Complexity and Global Solutions

wingnut666 · Aug 20, 2010

It?s easier to work towards your own interests than working together as a group to solve a problem. It's even harder to unite other countries with different global agendas towards a common goal.

There's a lot of thought provoking video clips regarding complexity and how global problems become almost impossible to solve on a Facebook community page
http://www.facebook.com/thewatchmansrattle

Why do we have a tendency to fight one another when we know sharing results in the most optimum outcome for everyone? Why does our biology cause us to hurt the ones we love, hoard resources and compete with one another?

Heres the link to the video
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1493017207106

obtuseobserver · Aug 20, 2010

do your posts come with a magnifying glass?

font absurdly small; dr

wingnut666 · Aug 21, 2010

wingnut666 said:
It?s easier to work towards your own interests than working together as a group to solve a problem. It's even harder to unite other countries with different global agendas towards a common goal.

wingnut666 said:
There's a lot of thought provoking video clips regarding complexity and how global problems become almost impossible to solve on a Facebook community page
http://www.facebook.com/thewatchmansrattle

Why do we have a tendency to fight one another when we know sharing results in the most optimum outcome for everyone? Why does our biology cause us to hurt the ones we love, hoard resources and compete with one another?

Heres the link to the video
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1493017207106

Sorry about that.

Here it is again. I didn't see an edit post function as an option.

AK_ID · Aug 22, 2010

obtuseobserver said:
do your posts come with a magnifying glass?

font absurdly small; dr

Dude, I know darned well lawyahs can afford reading glasses. ;-)

Regarding the questions in the OP? Here are my short answers ...

Q: Why do we have a tendency to fight one another when we know sharing results in the most optimum outcome for everyone?

A: Self preservation comes to mind. If your neighbor was a known breaker and enterer, Wingnut, would you share with him your home alarm system security code in the interest of an optimum outcome? There is evil in this world, regardless of a person's religious beliefs, and it has to be taken into account.

Q: Why does our biology cause us to hurt the ones we love, hoard resources and compete with one another?

A: Our biology tends to cause us to protect the ones we love at the expense of those we don't. You can't take the DNA out of the man. Even wild animals feed their own offspring at the expense of other young of the same species. I'm amazed that such questions continue to recur from generation to generation as if the newest additions to humanity are either incapable of recognizing that these questions have already been answered; or believe that they've discovered the questions for the first time.

wingnut666 · Aug 22, 2010

I never assumed I was asking the question for the first time. But I was asking the question because I wanted to know. Here's some more thoughts

Apparently, our biology is an important factor in determining how we react with the rest of society.

The individual is smart and insightful.

Humans in groups are dumb, act under peer pressure and towards social conformity.

Without great leadership, people in groups are stupid, violent, competitive and selfish. And only if those groups of people are listening to good advice from their leaders or role models.

AK_ID · Aug 22, 2010

Our biology certainly controls much of our interactions with others. So does our upbringing, though. We're not entirely creatures of cells and genetic code. How else can you explain the fact that some communities respond to stress by burning and looting their own neighborhoods, while others pull together and respond creatively to the problem at hand? I would say that "Humans in groups are dumb" is, like most generalizations, too general to be accurate.

Great leadership is a subjective thing. There are folks alive today who believe Hitler was a great leader -- I disagree, and for very personal reasons. My grandmother lost a half-sister in one of his camps. My great-grandmother lost a daughter and a sister and a brother and a number of nephews and nieces and cousins in his camps -- some of them never made it to the camps, but the end result was the same; they never left Germany or Poland.

Yes, an individual can be smart and insightful, but I've known a few loners who were dumb as rocks, too. The internet comes to mind -- one of the great intellectual creations in recent history, and it certainly wasn't one man's brainchild, but is, and will continue to be, a mass creation. Ha! Where else could you be blessed with my words of wisdom, if not the internet?

