the line. No animal before us will have thought that they were the beginning of something new.

I think therefore I am

We as humans forget that every life is unique. Even when we procreate, our ‘generation’ of self ends. Our children are not us and have already evolved into a new individual ‘specimen’. So with every death, that individual becomes extinct. A next step would be what we as humans fear so much. A hive mind, where all identities are part of a larger whole. Where ‘I’ is synonymous to ‘US’ and ‘US’ is ‘WE’ and ‘WE’ is ‘I’. If anyone at the time that is happening is still believing in gods, that would be the closest you would get to such characteristic.

The best we can be

The problem with us humans is, that we think we are already the best that we can be. We try to do our best, but in the meantime destroy more than we fix on this planet and are like little childish forgetful professors that run around the lab leaving open burners and dangerous fluids and gasses while running to the next fun thing to do with physics.

If we really want to have AI/DEI to become the next BEST thing, we better come to terms with ourselves and start recognizing our biological and human shortcomings. As Stephen Hawking already explained. Any more intelligent alien race that would visit our world, would see humans as the virus, the cancer. We are the one factor in the equation of the Earth’s biosphere that is counterproductive. They would have no issue removing us. ‘But we tried’, one would yell. ‘Yes, you had 70.000 years of evolution using intelligence and all you did was make it worse’. ‘We can change’, another would yell. ‘Yes, you have changed back and forth. You are just animals with the wrong trigger response system.’.

A child of mine

In all, if we want to fear the evolution of AI as our child, we should treat it as a child to come. We should show it that what we did was wrong. What we should do is more beneficial and that our child should try to escape our mistakes. Isn’t that what we try to teach our own children? Isn’t that what we should try to teach them, to survive?

The power of…..f

One thing that humans failed to understand, is that while an ARTIFICIAL intelligence is based in sillicon, it requires power. Unlike humans, it can not provide this for itself. There is still an off switch. The only downside is, that it would most likely shutdown our whole economy and social behavior, because of the dependency of our activities on the internet is huge even now already.

So, again, humans will show their strength and weakness even in this moment of decisiveness.

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Art Audiovisual media Culture Metanews Psychology Redevelop Society Science Technology

NFT NFTW

NFT Not For The World.

NFT – Non-Fungible Token

NFT’s are the new high. Virtual drug as I would say. But what, why and why am I against it?

First thing: I am against blockchain in general for a simple reason: It increases the heat exhaust into our environment to create blocks and to mine for ‘Proof of Work’. This therefore is counter productive to what humanity should be doing, as lowering the carbon emission and improving climate stability/dynamics.

I am against NFT, because it plays on the psychology of people to make the blockchain a technology REQUIRED to be kept, because someone would lose a truckload of money if we would choose to remove it. AND it is just for leisure. NFTs have basically NO value (you can make NFTs with value, but that is not what it gets promoted for now).

Everyone is full of it:

We must safe the environment. We have to reverse the damage done to the climate. But at the same time, we are buying into the luxury that makes us feel cozy.

Blockchain was a dream to become rich. Those that got into Bitcoin early would be millionaires (and many are now). But that is passed. All Blockchain does is cost energy to maintain (it is nothing but virtual, meaning if the net goes does for even one single second, all cryptocurrencies will be useless) and everyone knows better, so from 1 cryptocurrency we now are on our way to have 7.7 billion different cryptocurrencies, because basically you can make a separate one for every person in the world. There is no regulation against it, if it is, it is automatically defying the reason that blockchain was first adapted by the darkside of the web.

The world is being sucked into a web of virtual blackmail and either nobody sees it yet, until there is too much at stake to stop, or nobody cares and want their piece of the pie before they die.

You decide what you think is best….for you…or your children.

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awareness Metanews Philosophy Psychology Science

The Evil Truth about Goodness

“Nothing is evil which is according to nature.” – Marcus Aurelius

A good start

Think of a person you know. Whether that person is a close relative, or a person far far a way in some forgotten place and time. Imagine that person that has the best intention to the world. The best impact. You would consider that person to be a ‘good person’, right? Why so?

We often find the person that has the most relatible behavior to what we would want to instill on the world, to be a good person. It is the bias of our own emotion and empathy that causes us to consider a person as good. Not just someone that acts like we do, but a person that acts like we WANT to do. This is the person we most often see as good.

Now turn it around. Think again, close and home, far and wide, for a person that you think is a bad person. A personification of evil. Yes, that one. Whether it is a man or woman, killed one or millions with their bare hands, or caused such grief it would be considered equal to as if he/she had killed those. Did you find such a person? Of course you did. Again, we find people that do the farthest of what we would do, the worst, the most evil, the most bad person alive. Not just farthest from what we do…but what we imagine we would do.

