Puffy the kid

The Black Swan Theory

The Black Swan Theory : The Impact of the Highly  Improbably; it is  a metaphoric  theory developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb that refers to almost all major scientific discoveries, historical events, and artistic accomplishments that don’t have a  direction and are unexpected as "black swans".

Several examples and concepts "Is it luck?: Fooled by randomness" the start point of  the problem of induction exemplified graphically in the case of "Russell duck " which founds that every morning the humans fed him , after several months of observations the duck  concludes as a  universal law ("these humans are  so nice, they must love me  a lot, every day I get to eat"), when the arrival of Thanksgiving Day  came the  unexpected death for the duck. Well, our thinking is not very different from the "Russell duck." Much of the mathematical statistics, calculated risks and probability distributions are crossed by this way of thinking: a higher frequency of occurrence of an event less sensitivity to the unexpected.
A casualty satisfies these three properties: high impact, impossible to calculate and surprise. First, the incidence produces a disproportionately large effect. Second, it has a small chance but impossible to calculate based on available information before the fact of being perceived. Third, the most damaging property of the "black swan" is its surprise effect: at any given time of observation there is no convincing evidence indicating that the event will occur.

A black swan effect is the retrospective distortion, something that economists and historians to explain the causes of an economic crisis or a world war, but are unable to anticipate it:. There is a philosophical and genetic basis for understanding that fact. The evolution did not favor us with a type of complex and probabilistic thinking, on the contrary we are very quick to take instant decisions supported by a minimal amount of data or theories superficial and lacking in strength, perhaps because those who saw a lion and ran away by assume that all wild animals always eat humans were more likely to survive than those who preferred to test this hypothesis experimentally. Of course there are  friendly lions  (as there are black swans), but it is better to be prudent and cautious instead of  suffer the consequences later (problem of induction). There is also a fundamental philosophical problem: the Platonicity or "Platonic fallacy." We are children of the Platonic school that encouraged us to prefer the structured theory, ordinary and understandable to the messy and complex reality on the other hand, also inclines us to select only those facts that fit our theories (fallacy of silent evidence) or when the events have taken place

Another phenomenon is the circularity of statistics and the collateral damage caused by the normal or Gaussian distribution: we need data to find the probability distribution. How do we know if we have enough for the probability distribution?. How do you know which is Gaussian?. By the data. So we need data to tell us what the probability distribution we must assume, and that a probability distribution to tell us how much data we need. This circularity causes serious problems in the regression, more pressing when applied without discrimination of Gaussian distributions to everything that moves. Imagine that we have in a football stadium 1,000 people randomly assembled inside. If we add to them the tallest person in the world will it change much the average height of 1,001 people gathered?. No, not hardly vary. Welcome to Mediocristan, whose mathematics is the algebra of classical statistics and probability theory. In that world, the distributions are normal, with curves in the form of the famous bell curve. Individual variations do not vary much average. Now let's take those same 1,000 people and we come into the stadium Bill Gates, reportedly one of  the richest men in the world. Will it change much the average wealth of the gathering? Yes, change from one form to enter brutal Bill with more than 50,000 million dollars of assets. Welcome to Extremistan, which are much less orthodox mathematics, for example, fractal geometry, those distributions follow a power law as the Zipf or Pareto or, more recently, the "Long Tail”,  black swans are Extremistan.

The neurologists know that our brains are programmed to be in control of everything that happens. However, the fact is that our brain is literally in the dark, hidden under the cranial cavity, and the only contact I have outside is through imperfect bodies, either the sight, touch, sense of smell or taste. And since our brain is programmed to control everything and due to imperfection of the perceptions that come to him, elaborates what he can, creating abstract models of reality, which sometimes do not have to coincide with reality itself. In few words, the explanation could be that we are not physiologically prepared for unforeseen events. There are unpredictable events yet.

Happy New Year

On the 17th of June, 2009, by means of supreme decree Bolivian president Evo Morales, of Aymara origin, declared that every 21st of June to be a national holiday to celebrate the winter solstice. On the 7th of June 2010 the law was passed and the holiday is to be called the ‘Aymara New Year’ and must be celebrated as a national Holiday which means that all public and private institutions, companies and schools throughout the entire nation must suspend their activities.

 What is this holiday? Basically, the Aymara New Year is a ceremony involving the Winter Solstice. In pre-Colonial America, the native peoples of the Andean highlands depended on agriculture and their agricultural rituals were carried out to obtain the blessings of the gods, above all the Pachamama (Mother Earth) and Inti (Father Sun), to ensure an abundant harvest. The Quechuas and Aymara celebrated two annual festivities: the planting season and the harvest, coinciding with the summer and winter solstices. Some Amazonian tribes also celebrated the solstice, with other rituals and in a different manner, each according to their customs.

 However, let’s focus on what this celebration is according to the Aymara. Every 21st of June, from very early in the morning, when dawn is beginning and the first rays of sun have not yet shone, a group of amautas (a type of priest) meets with various ceremonial objects in the Temple of Kalasasaya, in Tiwanaku and they make toasts (wassail), burn offerings, and sacrifice tiny immaculate llamas as they wait for the rays of sun to pass through the Gate of the Sun, located in the same temple. This officially initiates a new agricultural cycle. They don’t measure time by the Western system of 12 months and 4 seasons. They have two ways of dividing their time: the first is a solar year which is divided into two periods, the summer solstice (December-January) and the winter solstice (June-July). The latter ends precisely on June 21st, and on this date one solar year ends and a new one begins. The second manner in which they divide their calendar, is in three seasons called ‘pachas’, each of which is divided further, and this is based on the climate.

