Filosofando con Tron Legacy

Se acaba el 2010.  Hace como dos semanas que no escribo.  Es hora de otro rant.  Mencione que vi a Tron Legacy este fin de semana?  Entretenida.  Si no te gusta la historia, por lo menos disfruta los visuales y el excelente score que preparo Daft Punk. 

Repasemos:
Score de Daft Punk - Check
Daft Punk sale en la escena del Club, en los platos - Check
Es 3 D - Check
Jeff Bridges joven - Creepy
Castor - Me hizo sacar los CDs de Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCQCLRB2qEg

Personalmente me gusto la pelicula, pero lo que mas curioso que encontre fue que enfatizaron el aspecto religioso.  O sea, la existencia de otras inteligencias que no son humanas.  Y ese tema lo han traido ya en varias peliculas incluyendo Matrix, Inception, Ghost In The Shell y otras.  No voy a enumerar lo que pasa en esta pelicula puesto que no quiero arruinarle el dia al que no lo ha visto.

Sin embargo, en la primera pelicula todo este mundo electronico tiene conciencia (y es un estado fascista).  A mi particularmente me gustaba el look y feel de una pelicula blanco y negro de los 50 con tonos azul (o rojo) neon.  Particularmente la escena de las motoras de luz...

Lightcycle Scene (original)


Entonces me recorde de este viejo post de Cartoon Brew con la carrera hecha en stop motion y carton...
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/shorts/tron-in-cardboard.html


Bueno, ese tema de aspectos filosoficos de las peliculas es uno de esos temas de mi familia.  Discutimos a saciedad el tema.  En la web se ha discutido que esta conexion con temas budistas es evidente en la pelicula, y les incluyo varios links debajo.

http://wisdomquarterly.blogspot.com/2010/12/tron-legacy-zen-and-religion-film.html
http://www.shambhalasun.com/sunspace/?p=19771

There’s of course been lots of buzz about the Tron/Buddhism connection. More on that after the jump.There’s also an interesting National Post piece about Jeff Bridges, Zen, and Tron: Legacy.

And Bridges’ Tron: Legacy star Olivia Wilde talks in a new interview about how her character, Quorra, is inspired in part by Buddhism, and the “coolest Zen Buddhist alive” — her co-star Jeff Bridges. Check that out here.

And back in October, over at The Worst Horse, eagle-eyed longtime reader Sam DeWitt contributed one of the first looks at the Tron/Dharma connection, including some interesting screengrabs. See that here.

And, just put online at the scifi and geekery site (I say that lovingly) i09, is an article called “Jeff Bridges and Olivia Wilde say Tron Legacy is all about religion.”

…As one of a bunch of kids who were enthralled by the original Tron (1982), it’s exciting to see that this groundbreaking film is becoming a smart franchise, and especially since it’s doing so while, in its way, growing up with me.
http://io9.com/5713435/jeff-bridges-and-olivia-wilde-tell-us-about-the-zen-of-tron-legacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetsugen_Bernard_Glassman
Para mas detalles sigan los links.  Basta ya de filosofia...
A mi solo me interesan los visuales y el soundtrack de Daft Punk, al que le estoy dando paleta en el player...

Aqui la escena del club (cameo de daft Punk al final):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_pBGIvPXCM


Bono:
Me recorde de este viejo episodio de los simpsons (The Genesis Tub) donde Lisa crea accidentalmente una civilizacion de un diente caido...detalles en los links.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treehouse_of_Horror_VII#The_Genesis_Tub
http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Treehouse_of_Horror_VII

(link is dead - chit!)
http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=25637
(this might work)
http://www.sharkstreams.com/v/animated-tv-shows/the-simpsons/the-simpsons-801-treehouse-of-horror-vii.php

Bono 2: David Bowie y el Ocultismo
http://user.cyberlink.ch/~koenig/bowie.htm

Have an Inception Coca Cola Christmas

A veces las mejores cosas llegan sin buscarlas.  Toma un anuncio que detestas y hazle un mashup.



http://www.homorazzi.com/article/coca-cola-inception-christmas-video-snow-globes-commercial-holiday-2010/

Y sobre todo cuando es con Inception.  Vi el anuncio de nuevo ayer viendo Tron.  Le llamamos Santa Claus es Dios, puesto que Santa es Omnipresente y controla nuestros destinos como un padre bondadoso...

