In schools sometimes it seems they teach to figure out why you are wrong, but do not encourage thinking your are right and maybe the information was wrong. Just sometimes. I will take the personality test you provided.
The thing about "reasoning" and "thinking"... just like in trading - there are a number of ways to winning, but there are a few things we know are not ways of winning... The trick is to be good at adaption, evolution -- i.e problem solving, not only "intelligence", but the wise application of it by using your knowledge and trust. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_and_crystallized_intelligence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degree_of_truth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-level_utilitarianism See also http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/index_surveys.shtml The test about "disgust" and the "sex of your brain" will scare you a little, especially the part about attraction to feminine/masculine facial traits...
REV 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: REV 13:17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. See RFID Chips, micro chipping.
The elitist corruption and imposing of a universally absolute truth is truly a great evil, aggression, oppression, suppression and ultimately destruction of everything and everyone... through their elitist social Darwinism being unsustainable and without any peace or trust. I was a boy scout at the age of 5-7... but I never read a bible or anything, just enjoyed the outdoors. I never had any use for a bible and never will, but I guess many do need something to structure their personal integrity... too bad there are so many "false prophets" out there, trying to convince through "logic" that they can infer universally absolute truths, when the truth lies within and in the consensual interaction with your surroundings - not enforcing your views or "logic" upon others, especially those who trust you unconditionally - your own children. Too many parents fuck their children up, they should learn from the parents of e.g Isaac Asimov, or even my parents who let me develop freely.
A telling example of how systems science works differently from logic... A known liar who has defrauded you several times, comes in to where you are sitting and tells you that someone will set off a car-bomb in 5 minutes just outside your window... waddya do? Then the event repeats itself several days in a row, with excuses for when it did not happen. What do you do? Tip: you think "outside the box."
So, to further explain systems views... (just an imaginary case study) E.g imagine a study showing that very few traders come from the state of Iowa. It is very disproportionate to the population size of Iowa. Of course there are natural variations by generations, and among any US state, but Iowa has consistently been at the bottom throughout the last 80 years. That looks like something that could be explored to understand --- it's a situational system where something is clearly contributing to the current state of affairs. It could be parental education, educational programmes, ethnic background, religious views etc - you name it ... an open mind is needed to consider "everything" and not disqualify anything. So, we go through the case and see what is closest to this situation system study. Well, the firms employing traders are relevant, and so are the educational institutions for traders, the grants, the scholarships, the trading metropolitans, media, public interest, savings tradition, public understanding, successes, scandals, population diversity, available funds/fortunes, incentives, activism, contact network --- in short, a whole lot of things are relevant - to a varying degree. We already know that something is attributing to this trend, because there is something producing this consistent situation. It could be all natural and just the evolutionary path chosen by anyone from Iowa, but there is a fact of this imbalance and we can try and understand the reason behind the imbalance. There is nothing judgemental in this, it is just understanding it - maybe free will and choice by people from Iowa. We don't know... yet. So we look into things, and we find that many of the people from Iowa follow traditions and have farms to keep running, passing on family traditions. Fair enough, nothing bad or something like that - just a choice. Further along, we see that traders are employed or funded according to contact networks, and this network favours and is skewed towards existing trader backgrounds. I.e it is not so easy to "break in" to the trading world - just a little resistance, but that is just because of evolution - however it is an influence that is present and continuous. Furthermore, we find that educational resources are geared towards completely different areas than trading in Iowa, so it is difficult to get an education relevant to trading -- as well as the media not covering success stories or informational/educational facts about trading - just the scandals and vilification of traders. Then we also see that religious leaders denounce traders and "speculators", further entrenching the views. Along the study we see that income of the people of Iowa is very low compared to where traders come from, as well as the debt of people in Iowa is invested into farms, property and similar. The population of Iowa as a whole is very centred around the agricultural economy, with little service completely detached from this epicentre. OK, now we start to see an emerging systemic bias as to why there are so disproportionally few traders from Iowa - and it seems like it is normal evolutionary choices. So now we need to consider, if anyone wanting to become a trader, but is from Iowa - how does this whole process influence his personal path towards becoming a trader... then we see how many personal preferences and contact networks play out in making this path more difficult. Some is because of the geographical background and the society of Iowa, while other strong influences are caused by external societies and their bias towards supporting their own - and not any outsiders into the world of trading. With the Internet, now anyone can become a private trader, but since the contact networks are so strong - the systemic bias continues to favour those within the already established contact networks ... tips, methods, information and secrecy. That amounts to partly corruption of the system with negative influences on traders from Iowa, who are more prone to become losing traders - further entrenching the public image in Iowa - and making them easy prey for more established traders. Through the study - we can identify single firms, contact networks, powerful individuals, educational bias