Aymara New Year Activities

 

In a country of nearly 10 million, only about 2 million people identify themselves as Aymara and of those, many are actually mestizo (indigenous/European mix). People throughout the country who are not Aymara are very upset at having the Aymara New Year imposed upon them. In any case, those companies that do not shut down and whose employees work on this date will be fined and will be forced to pay their workers double for the day.

According to Aymara timekeeping, whose history has been passed down orally, the 21st of June 2010 will mark the 5,518th year of the Aymara culture. The Ministry of Culture is planning and promoting celebrations in La Paz, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, and for the first time, near Uyuni in Potosí.


In La Paz there will be celebrations in Tiwanaku, Sorata, El Alto, Copacabana, the Valley of the Moon, and Pasto Grande.
In Cochabamba, at the ruins of Incallajta, there will be ceremonies and rituals to welcome the Aymara New Year.
In Santa Cruz, at Samaipata, the winter solstice will be celebrated as an astronomical phenomenon, (although the ruins at Samaipata are also not of Aymara origin).
In Potosí, there will be typical music and dances at Tahua, a visit to the ruins in Vinto, and at dawn participants will go to the island of Tajarete to await the sunrise.

The Arguments Against Aymara New Year

 

Cultural argument: The most vociferous argument made by those who oppose this holiday is based on the fact that Bolivia is not an Aymara nation. In fact, there are dozens of native Bolivian cultures and therefore, they argue, the rituals of only one culture are being imposed upon all the other cultures, some of which are also very large ethnic groups, such as the Quechua and the Guaraní. It’s not that they are against the festivity itself; after all, it’s perfectly understandable that the Aymara culture should continue with its customs. What they are against is the fact that the entire country is being forced to obey with complete disregard for those who are not Aymara, those who are of different ethnic groups, those who are mestizo (mixed race), and worse yet, those who are not even remotely indigenous. Therefore, they argue the Aymara New Year should be limited to the regions where the Aymara population is numerous, in other words, Western Bolivia.

The Constitutional argument: The new Bolivian Constitution, passed in 2009 at the insistence of the current government’s political party, establishes Bolivia as a ‘plurinational’ state, and guarantees respect for the customs and lifestyles of each and every one of the 36 ethnic groups that inhabit Bolivia, no matter how large or small they are. This would make imposing the Aymara New Year on non-Aymara peoples unconstitutional.

Historical argument: There are those who argue that there is no evidence the Aymara ever celebrated a New Year prior to the arrival of the Spanish. They also affirm that this “Aymara New Year” is nothing more than a celebration of the potato harvest which doesn’t actually occur on the 21st of June. The first existing evidence of this celebration is from the 16th Century when Incan Emperor Pachacutec imposed the celebration of the Inti Raymi (the festival of the Sun god) on all people Incas or not, free or colonized, throughout the entire Tawantisuyo, the territory over which the Incas ruled. In addition, writings from the era when the Spanish arrived contain no evidence of an “Aymara New Year” but do mention the Inti Raymi.

The vindicative argument: There are those who explain that, taking into account historical evidence, this celebration is very recent, and is actually an attempt to vindicate the Aymara culture and that these ceremonies were created for this sole objective. They claim that the ceremony uses the customs of other cultures to give it an “ancestral” feel, not to mention what a great tourist attraction it makes. There are also those who argue that elements not native to the Aymara culture are included in order to manipulate ideologies, and that this is actually detrimental to this culture as it corrupts their identity even further.

 Archeological argument: This argument states that almost nothing is known about the Aymara culture as they have no written history and very little archeological evidence of their culture has been found. In addition, because they were conquered by the Incas they were “Quechua-ized”, and in fact, their very name “Aymara” is actually a Quechua word used to describe natives who are not Quechua, who were deported as slave labor to the Inca Empire. The word is not original to their true ethnic identity and was grossly mispronounced by the Spaniards. Therefore, there is no evidence that the origins of this festivity are Aymara. In addition, the location where they now celebrate this Aymara New Year, the ruins of Tiwanaku are not Aymara ruins. They belong to the Tiwanakotas, a different culture. Finally, there is concern, among archeologists and local inhabitants of Tiwanaku, that the ruins will be damaged.

 

 

Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass but learning to dance in the rain

The event also allows us to comment about  an old phenomenon that strikes us in a cyclic way; waiting for the great happiness, while we disregard the small joys of everyday life. Wait!!!, do nothing but wait!!! and while waiting, life is spent and still keep on waiting without knowing what to expect ... perhaps not waiting.

One thing is to hope for something to happen and quite another to make it all turn around its arrival. Let's be consistent enough to live each day with enthusiasm because, Wait for what? Death? A change in the wind?, it will run eternal. A change of opinion?, some people never change. A stroke of luck?, fortune rarely appears suddenly. A miracle?, Well, I don't say that doesn't occur, but they are soooo scarce.

Wait for  all these if we want and do it with confidence, but do not put off anything for it and not stop to enjoy a single day of our life, or get ready to learn or improve, nor to know, love, feel , enjoy, laugh ... in few words to live!.

Don't judge unless you feel the flames

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

                                                                            --- David Foster Wallace

The perfect friend

Emoticon Holiday Party