Digo, porque estamos claros que el Santa que todos veneran estos dias tiene trademark de Coca Cola.
http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/heritage/cokelore_santa.html

Ahora en serio...Muchas felicidades a todos en estas Navidades 2010.

http://www.bite.ca/bitedaily/2010/12/tronified-disney-characters/

Update!!!
Ese final tan rata, en plena Navidad. Les dejo con algo del Mesias de Handel:

For unto us a Child is born

For unto us a child is born,
To us a son is giv’n;
The government shall rest on him,
Th’ anointed one from heav’n.
His name is Wonderful Counselor,
The Mighty God is he,
The Everlasting Father,
The humble Prince of Peace.

The increase of his government
And peace shall never end;
He’ll reign on David’s ancient throne
As ruler of all men.
Upheld with justice and righteousness,
Forever his kingdom will last;
The zeal of the Lord God Most High
Will bring these things to pass.

Lord Jesus, come now and reign in me,
Be Lord of my life this hour.
Come be my Counselor and my God,
My source of wisdom and power.
Watch o’er me with your Father care,
My heart and my mind, fill with peace.
I worship you, my Lord and King,
My praise will never cease.

Journal Publica Estudio Abejas Hecho Por Estudiantes de Elemental

Estoy ocupado estos dias, pero esta noticia me hizo el dia.  La Royal Society Publishing de UK publico un estudio de abejas hecho por ninos de 8 a 10 a/nos de una escuela elemental en Blackatown, Inglaterra.  No se que es mas interesante, el que los ni/nos dise/naran los juegos, los experimentos y las observaciones...

O su hallazgo de como las abejas aprenden a reconocer colores para obtener el nectar.  Les dejo los links aqui.  Sigo mis labores.

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/12/18/rsbl.2010.1056.abstract

Blackawton bees

1. P. S. Blackawton1,
2. S. Airzee1,
3. A. Allen1,
4. S. Baker1,
5. A. Berrow1,
6. C. Blair1,
7. M. Churchill1,
8. J. Coles1,
9. R. F.-J. Cumming1,
10. L. Fraquelli1,
11. C. Hackford1,
12. A. Hinton Mellor1,
13. M. Hutchcroft1,
14. B. Ireland1,
15. D. Jewsbury1,
16. A. Littlejohns1,
17. G. M. Littlejohns1,
18. M. Lotto1,
19. J. McKeown1,
20. A. O'Toole1,
21. H. Richards1,
22. L. Robbins-Davey1,
23. S. Roblyn1,
24. H. Rodwell-Lynn1,
25. D. Schenck1,
26. J. Springer1,
27. A. Wishy1,
28. T. Rodwell-Lynn1,
29. D. Strudwick1 and
30. R. B. Lotto2,*

+ Author Affiliations

1. ¹Blackawton Primary School, Blackawton, Devon, UK
2. ²Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London, 11-43 Bath Street, London EC1V 9EL, UK

1. * Author for correspondence (lotto@ucl.ac.uk).

