TED Community » Yubal Masalker

More About Me

An idea worth spreading

We are prisoners of our minds, captured between the walls of our ego & senses. This is why it's important to try thinking outside the box.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +218.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• +2

  A comment on Conversation: Is it time for philosophy to do away with metaphysics?

  5 days ago: IMO, philosophy is the Mathematics of Life. Like in science, when science was at its infancy, it could make progress by its own -- meaning just by marching on the path of the human thought. But as the science got developed, it required more & more mathematics in order to make progress. It's true particularly with Physics. The Modern Physics which began developing at the end of the 19th century, could not do it without mathematics.
  
  It's somewhat similar with life and philosophy. When we deal with the routine, daily life, we do not feel a need for philosophy. But as we go on living the routine life, and as we grow up, many thinking people feel that something is lacking in their routine life of pleasures & sufferings. They start looking for answers to their questions. A thirst is created in those minds to understand the principles which dominate their routine life and much further than that. This quest for understanding more than just our daily experience is called Philosophy. Philosophy helps us understanding the life like mathematics helps science understanding the physical world.
  
  The great thing with philosophy is that if one truly understands it, one sees that philosophy always was, is and will be an inherent part of any self-conscious life. The only question is if any self-conscious being is capable of reaching this insight. The insight that there's actually no other path but only the philosophic/spiritual path in each and every struggle of life.
  
  To illustrate our thirst for philosophy, imagine you haven't eaten anything for 2 days. Now someone puts before you a big plate with very delicious food and near it a big glass of water. What would you go for at the beginning ?? I guess for the plate full of food. You won't even look at the glass of water. But after eating enough and enjoying the delicious food, then you will start feeling a huge thirst for water and you will quench it with that water in the glass.
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: If communism was working the way its progenitors wanted it to, would it be better than capitalism?

  May 3 2013: I have no disagreements with what you say. Please note that I myself wrote in the comment you read on the Thandie Newton's talk, that the human nature is good fundamentally. However, the same nature has some traits which persistently cause failures of the systems the man creates, as the time passes. I gave there briefly the mechanism of how this happens.
  
  We both do not differ in what we say. See how.
  When you give examples of good things mankind has created or done, these things are usually new ways//innovations//discoveries//enterprises//....etc. At these new beginnings, there are mostly the good intentions of the beginners//founders, there's plenty of vital enthusiasm, there's great vision and so on. So no wonder so many good things come out of all these great virtues of the Man, as you had specified.
  
  But I say let's look beyond the great beginnings, after enough duration of time. Let's see what happens when the founding people//generation of all the good things pass away or lose their impact. The history proves that usually the followers or the successors (not necessarily the immediate successors) after the founders lose//forget//ignore the great ideals of their preceders. What was once new and fresh beginning turns gradually into routine, many times a boring routine. And so in such climate these followers tend to twist or misuse those great systems//ways//creations of the original founders. I say that this occurs due to the human basic traits of greed, ego-centrism, selfishness....etc which start to dominate in the absence of the spirit of good intentions, enthusiasm, vision, positive ideals.......
  
  But I shall add and say that it's not at all a lost battle. Exactly by becoming aware of these processes and confronting them we will be able to reduce the impact of our bad habits//traits and to preserve the original good qualities of our basic human nature and of our great creations.

• A reply on Conversation: If communism was working the way its progenitors wanted it to, would it be better than capitalism?

  May 3 2013: Here's another joke about communism:
  After the break down of Soviet Union by Gorbachev, a woman enters Gorbachev's office and ask him:
  
  "who invented the communism, the scientists or the politicians??"
  Gor: "the politicians."
  Woman: "So now I understand why communism failed. Because if the scientists would have invented it, they would first try it on the animals."

• A reply on Conversation: If communism was working the way its progenitors wanted it to, would it be better than capitalism?

  May 1 2013: Hi, I have replied to your comment below, not this one.

• A reply on Conversation: If communism was working the way its progenitors wanted it to, would it be better than capitalism?

  May 1 2013: A reply to Arkady Grudzinsky:
  
  Good points. Generally I like to phrase the sentence that Bad things come out of Good things and Good things come out of bad things.
  