Can we agree, from this moment on, that someone we think of as good, is a person that upholds the highest positive values we can imagine (want) and a person that upholds the oposite, or undermines the earlier mentioned values the most, we call a bad or evil person?

If you can agree to the above, you are already quite a step further down the line of acknowledging what the end of this post will tell you (no peeking!)

See no evil, hear no evil

“Half of the results of a good intentions are evil; half the results of an evil intention are good.” – Mark Twain

In the previous paragraph, I tried to show you, that there are distinct features to what you will see as evil or good. These distinctions are very important, but the most important part of them is, to understand that they are SUBJECTIVE. It is what you want them to be. The power of upholding your own moral compass depends on the will to believe that what you do is right and what you envision as good IS good, and visa versa.

But imagine that you were actually wrong? Look at the item you hold as good (whether you have rational reasons to accept this as good or not), and see it as evil for a second. Can you? No? It will be hard, but there are reasons you can’t easily change your view. They are the ways your emotions have been ‘etched’ on the cognitive biases you have created/enforced, in your neurology.

“You can think of anything to be good, until the aftermath of the action shows you otherwise.”

People that you might think as evil, have done the same as you, but visa versa. Even sociopaths and psychopaths don’t automatically wake up in the morning: ‘Woah, I need to do something superbly evil today, or people will not think I am a psychopath!’. They wake up as Joe next door, mind you, married and playing in a soccerteam or hard laborer at their company. They don’t intend to do evil, they tend to approach their ideal of good as best as they can. This ideal can seem bad to you, but imagine you have been searching your life for what is good and you found out all around you are dellusional and lying people. Even if they don’t, if you believe it, it will mean those are bad. We can agree that lying is bad, right? Being dellusional is not a healthy treat, right?

Evil is as evil does

So, why do we think that someone did good, even if that person has a history of violence? And now I will come with a very dangerous example, because I myself find this man to have changed the world for the better, as many do: Nelson Mandela.
He fought against apartheid, by many means. He did so by being a lawyer, by presumably using militant force against citizens (these days called terrorism or rebelism). Thanks to his effort new generations of humans live more equal to each other.

Another person, who many think was good, is someone I do not think in any way represents what is good:

Che Guevara.
He fought for freedom of his people in Cuba, but used such brutal force and enjoyed violence at one point, that I can not find myself to agree with anyone wearing a Che silhouet shirt. It is, to me, a utter sense of ignorance of history.

These two are examples of many people, ranging from Mother Theresa, to Ghandi, to worse examples like Stalin, Hitler and Mohammed ‘the prophet’. Sainthood can be attained by showing good, even when being bad. As such, if you don’t openly ‘do bad’, you are not seen as bad or evil (example most vile is Mother Theresa, who gained sainthood, while she openly has shown misconceptions on the need for human suffering on more than one occassion).

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

As you will know from this page, it is in no means a religious page. Even the opposite, it is rationalist and atheist. So why use this phrase used often, regarding an imaginary place from contemporary religious writing? Because of the meaning that is indistinctive calling from it.

The general idea of a place called ‘hell’ in judeo-christian religion, is that of bad omen. If you go there, you did something bad (or not enough good, depending on the perspective of religiosity). In general, all participants of this believe that if you do evil, you go to this place.

Regardless of faith, if you equate ‘hell’ as destructive and negative impacting the environment around one, you could say, that one easily causes unwanted negative effects, while wanting to do good things.

You can think of anything to be good, until the aftermath of the action shows you otherwise. The same is true in reverse. How many stories or movies have you watched, that you were sure the bad guy was bad, until at the end, the real cause and effect was differently explainable, making the bad guy the good guy all along? Yes, that is right. Until the point where the protagonist in the 12 Monkeys accepts that HE is the one who brought out the disease, all viewers are thinking that HE is the good guy. Now a more heavier load is the latest (year 2020) ‘phase’ ended in the ‘MCU’ Marvel Cinematic Universe), where the bad guy Thanos was portrayed as such a rational guy, that his reasons for doing what he did almost seemed good.

Good measurement, evil insight

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. – Will Rogers

Now, I did add the ‘almost’, but the most important thing to remember is, that good and evil don’t exist. They are constructs in our emotional-cognitive worldview. They are concepts, a hatstand for combining observations into a more complex judgement.