Abstract

Background Real science has the potential to not only amaze, but also transform the way one thinks of the world and oneself. This is because the process of science is little different from the deeply resonant, natural processes of play. Play enables humans (and other mammals) to discover (and create) relationships and patterns. When one adds rules to play, a game is created. This is science: the process of playing with rules that enables one to reveal previously unseen patterns of relationships that extend our collective understanding of nature and human nature. When thought of in this way, science education becomes a more enlightened and intuitive process of asking questions and devising games to address those questions. But, because the outcome of all game-playing is unpredictable, supporting this ‘messyness’, which is the engine of science, is critical to good science education (and indeed creative education generally). Indeed, we have learned that doing ‘real’ science in public spaces can stimulate tremendous interest in children and adults in understanding the processes by which we make sense of the world. The present study (on the vision of bumble-bees) goes even further, since it was not only performed outside my laboratory (in a Norman church in the southwest of England), but the ‘games’ were themselves devised in collaboration with 25 8- to 10-year-old children. They asked the questions, hypothesized the answers, designed the games (in other words, the experiments) to test these hypotheses and analysed the data. They also drew the figures (in coloured pencil) and wrote the paper. Their headteacher (Dave Strudwick) and I devised the educational programme (we call ‘i,scientist’), and I trained the bees and transcribed the childrens' words into text (which was done with smaller groups of children at the school's local village pub). So what follows is a novel study (scientifically and conceptually) in ‘kids speak’ without references to past literature, which is a challenge. Although the historical context of any study is of course important, including references in this instance would be disingenuous for two reasons. First, given the way scientific data are naturally reported, the relevant information is simply inaccessible to the literate ability of 8- to 10-year-old children, and second, the true motivation for any scientific study (at least one of integrity) is one's own curiousity, which for the children was not inspired by the scientific literature, but their own observations of the world. This lack of historical, scientific context does not diminish the resulting data, scientific methodology or merit of the discovery for the scientific and ‘non-scientific’ audience. On the contrary, it reveals science in its truest (most naive) form, and in this way makes explicit the commonality between science, art and indeed all creative activities.

Principal finding ‘We discovered that bumble-bees can use a combination of colour and spatial relationships in deciding which colour of flower to forage from. We also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before. (Children from Blackawton)’.

http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/12/18/rsbl.2010.1056.full

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/kids-study-bees/

Strudwick says the project has completely changed the way Blackawton Primary School approaches science education, and that the students have a much more positive view of science now than three years ago. The students’ scores on Britain’s national science exams are well above average, too.

Misha Lotto, now 10, says his view of science changed thanks to the bees.

“I thought science was just like math, really boring,” he said. “But now I see that it’s actually quite fun. When you’re curious, you can just make up your own experiment, so you can answer the question.”

Some of the students now want to be scientists when they grow up, but some still want to be soccer players and rock stars. That’s okay, Lotto says.

“If they don’t turn out to be scientists, that’s not a big deal,” he said. “The hope is that this kind of program doesn’t just create data and information and little scientists. Being uncomfortable with uncertainty, in fact being excited about not knowing — that’s really what we’re trying to foster through science.”

Lotto and Strudwick are now developing a similar program called “i,scientist” at the Science Museum in London, where visitors and classes from nearby schools can do real experiments on-site. Strudwick hopes to help other schools develop their own student-driven science experiments.

“I certainly don’t think this is something that only we could have done. It’s something that lots of schools could do,” he said. “It would be lovely to have this sense of community around learning all over the country and all over the world.”

Images: 1) A buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris). Wikimedia Commons/Alvesgaspar. 2) Courtesy of Beau Lotto. 3) P.S. Blackawton et al/Current Biology 4) Courtesy of Beau Lotto.

http://www.apinews.com/en/news/item/12828-united-kingdom-scientific-bee-study-made-by-the-youngest-scientists-ever-seen
http://www.journalnet.com/news/science/article_e013fda4-fcf8-5a3c-9ab1-05a6077a9a7e.html
http://www.localnews8.com/news/26243958/detail.html#

Disertacion Sobre La Estupidez

Esta discusion esta relacionado a la estupidez y la insensatez.  No se por que, pero aparenta ganar relevancia en estos dias, en el ambito politico y ante los aires de otra huelga (YAWN!!!) indefinda en la UPR.  Este link es viejito, de los dias cuando la red era joven y libre (el documento original es de cerca de 1987).