and so on... but it is not fair to put all the blame on any single entity - because it is a total systemic bias. Is it fair? Well, obviously not all of it - since the negative influences should ideally be offset by more positive paths so that the freedom of choice is there - for ANY person to chose to become a trader, and have access to equal information as any other trader, emerging or already established. That is how the system becomes balanced - and no longer with a systemic bias enforced by negative influence or self-interests dominating and increasing the difficulty of the path to becoming a trader, when you come from Iowa. Understanding the system makes it a neutral point of view, and while "conspiracy theorists" and "fringe science" starts looking into the individual entities contributing to the difficulty and systemic bias using logics and infering blame using reductionism and "logics" normally applicable to closed systems --- what is the systems view is how this whole situational system is compounded and needs to be able to change - consensually and foster freedom of information, thought and choice. That is how the system becomes more sustainable and not going through strong swings of ups and downs - maybe even breakdowns. This is the big difference between "logics" and "system views". With logics, you would typically follow various "paths of reasoning, natural deduction" while all the time reducing the focus point and coming to a conclusion. Of course the conclusion of such reductionism is most times completely unreasonable - because of the inherent "complexity" - i.e the intersection of various systems, where logics applicable within the closed systems would be projected outwards and no longer have validity or applicability. This is ultimately also true for "religion" and other ideology - where one sets a "universally absolute truth" and then tries to influence and control everything into alignment of this "truth". In reality, truth is a component of any system - where it can be defined and found using knowledge and methods like logic. It is however, not always applicable to every other system, but many times into intersecting systems with situational close proximity and influence on each other. E.g in astronomical terms ... what happens in other galaxies does not matter so much to our Milky Way, or local news do not matter so much to someone on the other side of the world. There is always the "Butterfly effect", but it is just an understanding that effects MAY be transferred and extrapolated from one situation to another - but there is NOT a true/false or yes/no bivalent impact from one remote event to another event in a separate system. Bivalence is a very restricted and simplistic view of the world - and there is the modern understanding that the world is not digital or composed of true/false or yes/no facts or similar bivalent "universally absolute truths". Rather, the world is a complex of intersecting systems which effects and interactions are largely unknown - and changing, evolving - making us perceive randomness and chaos. Of course there is free choice and will, so the world is not predetermined or guided by "destiny" - but there can be temporary strong bias which directs anyone into a specific situation. Hope this clarifies a little on systems philosophy.
The interesting thing now, is a systemic view at the bible and the Judea-Christian traditions... what have they contributed to humanity? Did they invent compassion? Certainly not, there was compassion all along, and even monkeys and wild beast show it. Did they invent democracy? Certainly not, there were tribal counsels and similar social structures before the Christian onslaught. Did they invent freedom of thought? Ehhh... not exactly. In fact - the ONLY essential contribution in a systems view from Judea-Christianity to human evolution or belief system - is the notion of monotheism and "universally absolute truth". Rather, it was Zarathushtra and the society around him that founded the ideas of monotheism as we know them from the Abrahamic religions... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarathushtra So what effect does the Abrahamic religions had on society? Well, since thousands of years, the tribes in the region where the ideologies emerged have been warring each other and engaged in infighting and power positioning by proclaiming prophets and messiahs. The region was dominated by the Roman Empire and scattered around Europe and the region of origin after being mostly decimated. The ideas of the religion never died down though, and got a foothold through the European times of plague and other shocking trauma, where Christianity showed great compassion for the ill. The reverberation throughout society to rebuild and strengthen itself was brought through the preaching of Christianity - as well as being a strong vehicle for conquest and "reasoning". This is because of the inherent "universally absolute truth" at the centre, which was being project outwards to align the surroundings. Throughout history a great deal of misery, violence and abuse was committed - along with glorious conquest, heroes, kings and accumulating riches among nations. The US was founded on a combination of hope for a "Christian paradise" for fundamentalists suppressed in Europe, along with entrepreneurial souls looking to strike it big in the "New World". After the global wars, the ideological onslaught kept accumulating and in the "War on Terrorism" we have seen the culmination of the Abrahamic religions in warring conflict in modern time. Now we have gone through times where the former Great Nations are no longer the same, and decolonization after the global wars. Thus emerged a new strong voice again reverberating through power and the greed for more - the Neo-conservatives seeking to destroy their thousands of years of enemies, and find their "paradise" - "place in the sun" among great nations. The polarization was again strong and just like the old fronts were entrenched a new battle for position and dominance - destruction of enemies evolved. Throughout the Cold War and the culmination of Neo-conservative self-aggrandizing after the Soviet was "defeated", they set their sights on their mortal long-time enemies... their old neighbours. Now they face utter defeat and their ideology radiated from their religion has been largely crushed - shown in its corruption and greed. But the problems are not over, because the Abrahamic religions have this strong inherent polarization of everything that comes in contact with it, because their temptation is that they NOT keep their beliefs to strengthen their inner structure and personal integrity - but to seek the power through projecting the notion of "universally absolute truth" and