can the economy be saved?
you know how every time something really really bad happened to the economy and a million economic experts will come out and say that how they all saw the signs and how it all made perfect sense, and what's more, how this crisis is totally out of hand and how the last one was so easy to solve.
the problem that lies in every crisis of course is that it cannot be anticipated and solved until it is imminent or until it hits. it's the BLACK SWAN theory, which simply points out that every time in human history a major event will happen that's totally out of the ordinary and will then shift the paradigm of the world. Linear thinking, hence logic, is not able to solve this type of problems, as it proposes to process information within the existing paradigm.
Well, all these are old news.
What i've been thinking is, maybe, just maybe, we are coming to a stage where everything that could happen has almost all happened. And as our coverage of these "paradigms" become more and more comprehensive and extensive the new and unknown "abnormal" events will be so out of the ordinary that we simply do not have the power to solve them. That is the Soros' theory of reflexivity essentially, only this time we are talking about the gap between human capacity and real life issues. The exponentially increased pressure from reality seems to have outpaced the adapting capacity of our intelligence and resources, and we simply cannot sustain the self re-inforcing trend that we have so-far more or less successfully sustained in the last two centuries.
That gap is further supported by two things that get us to what we are today, paradoxically, the invention of atomic bombs democracy. The former essentially rules out the possible solution of wars, and the latter almost always guarantees a solution that will satisfy the majority, and exclusively short-term. Which means that we cannot reduce the reality pressure by eliminating a selected population on the planet without running the risk of a total extinction, and any politician who has the guts to propose a difficult solution will be slaughtered by his own people.
so can the economy be solved?
Monday, June 30, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
what is time?
what is time?
there is no such thing as present. by default the time for our perception of the "now" is always a little bit slower than the actual happening of the "now". and so we view the presence of time always a hindsight, and never as a simultaneous perception of the situation.
Simplicity: as we define our time with seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, centuries, milleniums, and etc. we have effectively quantified the continuity of time (assumption) into integers. Most watches would have a smooth transition for the minute and the hour hands, but quantumized movements for the second hand. What the second hand does is the repetition of stop, move, stop move and etc. so in this way, time has been split into two types of moments, the stability moments as the second hand rests on whole numbers, and the transition moments as it moves in between.
It influences us on a number of different ways in terms of our perception of time. One is that time is quantified. Another is that time is divided into equal units. The theory of relativity had already discussed the later issue where time is in fact not consistent, that it is not the unshakable contant in our universe. For me the important inspiration from this theory is that time may end with matter, in a way that not only is it not linear nor consistent, it is not even a scale concept. It may be in possession of directions more than positive (future) and negative (past), and it is able to gain and lose momentum and weight. Just like forces.
And then we look at the former issue of quantified time. We all so stubbornly believe that the device of a clock or a watch is a measure of time, and sometimes even equalize the two concepts, whereas in fact all the artificial mechanism captures is a representation of our perceived time, and that perceived time is defined in the first place by our understanding of it. So on the centre of all things the actual time, then the effects of time as it takes place, then our understanding of it based on these perceptions, and then our way of capturing and representing that understanding of that perception.
Hence layers of gaps are created, between our understanding of the equilibrium and the actual happening of reality. The dangerous thing being we are not only constantly influenced by the representation of time, let alone time itself, but also constantly giving feedback to that so called reality by our methods of representation (clock), without being aware of the reciprocal interactions. That's how sometimes strange things happened to our perceptions, like memories of the past versus the memory of yesterday, where one perceives the former as significantly more important and closer than the latter even though the measurement of time suggests the opposite. We have distorted that equilibrium of time by magnifying or diminishing our conception of it, whereas on the other hand still comfortably believing that we are staying faithful to the iron law of consistency. Another example is with facial products. it works by bringing attention to the process of application, hence ritualized these short periods of putting cream on face into performances. That in itself creates a conception or misconception of enlarged time.
m.
there is no such thing as present. by default the time for our perception of the "now" is always a little bit slower than the actual happening of the "now". and so we view the presence of time always a hindsight, and never as a simultaneous perception of the situation.
Simplicity: as we define our time with seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, centuries, milleniums, and etc. we have effectively quantified the continuity of time (assumption) into integers. Most watches would have a smooth transition for the minute and the hour hands, but quantumized movements for the second hand. What the second hand does is the repetition of stop, move, stop move and etc. so in this way, time has been split into two types of moments, the stability moments as the second hand rests on whole numbers, and the transition moments as it moves in between.
It influences us on a number of different ways in terms of our perception of time. One is that time is quantified. Another is that time is divided into equal units. The theory of relativity had already discussed the later issue where time is in fact not consistent, that it is not the unshakable contant in our universe. For me the important inspiration from this theory is that time may end with matter, in a way that not only is it not linear nor consistent, it is not even a scale concept. It may be in possession of directions more than positive (future) and negative (past), and it is able to gain and lose momentum and weight. Just like forces.
And then we look at the former issue of quantified time. We all so stubbornly believe that the device of a clock or a watch is a measure of time, and sometimes even equalize the two concepts, whereas in fact all the artificial mechanism captures is a representation of our perceived time, and that perceived time is defined in the first place by our understanding of it. So on the centre of all things the actual time, then the effects of time as it takes place, then our understanding of it based on these perceptions, and then our way of capturing and representing that understanding of that perception.
Hence layers of gaps are created, between our understanding of the equilibrium and the actual happening of reality. The dangerous thing being we are not only constantly influenced by the representation of time, let alone time itself, but also constantly giving feedback to that so called reality by our methods of representation (clock), without being aware of the reciprocal interactions. That's how sometimes strange things happened to our perceptions, like memories of the past versus the memory of yesterday, where one perceives the former as significantly more important and closer than the latter even though the measurement of time suggests the opposite. We have distorted that equilibrium of time by magnifying or diminishing our conception of it, whereas on the other hand still comfortably believing that we are staying faithful to the iron law of consistency. Another example is with facial products. it works by bringing attention to the process of application, hence ritualized these short periods of putting cream on face into performances. That in itself creates a conception or misconception of enlarged time.
m.
oil price will hit 150 by the end of this month.
and then it will hit 165 by the end of July.
Then in August 8th Olympics games will come.
Some things might go wrong. The weather, for instance.
Some stupid western countries will boycott the game, at least for some of the atheletes.
then it'll be tension. then the stock market will go down, really down.
then the economy is in for an apparently painful correction,
but in fact it is good for the government because the alternative will be too scary.
then the oil price will go down. or not.
but if it does. it will drop to 120 in no time.
and then 100. or not.
this is the easy part. what will happen after that?
and then it will hit 165 by the end of July.
Then in August 8th Olympics games will come.
Some things might go wrong. The weather, for instance.
Some stupid western countries will boycott the game, at least for some of the atheletes.
then it'll be tension. then the stock market will go down, really down.
then the economy is in for an apparently painful correction,
but in fact it is good for the government because the alternative will be too scary.
then the oil price will go down. or not.
but if it does. it will drop to 120 in no time.
and then 100. or not.
this is the easy part. what will happen after that?
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