Bottom line: Un bestia con iniciativa es pero que un maton a sueldo.

Debajo el link de la referencia.  Es mas, lo voy a poner aqui a verbatim...

http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~leeey/stupidity/basic.htm

THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY by Carlo M. Cipolla
illustrations by James Donnelly

The first basic law of human stupidity asserts without ambiguity that:

Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
At first, the statement sounds trivial, vague and horribly ungenerous. Closer scrutiny will however reveal its realistic veracity. No matter how high are one's estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that:
a) people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid.
b) day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one's activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments.
The First Basic Law prevents me from attributing a specific numerical value to the fraction of stupid people within the total population: any numerical estimate would turn out to be an underestimate. Thus in the following pages I will denote the fraction of stupid people within a population by the symbol å.

THE SECOND BASIC LAW
Cultural trends now fashionable in the West favour an egalitarian approach to life. People like to think of human beings as the output of a perfectly engineered mass production machine. Geneticists and sociologists especially go out of their way to prove, with an impressive apparatus of scientific data and formulations that all men are naturally equal and if some are more equal than others, this is attributable to nurture and not to nature. I take an exception to this general view. It is my firm conviction, supported by years of observation and experimentation, that men are not equal, that some are stupid and others are not, and that the difference is determined by nature and not by cultural forces or factors. One is stupid in the same way one is red-haired; one belongs to the stupid set as one belongs to a blood group. A stupid man is born a stupid man by an act of Providence. Although convinced that fraction of human beings are stupid and that they are so because of genetic traits, I am not a reactionary trying to reintroduce surreptitiously class or race discrimination. I firmly believe that stupidity is an indiscriminate privilege of all human groups and is uniformly distributed according to a constant proportion. This fact is scientifically expressed by the Second Basic Law which states that
The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
In this regard, Nature seems indeed to have outdone herself. It is well known that Nature manages, rather mysteriously, to keep constant the relative frequency of certain natural phenomena. For instance, whether men proliferate at the Northern Pole or at the Equator, whether the matching couples are developed or underdeveloped, whether they are black, red, white or yellow the female to male ratio among the newly born is a constant, with a very slight prevalence of males. We do not know how Nature achieves this remarkable result but we know that in order to achieve it Nature must operate with large numbers. The most remarkable fact about the frequency of stupidity is that Nature succeeds in making this frequency equal to the probability quite independently from the size of the group.
Thus one finds the same percentage of stupid people whether one is considering very large groups or one is dealing with very small ones. No other set of observable phenomena offers such striking proof of the powers of Nature.
The evidence that education has nothing to do with the probability was provided by experiments carried on in a large number of universities all over the world. One may distinguish the composite population which constitutes a university in five major groups, namely the blue-collar workers, the white-collar employees, the students, the administrators and the professors.
Whenever I analyzed the blue-collar workers I found that the fraction å of them were stupid. As å's value was higher than I expected (First Law), paying my tribute to fashion I thought at first that segregation, poverty, lack of education were to be blamed. But moving up the social ladder I found that the same ratio was prevalent among the white-collar employees and among the students. More impressive still were the results among the professors. Whether I considered a large university or a small college, a famous institution or an obscure one, I found that the same fraction å of the professors are stupid. So bewildered was I by the results, that I made a special point to extend my research to a specially selected group, to a real elite, the Nobel laureates. The result confirmed Nature's supreme powers: å fraction of the Nobel laureates are stupid.
This idea was hard to accept and digest but too many experimental results proved its fundamental veracity. The Second Basic Law is an iron law, and it does not admit exceptions. The Women's Liberation Movement will support the Second Basic Law as it shows that stupid individuals are proportionately as numerous among men as among women. The underdeveloped of the Third World will probably take solace at the Second Basic Law as they can find in it the proof that after the developed are not so developed. Whether the Second Basic Law is liked or not, however, its implications are frightening: the Law implies that whether you move in distinguished circles or you take refuge among the head-hunters of Polynesia, whether you lock yourself into a monastery or decide to spend the rest of your life in the company of beautiful and lascivious women, you always have to face the same percentage of stupid people - which percentage (in accordance with the First Law) will always surpass your expectations.

