Ah, now I finally know the reason why I cannot be a manager: a manager is supposed to hire people smarter than himself. That works for most management but where would I get people smarter than me? I am with Dilbert on this one :)
But, as we like to say, there is a grain of joke in every joke :)… -->
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Today’s discussion brought another interesting riddle that at first looked childishly simple:
“Assume that there is a train traveling at a very high speed. The train cannot be stopped. There is a fork in the road ahead and you are in control of the fork. If the train continues as it is, it will derail and kill 100 people. If you switch the tracks and train goes another way, the train will derail and kill 1 person. What do you do?”
I assume this riddle is to get someone into a discussion about why killing one person is better than killing 100. Which is of no interest to me, of course, so my first reaction is that I do not have to get involved and let the events take their place as they are scheduled.
However, I suddenly recognize that the riddle’s setup makes an assumption that is very important. The situation assumes that you were brought somehow, through an improbable chain of events, to control one single point of influence over the situation.
If we take it as true, that means I am brought into the control of the situation for some reason. Not taking action under the circumstances is equivalent to going against the flow of the world because in that case I did not have to be there at all, why bother? The only correct solution to the situation is to take the action that is not equivalent to me being there at all and seeing what happens next. In the case of the train riddle it means I will switch the tracks.
This also comes back to the earlier riddle of the big red button. Assuming that you are brought very specifically in front of that button and got all that explanation and things, you must not shy away from action. The only correct way would be to take the action, press the button and see what happens.… -->
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Here is a riddle from Jed McKenna’s “Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment”:
– Pretend there’s a big red button on the counter, okay?
– Okay.
– If you press it, you kill everyone in Switzerland.
– Okay.
– If you press it, no one will ever know. You’ll never be blamed or connected to the deaths of all those millions of nice Swiss people.
– Yeah? So?
– So why not press it?
Indeed, why not press the big red button that kills everyone in Switzerland?
I am trying to think for myself but I do not see any reason not to. Funny thing is, I do not see any reason to do it either. When there are no external influences and motivations, basically, I am becoming neutral to this action. Unless there would be an additional compelling reason to do or not to do, I am in the undecided point. The problem with that is that “undecided” is equivalent to “not do” and that is by itself a bias.
The problem is that my ego feels quite happy when I decide not to kill them all, not to push the button. It feels equally happy when I think to myself that I do not have any reason to push the button and I do not have any reason not to push the button, resulting effectively in me doing nothing, i.e. not pushing the button. The result for the ego feels exactly the same.
If my task is to nuke the ego, to bring it to an end, I probably must make the situation really uncomfortable for the ego, bring it to an untenable position. And the only way to do that in this particular simulation is to press the button. So, in the end, there may be a compelling reason to press that button, apparently. Interesting.… -->
continue reading →It simply amazes me to watch the colonial wars in our time. Somehow years ago I thought it would not be possible to do large-scale colonial wars anymore, that nobody in their right mind would actually dare start a war like that anymore. And there we are, it is all happening in front of our very eyes. Simply unbelievable. Yes, like Iraq, Syria and Libya and all that.
Today they have it in the news that NATO provides air support to the “rebels”. I do not even know where to start laughing at that. At the notion of “rebels”? At the NATO support to anyone but the rightful country administration? At the fact that they are fighting over the control of oil fields? At the comments of Australians that the actual government’s “days are numbered”? At the equally cool reaction to all this of the whole brainwashed population right across the globe?
We had recently an outbreak of some weird bacterias that took away several lives and almost started an epidemic in Northern Germany. I guess nobody sees this as a direct result of the colonial wars or what? No, the services that must know – they know, I am sure. The disease that combines the most horrible parts of two bacterias and resists contemporary antibiotics comes from cucumbers and lettuce? Give me a break! It comes from the demonstrated desire of France and UK to join the colonial wars and cut a piece of pie for themselves and from the outspoken desire of Germany to stay away from it. You want a piece of war? You do not want to give support? Here is a bit of bacteriological warfare for you, think twice before cutting ahead of Uncle Sam.
Strangely, we do not seem to be able to trust ourselves anymore. You know, a hundred years ago people were more honest, I think. Honest to themselves. They would admit they are going to war. They would say to their own population that we are a country at war and there will be casualties even if we all do watch out. Now we pretend that nothing has happened and blame it on the farmers. Yeah, right.
I do not think they can keep up the good appearances forever. There are destabilizing forces that force EU time and time again to look internally rather than externally. Those forces are man-made. I think they have to be known. It is much more efficient to fight against known enemies. The people must know what they are up against. Well, that is, if we really are up against something… -->
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