el sueño de la razon

opening again with goya's quote (and incision) to carry on along last night line...


ie. the infamous new law just approved in italy about immigration.

was thinking again about it today, especially during one of the talks of the conference. this guy was talking about the "survival rate" of a complex system increasing with its DIVERSITY. apparently, even in early evolution of pre-biotic structures, diversity makes a system more robust against crashes, hence more stable and long-living. apparently my ignorant country is trapped in a pre-pre-biotic state and cannot understand that...

anyway, what pissed me off even more was the (almost) absence of any reference to this law in the main international - especially european - press. not a single line. and it's not that recent, i mean the bill was finally approved yesterday, but it's been under debate in the parliament for several weeks - guess they could have already prepared a column about that. ok, let's give them time. i just wish it is a matter of time.

guess i truly hope it's a matter of time and not a voluntary negligency. i just hope it hasn't been mentioned for whatever random reason but a systematic will to hide the news.

italy is doing something nasty. awful. and it's just round the corner, it's one of the founding members of eu. it IS shameful for the whole europe. they should talk about that. they should be disappointed.

but if you ever (as apparently lots of italians do) think italy is going to benefit from such despicable behaviour, if you ever (guess you wouldn't be on my blog, but whatever) think this outrageous law is going to somehow "protect" italy, nothing forbids you to assume that it is going to "protect" whatever other country in europe as well. what i mean is, if you ever think that in italy they're doing a dirty job, right, but we're going to gain something also elsewhere in europe, then you would probably keep your mouth shut.

something like...
italians are washing dirty clothes for all of us.
let them do it. and thank god we still don't have to do it ourselves.

truly hope this is NOT what people are thinking throughout europe. fortunately, after a whole afternoon browsing the net, i found this BBC issue which partly contradicts me:

Italy adopts law to curb migrants

please have a look, it contains basic info about this ignominious law and also about the ignoble institution of the citizens' patrols, which i also mentioned in yesterday's post.

and please forward it, share it, circulate it (all of you, imaginary readers of my blog) in whichever country you live...

THE SLEEP OF REASON
PRODUCES MONSTERS.

LET'S STAY AWAKE.

bremen, game theory, evolution and immigration

haven't bloggged in a while. a veeeery long while. it's just that i left heidelberg and have been kind of around ever since. and i've been writing, sure, but with good old paper and pen. my friends even got me the sweetest gift - a portable typewriter! - and i initially thought i'd take it around and use it! but it's kind of heavy, so i preferred good old hand writing. hence, i didn't blog.

and now i'm in bremen, actually somewhere close to bremen but also in the middle of nowhere, in the dorms of a fancy shiny private university, which btw is financed by a coffee company - seriously?? seriously: have a look --> jacobs university... if you're wondering, yes, it's the same jacobs guy of the coffee, apparently the company is from bremen (at this point it would have been better if it had been founded by the other famous bremen company... becks beer!)

anyway it's kind of a shame for me being here. me, completely against private education. me, in favour of fair trade products. spending a week in a private university founded by some presumably nasty coffee company guys. anyway, i'm just attending a scientific conference, which has little or nothing to do with the university. at least.

and the conference is about evolution. i've been recently very interested in evolution and possible controversies about it. well, the lectures are not exactly what i expected, but i'm learning a lot anyway.

eg. some of the lectures were about game theory, which i found very interesting and had almost no clue about. i even thought, gees, hadn't it been a hard-core computational research field, i'd even consider it for the future. well, whatever. they were explaining us some games where some patterns arise, which are interesting for biological evolution.

cooperation.
the reason of cooperation between different humans, especially the uncorrelated ones.
cooperation is costly.
and you can usually get a gain anyway even if you don't cooperate, since most of the other individuals are going to cooperate anyway - why on earth should you ever cooperate??

there are also games where you can institute punishment for those who don't cooperate, but systems can be infiltrated by cooperators who don't punish and later by defectors... and a whole lot of other interesting examples. yes, ok, it's all about highly simplified systems, which are then used to model completely different situations.

however, this and other concepts about evolution made me think a lot these days. cooperation. selfishness vs. altruism. the richness in diversity.

especially in the framework of what just happened today in italy - the release of a law that makes immigration a penal crime. with all the obvious consequences of it, not to mention the violation of basic human rights. and the scary institution of citizens' patrols.

if only we were not such a bunch of hypocrites... we even forgot we were a country of migrants ourselves only last century. i guess not even a dramatic (but almost kitsch - have to admit) reconstruction like the one we saw yesterday (the museum of german migration... seriously?? seriously) could make most people change their mind. i was reading the comments of the readers to some articles in the news about the new law, and they're frightening. we've turned into monsters.

guess i'll quote my favourite of goya's...
"The sleep of reason produces monsters"
unfortunately. so true.

and i'll conclude with a photo...
just, this time it's about us. not the danes.