THE THIRD (AND GOLDEN)BASIC LAW
The Third Basic Law assumes, although it does not state it explicitly, that human beings fall into four basic categories: the helpless, the intelligent, the bandit and the stupid. It will be easily recognized by the perspicacious reader that these four categories correspond to the four areas I, H, S, B, of the basic graph (see below).

If Tom takes an action and suffers a loss while producing a gain to Dick, Tom's mark will fall in field H: Tom acted helplessly. If Tom takes an action by which he makes a gain while yielding a gain also to Dick, Tom's mark will fall in area I: Tom acted intelligently. If Tom takes an action by which he makes a gain causing Dick a loss, Tom's mark will fall in area B: Tom acted as a bandit. Stupidity is related to area S and to all positions on axis Y below point O. As the Third Basic Law explicitly clarifies:
A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
When confronted for the first time with the Third Basic Law, rational people instinctively react with feelings of skepticism and incredulity. The fact is that reasonable people have difficulty in conceiving and understanding unreasonable behaviour. But let us abandon the lofty plane of theory and let us look pragmatically at our daily life. We all recollect occasions in which a fellow took an action which resulted in his gain and our loss: we had to deal with a bandit. We also recollect cases in which a fellow took an action which resulted in his loss and our gain: we had to deal with a helpless person. We can recollect cases in which a fellow took an action by which both parties gained: he was intelligent. Such cases do indeed occur. But upon thoughtful reflection you must admit that these are not the events which punctuate most frequently our daily life. Our daily life is mostly, made of cases in which we lose money and/or time and/or energy and/or appetite, cheerfulness and good health because of the improbable action of some preposterous creature who has nothing to gain and indeed gains nothing from causing us embarrassment, difficulties or harm. Nobody knows, understands or can possibly explain why that preposterous creature does what he does. In fact there is no explanation - or better there is only one explanation: the person in question is stupid.

FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION
Most people do not act consistently. Under certain circumstances a given person acts intelligently and under different circumstances the same person will act helplessly. The only important exception to the rule is represented by the stupid people who normally show a strong proclivity toward perfect consistency in all fields of human endeavours.
>From all that proceeds, it does not follow, that we can chart on the basic graph only stupid individuals. We can calculate for each person his weighted average position in the plane of figure 1 quite independently from his degree of inconsistency. A helpless person may occasionally behave intelligently and on occasion he may perform a bandit's action. But since the person in question is fundamentally helpless most of his action will have the characteristics of helplessness. Thus the overall weighted average position of all the actions of such a person will place him in the H quadrant of the basic graph.
The fact that it is possible to place on the graph individuals instead of their actions allows some digression about the frequency of the bandit and stupid types.
The perfect bandit is one who, with his actions, causes to other individuals losses equal to his gains. The crudest type of banditry is theft. A person who robs you of 100 pounds without causing you an extra loss or harm is a perfect bandit: you lose 100 pounds, he gains 100 pounds. In the basic graph the perfect bandits would appear on a 45-degree diagonal line that divides the area B into two perfectly symmetrical sub-areas (line OM of figure 2).

However the "perfect" bandits are relatively few. The line OM divides the area B into two sub-areas, B1, and B2, and by far the largest majority of the bandits falls somewhere in one of these two sub-areas.
The bandits who fall in area B1 are those individuals whose actions yield to them profits which are larger than the losses they cause to other people. All bandits who are entitled to a position in area B1 are bandits with overtones of intelligence and as they get closer to the right side of the X axis they share more and more the characteristics of the intelligent person.