  Now to be more specific about your points: The examples you gave about good things coming out of bad things -- please note that to create the good things you mentioned from the bad things, there had to be, I guess, someone (or some people) with good intentions who initialized those good things. But see now, isn't the scientific and industrial progress used many times for bad aims ?? Isn't the image processing technology used many times for fraud or just to create illusions about products to attract customers or about modelling to attract teenage girls ?? And so on and on.......
  
  So you gave true facts, but the principle I gave about the basic human nature is valid with those facts too.

• A reply on Conversation: If communism was working the way its progenitors wanted it to, would it be better than capitalism?

  May 1 2013: I almost completely agree. Your words here express almost precisely my thoughts, except the death penalty. I guess there are many who think similarly as you wrote about how it should be in politics.
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: If communism was working the way its progenitors wanted it to, would it be better than capitalism?

  May 1 2013: A quick review of the history shows that usually new systems or ways are founded with good intentions. The founders usually mean to make good. The problem is with their successors. The successors many times twist the main theme of the founders, and here enters the issue of the human nature. The communism is of no exception of this principle.
  
  I have written about this in more details on another discussion at TED forum. It is at my second reply there (Sep 2 2011) to "robert richards": http://www.ted.com/talks/thandie_newton_embracing_otherness_embracing_myself.html?c=312893
• +4

  A comment on Conversation: If communism was working the way its progenitors wanted it to, would it be better than capitalism?

  Apr 24 2013: I think it would. The problem was that there was a huge gap between the theory and its practice. The communism theory was an outcry for change in the reality of severe injustice of those times. It had noble ideals. But as it usually occurs in the mankind history, the great ideals always fall victim to the basic human nature -- the human nature of greed and selfishness. This means, whoever gains the power in the name of any ideals, exploit those ideals only for the benefit of his and his close group. Communism was not exception of this basic human nature, as well as the Capitalism and many countless other man-made systems of diverse ideals.
  
  So I think that instead of looking for the BIG answers from the failure of Communism (like dictatorships, organizing labor differently, the Chinese interpretation of communism or whatever) it would be much better for the all mankind to look for more seemingly minor answers, which are actually the real true answers. Because these answers are common to perhaps all the mankind’s ideological failures in the history and not just for the failure of the communism -- for example, also the latest economic crisis due to the failure of the Capitalism.
• +2

  A comment on Conversation: Do we have an opinion about everything? If not, should we?

  Apr 14 2013: There's no rule about having opinions. It's not that we should, nor that we should not, have opinions. I guess, opinions are created as a response to something that stimulates one's mind. I think 'Interest' is perhaps the most basic cause which creates opinion. If one does not have interest in something, I don't see how one can have opinion in that thing. Other weaker cause might be when somebody asks you for your opinion about something which might not interest you so much. But if the asker is close enough to you or his//her question creates some stimulation in your mind, then you might make some efforts and start thinking about that not interesting//unfamiliar issue and then create some opinion.
  
  The other question you ask -- "On what level of consciousness are opinions formed?" -- is a terrific question.
  
  I think there's always sub-conscious elements or processes which affect our final opinion. What changes each particular case of creating an opinion I guess is the mutual balance between the conscious and sub-conscious elements. This balance is influenced among others by the issue discussed, our personality, mood, level of our knowledge about that particular issue, level of our self-awareness, level of our mind's lucidity and so on.
  
  I think there are quite a few talks at TED which touch this question from various directions, although they do not necessarily claim directly doing so.

• A reply on Conversation: Are we on the brink of creating a human-like digital mind?

  Apr 3 2013: Actually this is a reply to your last comment of mine.
  
  Your question deals with a problem which the mankind had already dealt and still dealing with other similar problems.
  
  See what's going on now with the nuclear energy or the dynamite. The nuclear energy discovery originally was a pure outcome of mankind's curiosity and ambition for understanding more. The dynamite was an outcome of the ambition to ease the work for paving roads. But as we all see now, they have become an enormous threat to our very existence.
  
  But despite all this, I think we should not and even cannot restrict the human aspiration to know more, to make a progress, etc. What should be restricted is only the misuse of any discovery or progress.
  
  So, if the scientists would be really able to create a digital mind, that would be a tremendous achievement. Then what we would need is taking care not allowing this amazing achievement to be misused to harm, to dominate others, etc.
  
  But IMO, and that what I was trying to explain, is that it does not look reckonable in the seeable future that such an alive and sophisticated human-like mind or even much lesser that that, could be created artificially based strictly just on man-made technology.