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01370: Re: [WDDM] Repeted answer to Antonio

From: Antonio Rossin <rossin(at)tin.it>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:00:16 +0200
Subject: Re: [WDDM] Repeted answer to Antonio

Giorgio Menon ha scritto:


G:
Here we go again. You say there's democracy and Democracy. I'm sure
there's
dEMOCRACY too and a friend of mine knows someone who claimes he saw
a DeMoCraCy once. Calling different situations with the same name
generates
only confusion. On the other hand pretending an existing situation
is "better"
that it really is remains a bad sign of schizophrenia IMHO.
Please let's separate dreams from reality. Dreams are a necessary
drive for
anyone. But reality has its own necessities.

I do not follow you here.

First: because there is difference from the reality outside, and the
reality inside
our words. Do you know about Alfred Korzybski's renown axiom:
"*The map is not the territory*"? As how I understand it, our
descriptions of
reality are all maps of the reality outside.


Reality (facts) has a different "weight" compared to our dreams and
thoughts.
I agree

Ok. But a question arises now: has the human language the intrinsic
capacity
of expressing the *objective* reality? My opinion is a firm NO, it has
no such
capacity. A language-made description can be closest to objective
reality, but
it can never become the objective reality. Only a map of it, indeed.
I always recall Heisemberg and Goedel on this point



Second, and subsequent: Since all of what we put into words about
reality
are maps, let's agree that one's map can be better than another's.


Yes, words pointing at a map closer to reality are to be preferred.
Words pointing
at something that has never existed are to be avoided.
Agreed again



Third: "Reality", has no necessities. It is the one who maps out the
reality,
who has necessities, according with one's own ability to draw out and
read
maps, and the usefulness of the latter in avoiding blind alleys,
ruins and like.

A stone has the necessity to fall down, once thrown. Newton did an
excellent
job describing it. Again i see that reality has necessities we don't
necessarily see.


Wait a bit.

We were speaking of "necessities" as if they were options, to be fulfilled.
Something that can be ensured or not. At least, I was intending
"necessities"
that way. I mean, reality has no necessity that a stone falls down, once
thrown, because the stone falls down as in itself, even though the
reality had
no necessity of it falling down. It is ourselves, who have necessity of
knowing
the reality, and of following its laws.


Oil is going to end soon, no matter how far we like to put that end.
Vulcanos
will burst, tornados will strike, earthquakes will shake the earth,
the sun will
heat the air up, the snow will freeze it. We can try to describe this
with poetry
or scientific formulae, but reality will care very little about it.

Of course. It is not the reality that has to care about our knowledge of
reality. It is ourselves who have to know reality as best as we can




History has always shown just one face of democracy, no matter
how you like to write it. It's about 2500 years that the elites are
"democratically" ruling the people.

I don't follow you, here. The term for the elites ruling the people
is oligarchy,
and not "democracy". Period.

Read on Wiki:
"All the Athenian citizens were eligible to speak and vote in the
Assembly, which set the
laws of the city-state, but neither political rights, nor citizenship,
were granted to women <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women>, slaves
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaves>, or
metics <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metics>. Of the 250,000
inhabitants only some
30,000 on average were citizens. Of those 30,000 perhaps 5,000 might
regularly attend
one or more meetings of the popular Assembly."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy

Are you trying to convince me that 5,000 citizens out of 250,000 is
not an elite?

This is an old question, rather a quarrel, in this list. I'm quite
prepared tp
answer it. ;-)

If we have a group of, say, 5,000 members who want to give themselves
democratic rules for processing their own affairs, that id no elite but a
democratic group.
If you take this 5,000 people democratic group and insert it into a larger,
say, 300,000 people collectivity and the 5,000 want to implement their
"democratic rules, they become an elite who want to set up oligarchy.


Question mark.



Questioning is not always a sign of wisdom. Would you question
driving on
the right lane?


Of course I do.

First, I question myself for whether that is the right lane.

If I'm unable to experience it myself, I search for the authority who
decided
that that is the right lane, and question him-her for which criteria
he-she used
to decide that that was the right lane.

Any question more ? ;-)


Yes. Should you find their criteria "irrational" for reasons only you
know, would
you drive on the left lane then? (English and Australian drivers
please forgive me.....).


Sorry, I did not understand the analogy. Really, you are not meaning some
left lane, but the wrong side of the road, now...

But be sure, if democracy drives on a precise side of the road, I take
it for right.
I don't want to be the elite who drives on the wrong side of the road...




Dear Giorgio,

I cannot control the offer of oil in the markets of London and New
York.
I can only control my demand of oil


Do you own a solar powered car maybe? You can't control nearly anything
in the oil process. Surely you need it to move, and you (anyone,
actually)
indirectly use a huge amount of it even without moving. I read
somewhere
that the few KJoule of a steak are nothing compared to the KJoule
needed to
transport, stock, refrigerate and cook it. Can you control this? The
system is
too big now to be controlled. And i'm quite sure that even at the
top of the
pyramidal societies people don't know much how to handle it. It's
enough
for them to keep it running the way they like it.


Regards

Giorgio


But unfortunately, the oil is no endless energy resource. Perhaps in
forty,
perhaps in fifty years the oil will end. But it will end: may I
suggest you,
while wishing you an everlasting life, to be prepared for the oil end by
providing yourself with a bicycle? Maybe some training with it could be
the case.

Ciao,

antonio


If i correctly uderstand your words you're picturing out a future
situation where
no oil is available and we all will be forced to use the pushbike.
Such future can't
disturb me, as i like riding my bike. My question: given that we know
that sooner
or later the oil will end, why alternative solutions haven't been
studied and planned?
What power do common people have to decide to switch, for instance,
from oil to
solar? No power is my answer. They can only hope that oil companies,
fearing the
end of their lucrative business, try to start a new game. Hydrogen
power, for example.
Oil multinationals have been responsible for decades of censorship and
sabotage
against new projects undermining their wealth while promoting oil
consumptions.
SUVdocet. "each gallon of gasoline burned pumps 28 pounds of CO2 into the
atmosphere, the average car emits about 63 tons of CO2 over its
lifetime — and
the average SUV or pickup emits around 82 tons.
In comparison: America’s automobiles produce more global warming
pollution
than all the vehicles, power plants, and factories in Great Britain
combined."
http://www.sierraclub.org/globalwarming/factsheets/BiggestStep_05.pdf

Regards

Giorgio


Ok., but the overall structure remains a fractal, and there are
different levels
of solution, and any one is due to solve the problem at one's own level.
Of course, we common pedestrians cannot study and plan and impose a
solution at the "Seven Sisters" logical level. But each one of us can
adopt
a solution at one's own level: in this case, more bicycle and less cars.
BTW, are you following the discussion at the worldcit(at)googlegroups.com
mailing list?


Regards,

antonio


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