SAL RESTIVO'S BLOG: THE SOCIOLOGICAL COGITO

  From the desk of the MindWarrior, the voice in the wilderness where trees fall and philosophers go nuts; remarks on a headline:  Objective Reality May Not Exist at All, Quantum Physicists Say.  But don’t let your guard down.  You should still look both ways when you cross the street in New York; read the directions below the curb when you cross the street in London; and be prepared to look six ways when crossing the boulevards of Rome and Paris.   Two things:1.Objectivity is not a monolith; it is shaped by culture and different groups live in different objectivity communities. 2. Principle of the profundity of the surface; but remember that this is a portal to the objectivities of “other worlds” like the worlds of quantum physics and relativity theory, not to mention the worlds of certain judges and political leaders.   Have a nice day.  Stay safe  Be aware of which objectivity community you’re in when you cross the street.  ...

  In the moments following the irresponsibility, morally degraded, and ultimately illegal SCOTUS decision on Roe v Wade I posted: A few words for you, Amerika. Thomas Jefferson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. Shame! It's not about abortion, stupid! If you are infected with the illusion that "logic" is a once and only historical phenomenon, that there is only ONE logic, that logic isn't a function of culture and values, read the SCOTUS "reasons" for overturning Roe v Wade. Hermann Lotze (1817-1881). There is no Logik, only logics. Oswald Spengler (1880-1936). There is no Mathematik, only mathematics. Sal Restivo and other science studies scholars: There is no Science, only sciences. I then shared the following post by M.J. Fleck Micah J. Fleck, Ed.M.(He/Him) • 1stAnthropologist, Curriculum Designer at MIDAS Multiple Intelligence Research, M.S. Candidate at University of North Texas1d • Edited  Fifty years of precedent has been wiped away today ...

  https://flip.it/-ZPRXV THE WASHINGTON POST Google’s AI passed a famous test — and showed how the test is broken The Turing test has long been a benchmark for machine intelligence. But what it really measures is deception.    Analysis by Will Oremus, Staff writer                                    June 17, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EDT THIS ITEM ASKS THAT YOU RE-CONSIDER WHO AND WHAT YOU ARE, AND WHAT THE TURING TEST ACTUALLY TESTS -SR _____________________________________________ A Dyson Sphere Could Help Humankind Live Forever. So We Found Out How to Build One. This sci-fi megastructure has captivated big thinkers for decades. A leading expert in astrobiology tells us how to construct one., BY DIRK SCHULZE-MAKUCH, JUN 17, 2022 https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a40230192/dyson-sphere-immortality/ THIS ITEM ASKS THAT YOU RE-CONSIDER WHO AND WHAT YOU ARE, AND WHY SOME PEOPLE ARE OBSESSE...

 In a Linkedin post today I had occasion to recall my friendship with the distinguished Costa Rican lawyer and sociologist, Eugenio Fonseca, with whom I shared an office at Michigan State University in 1971.  We both received our PhDs in sociology that year.   E. Fonseca: L.L., University of Madrid; Diploma, Latin American Faculty of So- cial Sciences.  Sociology. Major Professor: Frederick B. Waisanen, Professor. Thesis: Social Stratification, Some Aspects of Social Mobility and Family Planning in the Context of Modernization. In my post, I wrote:  Words in Context: A Morality Play The words are: treason, subversion, sedition, equality under the law, democracy. The Context is: "Law is the institutionalization of the social injustices of a society." Eugenio had written this on the blackboard in our office.   El Departamento de Ciencias del Hombre aglutinaba tres carreras: Antropología, Psicología y Sociología; en 1969 y 1970...

  FROM THE DESK OF THE MINDWARRIOR Came across this item flipping through FLIPBOARD this morning: For centuries, the more superstitious corners of popular culture have been obsessed with the prophecies of a 16th-century French astrologer and soothsayer named Michel de Nostredame, or as he's known by his Latinized name, Nostradamus. As Sky History notes, four and a half centuries after their publication, the soothsayer's quatrains - poems of four stanzas - are still analyzed and debated. There is a cure for this.  Nostradamus and His Prophecies (All the Prophecies in French and English, with Complete Notes and Indexes) by Edgar Leoni (1982). For over 400 years the prophecies of the controversial French prophet Michel Nostradamus (1503-66) have fascinated people because they project far into the future (A.D. 3797), and because they are open to countless interpretations. Until the publication of this book, however, there was no truly complete translation of the prophecies with ev...

  From BigThink: Will we download our minds into new bodies?  According to author and entrepreneur Steven Kotler, at some point this century, we will confront the prospect of immortality. NOT. Das ist nicht Wissenschaft, das ist nicht Naturwissenschaft: das ist theologie. The brain is not an independent bio-informational machine. It is at the coarse grained level intricately informationally networked with the body, the bodies organs, the bodies social interactions in cultural and ecological niches, and triadically entangled: the triad is the basic social unit, an emotionally connected unit bonded by a micro-collective effervescence. You "hard problem of consciousness" folks; that's where you should be looking. Following are excerpts from my The Social Brain in progress:  THE SOCIAL BRAIN MODEL I have taken this model through several revisions in order to keep current with the most recent developments in the relevant sciences.  The model was initially based on an ar...

       In 2014, Canadian First Nations teenager, Tina Fontaine was found murdered after being reported missing.   Once again, calls went out for a national inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women.   Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper responded by claiming that this was not a “sociological phenomenon” but a “crime.”   Crime is an eminently social phenomenon, but this tragedy only caused Harper to recall his 2013 claim that “this is not a time to commit sociology.”   Statistics Canada has long documented the facts that First Nations people face more poverty, unemployment, and violence than other Canadians. Various studies have shown that indigenous women are three times more likely to be the victims of crimes and eight times more likely to be murdered than non-indigenous women.   For Harper, these statistics veil the simple fact that the issue is “crime.”   Harper’s views and words echo those of ...

  BORIS BONDAREV: For 20 years of my diplomatic career I have seen different turns of our foreign policy, but never have I been so ashamed of my country as on February 24 of this year. The aggressive war unleashed by Putin against Ukraine, and in fact against the entire Western world, is not only a crime against the Ukrainian people, but also, perhaps, the most serious crime against the people of Russia, with a bold letter Z crossing out all hopes and prospects for prosperous free society in our country. … “I studied to be a diplomat and have been a diplomat for 20 years. The Ministry has become my home and family. But I simply cannot any longer share in this bloody, witless and absolutely needless ignominy.” —Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev  #ukrainerussiawar   #society This post led to the following conversation between Mike Takac, an engineer, and myself on LINKEDIN:   MT: The best we can do in our modern day, as the world became a loca...

 In recent years, we have become accustomed to news reports and scientific warnings about "existential threats" to our species. life in general, and the planetary ecology.  These threats range from climate change to artificial intelligence agents and robots.  Our future often seems to be unfolding into a dystopia of such threats; we are being attacked by the basic elements of wind, earth, air, and water.  This dystopian future is being fueled by our educational institutions.  In 1933, John and Adele Algeo defined "dumbing down" as                          "[to] revise so as to appeal to those of little education or intelligence".                                     At the time this was movie-business slang.  It has become increasingly clear that this term describes what has been happening to the Amer...