Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Weltanschauung

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulder of Giants - Isaac Newton
The audio-blogs I've been listening to, since yesterday, have built up on this same notion - using the giant past,  compiled history of culture, sciences/anthropology/sociology, to explain the present reality in consideration of a future understanding of reality. Nonplussed I did start, but little tidbits of information stuck as interesting.

One, that we have usurped from culture its share/hold in/on the society. Not that we've demolished culture, we have more of disrupted and rejuvenated it in postmodern terms.

Two, that the pace of technology has made pseudo-understandings obsolete. Scientific rigor has left us with little mumbo-jumbo to believe in, and also little time to delve in or encourage more of such. The market of several philosophies that also exist as professions has been going down.

Three, that we have made transmission of human thought unbound. We have exponentially increased our capacity to make copies of an expressed thought or theory. Things can be instantaneously shared, and made communication a sort of primitive form of telepathy. Billions of thoughts since the invention of written language that would've died with the moment now survive. A thought dying is much rarer now. This effect can counter the earlier one, and mumbo-jumbo that does exist, is more localised, but more appropriate for a population with a reduced world-view which is still possible due to human indulgences in their "self" lives.

Four, that a concept like Minority Report is immature. We can never predict behavior or draw generalities from analysis of situations. A more realistic system would be one that predicts and prevents liability deaths, as in accidents, that can be deployed city-wide. Otherwise, the things that can kill you in a bad moment, are too many to model. Trust me, I live among the most number of people in a country like India.

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