Unfortunately the individuals entitled to a position in the B1 area are not very numerous. Most bandits actually fall in area B2. The individuals who fall in this area are those whose actions yield to them gains inferior to the losses inflicted to other people. If someone kills you in order to rob you of fifty pounds or if he murders you in order to spend a weekend with your wife at Monte Carlo, we can be sure that he is not a perfect bandit. Even by using his values to measure his gains (but still using your values to measure your losses) he falls in the B2 area very close to the border of sheer stupidity. Generals who cause vast destruction and innumerable casualties in return for a promotion or a medal fall in the same area.
The frequency distribution of the stupid people is totally different from that of the bandit. While bandits are mostly scattered over an area stupid people are heavily concentrated along one line, specifically on the Y axis below point O. The reason for this is that by far the majority of stupid people are basically and unwaveringly stupid - in other words they perseveringly insist in causing harm and losses to other people without deriving any gain, whether positive or negative.
There are however people who by their improbable actions not only cause damages to other people but in addition hurt themselves. They are a sort of super-stupid who, in our system of accounting, will appear somewhere in the area S to the left of the Y axis.

THE POWER OF STUPIDITY
It is not difficult to understand how social, political and institutional power enhances the damaging potential of a stupid person. But one still has to explain and understand what essentially it is that makes a stupid person dangerous to other people - in other words what constitutes the power of stupidity.
Essentially stupid people are dangerous and damaging because reasonable people find it difficult to imagine and understand unreasonable behaviour. An intelligent person may understand the logic of a bandit. The bandit's actions follow a pattern of rationality: nasty rationality, if you like, but still rationality. The bandit wants a plus on his account. Since he is not intelligent enough to devise ways of obtaining the plus as well as providing you with a plus, he will produce his plus by causing a minus to appear on your account. All this is bad, but it is rational and if you are rational you can predict it. You can foresee a bandit's actions, his nasty manoeuvres and ugly aspirations and often can build up your defenses.
With a stupid person all this is absolutely impossible as explained by the Third Basic Law. A stupid creature will harass you for no reason, for no advantage, without any plan or scheme and at the most improbable times and places. You have no rational way of telling if and when and how and why the stupid creature attacks. When confronted with a stupid individual you are completely at his mercy. Because the stupid person's actions do not conform to the rules of rationality, it follows that:
a) one is generally caught by surprise by the attack; b) even when one becomes aware of the attack, one cannot organize a rational defense, because the attack itself lacks any rational structure.
The fact that the activity and movements of a stupid creature are absolutely erratic and irrational not only makes defense problematic but it also makes any counter-attack extremely difficult - like trying to shoot at an object which is capable of the most improbable and unimaginable movements. This is what both Dickens and Schiller had in mind when the former stated that "with stupidity and sound digestion man may front much" and the latter wrote that "against stupidity the very Gods fight in vain."

THE FOURTH BASIC LAW
That helpless people, namely those who in our accounting system fall into the H area, do not normally recognize how dangerous stupid people are, is not at all surprising. Their failure is just another expression of their helplessness. The truly amazing fact, however, is that also intelligent people and bandits often fail to recognize the power to damage inherent in stupidity. It is extremely difficult to explain why this should happen and one can only remark that when confronted with stupid individuals often intelligent men as well as bandits make the mistake of indulging in feelings of self-complacency and contemptuousness instead of immediately secreting adequate quantities of adrenaline and building up defenses.
One is tempted to believe that a stupid man will only do harm to himself but this is confusing stupidity with helplessness. On occasion one is tempted to associate oneself with a stupid individual in order to use him for one's own schemes. Such a manoeuvre cannot but have disastrous effects because a) it is based on a complete misunderstanding of the essential nature of stupidity and b) it gives the stupid person added scope for the exercise of his gifts. One may hope to outmanoeuvre the stupid and, up to a point, one may actually do so. But because of the erratic behaviour of the stupid, one cannot foresee all the stupid's actions and reactions and before long one will be pulverized by the unpredictable moves of the stupid partner.
This is clearly summarized in the Fourth Basic Law which states that:
Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
Through centuries and millennia, in public as in private life, countless individuals have failed to take account of the Fourth Basic Law and the failure has caused mankind incalculable losses.