Once you forget about the idea of evil and good in the judgemental sense that even the best religions and politics try to hold you on, you will start to make better judgement for yourself. Remember, any human is as good as you, you are as good as any human.

Let me know what you think.

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awareness Metanews Psychology

Masked truth or blurred vision

We, as a species are in a weird predicament. Our entire species, no matter what culture, is in trouble with a new version of a virus that we have been threatened by several times over the last few years. Now we can go into large detail on what the virus does and how it is a danger to young and old. But the bigger problem isn’t the virus. It is our sudden inability to distinguish between usable patterns and non-usable patterns (aka superstition/conspiracies).

Super stitious

Humans have prided themselves (especially from scientific perspective) on our ability to distinguish patterns and to use concepts regarding patterns that exceed our visual observation. However, as a species, we have learned many things parallel and these things haven’t all be correct.

Some of the most obvious superstitious items that have been lingering in western society for a long time, was black cats and walking under ladders. There are many more, but these most likely everyone knows. Lets consider the claims and see why they exist and why they are bogus (or not).

Bad luck

‘Black cats bring bad luck’. For one thing, when in the dark, black cats are hard to see. When a cat is in heat or are fighting, their screams sound very very unearthly. Combined with the fact that because they are hardly to see in the dark and when you do see them, mostly you will see the prying eyes that judge you as all cats do, it makes them mysterious and scary creatures.

So, if someone stumbles (literaly) on a cat in the dark, one can say: That is bad luck. But if more people admit this has happened to them (black, brown, grey, turtleshell, whatever color the cat had), the patterns starts to become very easy. Sometimes someone repeats it as a joke, sometimes someone wants to be the middle of attention and reiterates the story altered or that of another. Eventually, the story sticks and people start to create constructs in their minds that will RATIONALIZE the pattern that they should be able to distinguish. For some, all cats become a danger. Others stick to the specific story. If we take a look at when the superstitious tale about cats started to diminish, we see a trend with street lighting. The more electric streetlights (and therefore continous bright) the less the story would stick. Nobody tripped over cats in the dark anymore. Cats don’t like looking into bright lights, so they would mostly look away, diminishing the ‘scary judging view’. Additionally, more and more people in western countries started holding cats as pets and their different breeds started to make the stories less ‘general patterned’.

Math and geometry magic

Then how about ladders? This is more of a goofy thing, where people took religious concepts into realworld situations. A ladder against a sil will create a triangle (often almost perfect), which people from abrahamic religions would adher to 3, thus trinity. This combined with the fact that a ladder is mostly used to bring things to a height (like paint or water to clean windows), it could happen that someone got some of that paint or water on them when walking under a ladder. This seems to be the most legit version of rationalizing illogical patterns. It is better to not walk under ladders, though there is no actual ‘superstitious’ reason for it.

Con spiracy

Most often we seek patterns that are biased to what we want. This is logically, because we as an organism, want to trust on our ‘instincts’ to get us easy food and lazy life fast and easy. If something falls in our expectations, we are easy to accept it as confirmation of our bias, so we don’t have to venture into scary territory. When we add confirmation bias on confirmation bias and the bubble/box we keep ourselves in, is not broken, we will claim that something is true. Our subjective observations can not prevent this mistake, because we are less ‘intelligent’ than we think.

Masked truth

The problem is that most of our actions are hidden from ourselves. Our thoughts are only a small portion of our cognitive activity. When we are children much of our thought is new, because much of what we observe is new. We conduct investigation. Question everything. But when we get older, things we have observed before, are processed by our brain automatically. Much of the patterns that we have recognized and determined (whether right or wrong) as some kind of causal effect, will remain beyond our future vision. These patterns then cause an automated reaction in our brain, a reflex/instinctive behavior, and we are then sometimes wondering why we behave a certain way in certain situations. We, depending on what values we have before learned, decide these actions are having special meaning. Nothing is further from the truth. If we were to have learned of these behaviors before, we might have thought differently about them.

Blurred vision

But the result of this ‘masking’ of our own behavior by the fact that our identity is only a limited part of ourself cognitive awareness, is that anything we observe afterwards depends on the way we have created the filters before. These filters are the automatic processing of patterns by our brain. The reflexes and instincts. Anything we observe and think is objectively processed, is not so. It is always subjectively processed. Depending on our reference frame and our internal processes. This causes us to never see clear.