In our nation's current situation (assuming you're here in the U.S.) I wouldn't be overly hopeful for wisdom from our nation's leaders in the near future. We hired idiots, and we're getting what we paid for. We'd be far better off in the future hiring farmers and ranchers and carpenters to conduct the business of government.

Ignoramus · Aug 23, 2010

wingnut666 said:
It?s easier to work towards your own interests than working together as a group to solve a problem. It's even harder to unite other countries with different global agendas towards a common goal.
There's a lot of thought provoking video clips regarding complexity and how global problems become almost impossible to solve on a Facebook community page
http://www.facebook.com/thewatchmansrattle
Why do we have a tendency to fight one another when we know sharing results in the most optimum outcome for everyone? Why does our biology cause us to hurt the ones we love, hoard resources and compete with one another?
Heres the link to the video
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1493017207106

This is insightful and intelligent at one level of abstraction and ignorant and irrational at another level. At the level of the informed media, the former is true, when you go beyond that to the fundamental nature of things, the latter is true.
Ms. Costa speaks of the nature of Humanity from the perspective of a highly complex and artificial culture. This culture is a recent and aberrant Human culture, yet, she speaks as if this were the natural state of Humanity. It isn?t. To get to the natural state of Humanity, she would have to go back before civilization, to the state that was the norm for most of Humanity?s existence. She hasn?t done that, so almost everything she states is nonsense. The behavior she criticizes as instinctive is not instinctive, it is the behavior of a pathological culture.

obtuseobserver · Aug 23, 2010

All y'all ar a bunch of weirdos whose lives would be dramatically improved with a big bottle of bourbon

like my alliteration? ah?

AK_ID · Aug 23, 2010

Nicely alliterated, Sir Barrister, and believe me, sirrah, I'd grab a bottle in a flash if not for the fact that I'm trying at the moment to prolong the time allotted me to instruct misled youngsters. Consider my toteetling an act of charity. ;-)

obtuseobserver · Aug 23, 2010

AK_ID said:
Consider my toteetling an act of charity. ;-)

Austerity too!

I'll be thinking of you when I get my nightcap

AK_ID · Aug 23, 2010

Also consider it an act of misspelling. Maybe if I drank a nightcap now and then I'd be able to remember how to spell teetotaling. And OF COURSE you had to quote me before I went back and fixed my post.

obtuseobserver · Aug 23, 2010

Dude, I've already conceded that I type worse than I spell and you've seen how I spell so I didn't even notice.

AK_ID · Aug 23, 2010

Well, you could at least have the decency to notice MY misspellings before you quote me. ;-)

obtuseobserver · Aug 24, 2010

we've covered this

I'd need to know how to spell to do that

AK_ID · Aug 25, 2010

obtuseobserver said:
we've covered this

I'd need to know how to spell to do that

Ha! Good point. For only $19.95 monthly plus applicable taxes and surcharges, I'll teach you the meaning of those little squiggly red lines the search engine gods insert under certain words on occasion. What a bargain, eh?

obtuseobserver · Aug 25, 2010

I'd screw up the mailing address...............................................

danstevens80 · Oct 11, 2010

Teach us

AK_ID said:
Nicely alliterated, Sir Barrister, and believe me, sirrah, I'd grab a bottle in a flash if not for the fact that I'm trying at the moment to prolong the time allotted me to instruct misled youngsters. Consider my toteetling an act of charity. ;-)

Oh wise one

Seriously though - prolong away. The longer the better.

tomkent45 · Nov 5, 2010

It is not just a matter of human nature. The cultural aspect plays an important factor as well. It is desirable to wear a suit, drive a nice car and own a big house. All of this meaning that you are better than someone else. If the culture changed into helping each other and everyone is the same things would be different however everyone is different and that would be impossible as always there would be someone not happy with this and would trigger it's ambition to prove something. That is how the world works. It is the challenge of life in planet earth

Abbott Presley · Dec 13, 2020

Complexity and Global Solutions

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