Uncategorized – Seite 10 – Wilmar Igl

Psychosocial mechanisms contributing to climate change and climate action [DRAFT]]

The following text lists psychosocial mechanisms contributing to climate change and climate action: Climate Crisis Individual belief system Cognition: complex problem solving research, incl poor performance solving problems with time lag between cause and effect, non-linearity (cf research by Dietrich Dörner) Confirmation bias Fundamental attribution error Mechanisms of creating doubt (cf Naomi Oreskes, Merchants of…

2020-08-05admin

The Meaning of Money [DRAFT]

The following essay explores the meaning of money inspired by Modern Monetary Theory [1] and its relevance regarding ecological crises, especially the climate crisis. 1. Assumptions Money consists of statements about human behaviour in the future. The value of money depends on the shared belief of a group of humans. The shared belief is created…

2020-07-24admin

Human greed is a moderator of stupidity

“We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet. ” [1, also 2] Stephen Hawking In my opinion “stupidity” is largely caused by “flock behaviour” which defines as smart what the majority of the peer group…

2020-07-07admin

Blacking out and removing hidden information in PDFs by conversion to raster format

PDF documents may contain information which an author may remove before publication or sharing with specific target groups. While PDF editors (eg, Linux/Xournal) or graphic programs(eg Linux/GIMP) allow “blacking out” information, PDF files with vectorized information keep the hidden information, eg text, which can be marked and copied and pasted into another document, and further…

2020-07-04admin

Neoliberalism – An ideology based on the logical fallacy of “false equivalence” of freedom and liberty

Neoliberalism and its promotion of “freedom” is based on a logical fallacy of “false equivalence” of freedom and civil liberty. If “freedom” means the absence of laws (ie “deregulation”), this will only lead to the dominance of the ruthless and rich and oppression (ie loss of liberty) for the rest. However, “civil liberty” means that…

2020-06-22admin

Racism – A statistical comment

Big data and artificial intelligence may be useful in fighting racism, if we replace race as a (weak) predictor of future behaviour (eg past of future crime) [Reference missing] with other (sufficiently) informative predictors (eg social score?). However, this would require citizens to share personal information with public authorities, which creates new risks. However, by…

2020-06-18admin

Capitalism, growth, and the planetary boundaries

1. Introduction It is a common assumption that the global neoliberal capitalist economic system requires economic growth in terms of the gross domestic product (GDP) to avoid recession an collapse. Scientists argue that constant (exponential) growth is not possible on a finite planet and the continuing conversion of natural resources (abiotic and biotic) will deplete…

2020-06-05admin

How to use an android-based smart phones with anonymity, privacy and integrity [DRAFT]

1.Background Current societies have increasing powers of surveillance and control over individual citizens based on digital technology. At the same time, there is a world-wide trend toward fascist systems, ie political trends which promote the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. Individuals who are interested to maintain their liberal rights,…

2020-02-01admin

Negative impact of universities on the climate emergency

Here, I would like to present some short reflections on negative impact of universities on the climate emergency, as pointed out by Prof Kevin Anderson [1]: international scientific collaboration most often by air travel international personal/romantic relationships locking people in high-carbon futures providing high-level education, leading to high salaries, and high consumption Ad 1) Personally,…

2020-05-19admin

Sustainable Recruitment – Questions for potential employers or business partners

1. Introduction Depending on job skills and experience, employees may have a strong leverage on policies of employers. During an existing job contract, committment (eg dependence on salary, housing, job of partner, school for children) of an employee maybe rather high, giving him or her little influence. However, during an application process while committment is…