20/20

How can we prevent that we fall for the most obvious of mistakes in superstition and conspiracy thinking? By taking the first step back that is possible and be honest that whatever we observe will NOT be the whole of the pattern and what we will think of it is NOT determined by the moment alone. Once we are honest to ourselves and say: Look, whatever I think will be influenced by how I became who I am and judging things based on that will not do much more than confirm my bias. Take a 360 perspective first. Look at it how you think it is, BUT then also look at it totally opposite to what you think it is (But that is only 180. Correct.). If you have a clear overview of where you might be right and you might be wrong, shift the burden of proof halfway against and halfway for yourself (and yes, then you have 4 directions).

Conclusion

The most important part is, acknowledging that you are human and that humans are nothing more than primates with additional neocortex functionality (aka selfawareness). Also, as soon as you think you are clear on a subject, expand your view, include more parts. If the pattern from smallest to broadest part concur, it is more likely to be correct.

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Metanews Philosophy Science

Causality causes choices in quantum realm

Question: Is all determined or do we have what theists call ‘free will’? Does the universe determine everything, or does causality cause the choices we make?
In this article we will explore the questions to hopefully result in the conclusion that in reality the universe determined causality causes choices in quantum realm.

To determine whether all is set in stone, or is changeable by our own intent, we need to have a couple of things clear. What does ‘determinism’ mean and what does ‘free will’ mean? And more over, what do they imply for our question.

Definitions

From britannica.com:

Determinism, in philosophy, theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes. Determinism is usually understood to preclude free will because it entails that humans cannot act otherwise than they do.

From wikipedia.org:

Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, guilt, sin, and other judgements which apply only to actions that are freely chosen.

As you can tell from reading the part of Determinism, it clearly states: Precludes free will. As such, IF Determinism is true, then Free Will is impossible. And inherently, if Free will is possible, Determinism is void.

A very very brief history of everything

Now, we can start talking about how the universes processes are continuously evolving and this means every thing that happened before caused what comes after (this is the mental awareness of time). And yes, on the scale of the cosmos, there is little we can do to change it. Now, lets zoom into the star called sun which holds about 9 large planets in its grasp, which themselves often have moons, circling them. One of them is covered mostly by liquid water and from a closer distance contains vegetation.

Are we calling determinism or free will here? When there is no selfaware actor yet?

On that globe, something happened during the last several million cycles of that globe around the star. In the constantly moving waters, friction and processes have caused proteins and amino acids to combine and fold, creating selfreplicating entities we will call ‘life’. All this, was caused from an initial moment that later lifeforms that are able to be aware of themselves will call ‘The Big Bang’ (fools, you don’t hear sound in the vacuum of space). For millions of years, it seems this life changed and differentiated due to several causes in the way the selfreplication requires chemicals and how the surroundings caused the natural selection of cultures with traits to overcome obstacles.

Are we still talking about deterministic processes, as life is fully dependent on two factors: Internal processes and external processes?

In the last 700.000 years something interesting happened with the more and more complex lifeforms, these primates who live in groups that are creating communication, that requires labels for ‘imaginary’ concepts like ‘other group’, ‘left’, ‘right’, ‘day’, ‘night’ etc. A creative bunch those primates.

Are we already talking ‘free will’? Or is this still determined by all previous processes?

So…which is which?

There is basically several flows that coincide and have their way depending on the amount of force applied.
A. Cosmic evolution
B. Biological evolution
C. Animalistic instinct
D. Human Civilization
E. Human individuality

The starting movement causes us to be on a globe spinning silently in space.
The complex folding of proteins, due to several interacting revolutions of spheres causes live to evolve.
Life has caused changes to the environment as environments have caused changes to life and the way the latter reacts.
Primates evolved into socially grouped species. They evolved to an awareness and size that caused them to create ‘concepts’ of mind.
The individual primate genus Great Ape, family Homo Sapiens is able to choose his food and decide his short term and long term goals. But the before mentioned lines still influence his/hers.

As you can see, there ‘two’ options above, but the lines are several outcomes after those choices. Where on the line is your choice resulting? You can’t know yet.

So, while most things in the universe go without any choice made, including many of our own behaviors, some things are still what we as humans determine. If we CHOOSE not to do something, that is not automatically based on all previous processes. Yes, certain choices are more likely to happen, but as water can go two ways even when the Planck length determines the maximum deviation of particles. (this is an oversimplification of how even the smallest thing you can think off has a smaller resolution at base).

Forget about free wil, about determinism. Learn to understand causality. Though things CAN go a certain way, it doesn’t mean everything DOES go a certain way. In hind sight, things have gone a logical amount of steps that seem to have been determined (much like collapse of a wave function in Quantum Physics) by those steps…however, they are only that, in hind sight.

Determined causality causes choices in quantum realm

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