THE FIFTH BASIC LAW
Instead of considering the welfare of the individual let us consider the welfare of the society, regarded in this context as the algebraic sum of the individual conditions. A full understanding of the Fifth Basic Law is essential to the analysis. It may be parenthetically added here that of the Five Basic Laws, the Fifth is certainly the best known and its corollary is quoted very frequently. The Fifth Basic Law states that:
A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
The corollary of the Law is that:
A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.
The result of the action of a perfect bandit (the person who falls on line OM of figure 2) is purely and simply a transfer of wealth and/or welfare. After the action of a perfect bandit, the bandit has a plus on his account which plus is exactly equivalent to the minus he has caused to another person. The society as a whole is neither better nor worse off. If all members of a society were perfect bandits the society would remain stagnant but there would be no major disaster. The whole business would amount to massive transfers of wealth and welfare in favour of those who would take action. If all members of the society would take action in regular turns, not only the society as a whole but also individuals would find themselves in a perfectly steady state of no change.
When stupid people are at work, the story is totally different. Stupid people cause losses to other people with no counterpart of gains on their own account. Thus the society as a whole is impoverished. The system of accounting which finds expression in the basic graphs shows that while all actions of individuals falling to the right of the line POM (see fig. 3) add to the welfare of a society; although in different degrees, the actions of all individuals falling to the left of the same line POM cause a deterioration.

In other words the helpless with overtones of intelligence (area H1), the bandits with overtones of intelligence (area B1) and above all the intelligent (area I) all contribute, though in different degrees, to accrue to the welfare of a society. On the other hand the bandits with overtones of stupidity (area B2) and the helpless with overtones of stupidity (area H1) manage to add losses to those caused by stupid people thus enhancing the nefarious destructive power of the latter group.
All this suggests some reflection on the performance of societies. According to the Second Basic Law, the fraction of stupid people is a constant å which is not affected by time, space, race, class or any other socio- cultural or historical variable. It would be a profound mistake to believe the number of stupid people in a declining society is greater than in a developing society. Both such societies are plagued by the same percentage of stupid people. The difference between the two societies is that in the society which performs poorly:
a) the stupid members of the society are allowed by the other members to become more active and take more actions; b) there is a change in the composition of the non-stupid section with a relative decline of populations of areas I, H1 and B1 and a proportionate increase of populations H2 and B2.
This theoretical presumption is abundantly confirmed by an exhaustive analysis of historical cases. In fact the historical analysis allows us to reformulate the theoretical conclusions in a more factual way and with more realistic detail.
Whether one considers classical, or medieval, or modern or contemporary times one is impressed by the fact that any country moving uphill has its unavoidable å fraction of stupid people. However the country moving uphill also has an unusually high fraction of intelligent people who manage to keep the å fraction at bay and at the same time produce enough gains for themselves and the other members of the community to make progress a certainty.
In a country which is moving downhill, the fraction of stupid people is still equal to å; however in the remaining population one notices among those in power an alarming proliferation of the bandits with overtones of stupidity (sub-area B1 of quadrant B in figure 3) and among those not in power an equally alarming growth in the number of helpless individuals (area H in basic graph, fig.1). Such change in the composition of the non-stupid population inevitably strengthens the destructive power of the å fraction and makes decline a certainty. And the country goes to Hell.

(There is genius at work in this thesis. It came round about by way of reader Sam Keen, who sent us a thin gray monograph printed in Bologna, Italy. The trail eventually led to Carlo M. Cipolla, the author, who is currently Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley - Kevin Kelly, Whole Earth Review. Spring 1987 p 2 - 7)

Finalmente comparto esta ilustracion que hice en lo que esperaba a mi esposa en un COSTCO cerca de usted.