Stupidity During the Reformation

At the same time that people were turning away from theological truths and looking outward at the world those truths were undergoing dramatic revision as both the Christian religion in particular and Western Civilization in general were thoroughly reformed In the early sixteenth century with religious man seeking biblical answers to theological problems Christianity underwent a number of soul searching revisions which were essentially conservative in nature efforts to go back to times before the Church became corrupted Meanwhile with Renaissance Man seeking human answers to temporal questions and functional solutions to real problems the secular religions of capitalism and nationalism were taking shape Thus as Christian theology was being redefined the Bible reinterpreted and the Church both split and reformed rising capitalism was undermining the medieval guild system while growing nationalism was enfeebling the Holy Roman Empire and weakening the papac

The Technological Basis of Stupidity

A major cultural factor in determining the amount and nature of work performed a society is the level and type of technology applied to the exploitation of its natural resources Basically technology is that aspect of culture which encompasses the tools as well as the techniques people use in meeting their material needs 1 It functions through time in its interrelations to other aspects of society so its significance must be appreciated as means to maladapt a society not only to its natural environment but to itself as well2 to the point of being tyrannically dehumanizing 3 Regardless of the level of sophistication of its technology when a group outstrips the carrying capacity of its environment starvation disease and or war will follow This is a basic principle of life and technology cannot alter it Sophisticated devices and methods may expand the capacity of the environment to sustain a certain way of life but when these new limits are exceeded the same predictable result is inevitable but worse In fact without some guiding sense of the long-term impact of technoillogical exploitation of natural resources technology serves only to build up a culture to a bigger neurotic paradoxically induced crash when it come

Renaissance Stupidity

The Renaissance was an expansion of the Western cognitive world beyond the limits of the medieval mind Deism was replaced by humanism as God was replaced by man at the center of thought Christian theology which had so restricted intellectual development to ways to prepare people for the next life in heaven gave way to a general appreciation of this life here and now as people self-consciously gloried in and legitimatized the world of the senses Indulging the sin of pride reborn man presumed to stand on his own two feet and repudiated the doctrine that he needed God s support at every turn Reason based on knowledge gained through experience openly challenged faith as the basis for belie

Political Stupidity

For lack of effective credible criticism in the slap-happy world of the media power does indeed tend to corrupt as Lord John Acton noted1 because stupidity is a corruption of learning For some reason the power to command frequently causes a failure to learn--with power being a substitute for wisdom Worse yet the errors of leaders are less likely to be corrected then those made followers lower on the power-ladder so as often noted failure comes from the top down Ideally the responsibility of those in power is to govern as reasonably as possible to the mutual advantage of all To accomplish this end a leader has best be well informed heed available information be open-minded without being empty-headed2 and judge all effects of policies objectively However it is unusual for someone transfixed by his own power to be open-minded enough to perceive that a pet policy is having unintended negative effects responsible enough to admit it and wise enough to replace it with a better one 3 The principle of cognitive dissonance applied to politics would show that there is a constant push from way below and outside the powergrid to reform the system and force those in power above to live up to the ideals they routinely espouse but rarely honor and apply Usually such pushes are blunted by mid-level career-minded promotion-seeking mismanager

Stupidity in the Age of Reason

The Age of Reason was marked by a decline in the theological basis of knowledge due to a rise of scientific explanations of natural phenomena trends which reflected the application of reason to philosophy astronomy where it was most effective and biology However during this era the political life of nations continued to be shaped by power while the cognitive life of people continued to be shaped by religion tradition and emotion which combined to make this period as unreasonable as any othe

The role of the nature of the noise in the thermal conductance of mechanical systems

Focussing on a paradigmatic small system consisting of two coupled damped oscillators, we survey the role of the L\'evy-It\^o nature of the noise in the thermal conductance. For white noises, we prove that the L\'evy-It\^o composition (Lebesgue measure) of the noise is irrelevant for the thermal conductance of a non-equilibrium linearly coupled chain, which signals the independence between mechanical and thermodynamical properties. On the other hand, for the non-linearly coupled case, the two types of properties mix and the explicit definition of the noise plays a central role.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures. To be published in Physical Review

The Ferromagnetic Potts model under an external magnetic field: an exact renormalization group approach

The q-state ferromagnetic Potts model under a non-zero magnetic field coupled with the 0^th Potts state was investigated by an exact real-space renormalization group approach. The model was defined on a family of diamond hierarchical lattices of several fractal dimensions d_F. On these lattices, the renormalization group transformations became exact for such a model when a correlation coupling that singles out the 0^th Potts state was included in the Hamiltonian. The rich criticality presented by the model with q=3 and d_F=2 was fully analyzed. Apart from the Potts criticality for the zero field, an Ising-like phase transition was found whenever the system was submitted to a strong reverse magnetic field. Unusual characteristics such as cusps and dimensional reduction were observed on the critical surface.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures. Accepted to be published in Phys. Rev B (2006

Cinematic and aesthetic cartographies of subjective mutation

This article exmaines the use of cinema as a mapping of subjective mutation in the work of Deleuze, Gauttari and Berardi. Drawing on Deleuze's distinciton between the reduction of the art-work to the symptom and the idea of art as symptomatology, the article focuses on Berardi's use of cinematic examples, posing the quesiton in each case of to what extent they function as symptomatologies or mere symptoms of cultural and subjective mutations in examples ranging from Bergman's Persona to Van Sant's Elephant to finish on speculations about Fincher's The Social Network as a cirtical engagement with subjective mutation in the 21st Century