thus dominate and "organize" their surroundings. The inherent polarization of this method - where any human valuing their freedom of thought, information and choice - will naturally oppose such attempts. Therefore, the old warring tribes will continue to keep fighting - within themselves and towards other groups... and if one becomes dominant, they will still continue to polarize against everything of their surroundings --- as long as they keep projecting their inner beliefs to influence, corrupt, polarize and dominate their surroundings - instead of learning to leave in a fair, balanced and peaceful consensus of a sustainable developing society. That is why they will always face cycles of greatness and destruction - and why one can say that they have self-fulfilling prophecies ... evident through history ... these are SYSTEMIC BIASES. Not because they are right, but because their influences are allowed to control their surroundings in their flawed greed and corruption of their beliefs. The bearers of Abrahamic religion are inherently tempted to use their ideas for self-aggrandizing and conquest by influencing and controlling their surroundings by alignment and self-interest funnelling towards the "universally absolute truth" that they continues preaching about. They all fuck up their kids, their surroundings and their world - unless they can show restraint and accept not to project their beliefs on the rest of us. But that would mean that they let their children not walk around with Uzis, AK-47 toys and indoctrinating them into this continuous bullshit of ideas - self-aggrandizing path towards "universally absolute truth" and the generation of the apologetic ideologies for their goal of ultimate power and total domination. Jews, Muslims and Christian fundamentalists are locked into this conflict through their teaching, and suppression of freedom of thought of their children and their corruption onto their surroundings. They all seek their self-aggrandizing goals of domination and destruction of their enemies - because they all view themselves from with as self-righteous and projecting this belief onto their surroundings to align and polarize everything and everyone. The ultimate corruption and evil... only viewed through their tainted spectacles of polarization. It is unlikely that this "eternal conflict" will stop anytime soon, and only after educating everyone and bringing the systemic understanding of their beliefs to the front will we be able to see peace --- among the Abrahamic religions and in the world. Unless these fundamental understandings about how they influence the world are kept away - they will continues to corrupt the rest of the world and history with their quest for dominance, breaking any hopes for sustainable development for the time being. Of course, systems are changeable - and so is the future, that is why we CAN do something, and that is most importantly to THINK and reason with wisdom - and not be tempted into corruption like the projecting of closed system "logics" into everything else --- like the ideologies radiating from the Abrahamic religions. The Neo-conservatives were the most destructive throughout modern history in this respect. Other empires were military based, but this has been an "ideological empire" of corruption, suppression, oppression and atrocities -- apologized through many elitist theories: Askehnazi super-intelligence, managerial state, Freemasonry, holy wars - Jihad, Neo-conservatism and much more... Today we see anti-Europeanism strongest from Orthodox Jews, anti-Americanism strongest from Muslim countries but quite widespread, anti-Semitism from mostly Muslim countries but also Europe - and Japan has been quite anti-Semitic for many decades. Then we have the Islamophobia which is strongest in the US, but quite strong in Europe as well... while most Asian countries are strongly aware of the polarizing uprising from the Abrahamic religions, mostly Muslims in their region. Start reasoning and thinking, peeps - it is really worth the effort. Your brains may be invested heavily in biased bullshit and cultural morality trash. Those of use who understand freedom, democracy, free markets and the importance of trust, trustworthiness - the consensual interactions between humans - we know that by teaching these radical fundamentalists about their systems and the world - maybe we can make them understand as well, and contain themselves for a moment long enough to create strong consensual trust in social structures, which cannot be corrupted by the ideologies of these self-righteous entities... Now that is a future worth working and striving for, where elitist theories are marginalized and without effect, and where trust models are so strong that they can withstand the cancerous growth of corruption. Understanding the system of Abrahamic religions, is understanding how their supporters are very prone to the temptation of becoming corrupted and radiate their beliefs outwards - destroying and polarizing their surroundings in their quests. At least it is worth a try.
The ultimate cop-out and apologetic action is not structuring the ideologies through "logic" from their belief system and claiming "reason", but it is by asking forgiveness - an internal process... internal through prayer or the absolution, blessing of one from inside the aligned social structure - preferably with greatest possible "status" or "proximity to the Supreme Being." That is why the whole notion of "universally absolute truth" is so corrupting when used externally... seen in Neo-conservatism, Objectivism, KKK and other right-wing extremist ideologies - as well as the Abrahamic religions of the same tradition.
Bill Gates on Fareed Zakari GPS on CNN right now... Very interesting stuff. He points out the US having 1/3 of kids dropping out of High School, and more than half of minority kids dropping out... but he does not see the fundamental aspect of filling kids brains with "edutainment" as is happening today. He also talked about the importance of "IQ import" to the US, but it really came up somewhat similar to "The Bell Curve". http://en.wikipedia.rog/wiki/The_Bell_Curve The BIG problem in the US - in my opinion is all the investment in "edutainment" - worthless information and shows to be consumed by the population - filling their brains with nonsense and ultimately making them nothing more than drooling zombies without any will and with grave social problems. The crucial balance of providing the important structure and ideas for reasoning and interacting with the future - these are being cultivated elsewhere than in the US... THAT is why the US is falling behind on education and innovation - evolution and adaptation for the future... That is why the "American Empire" will ultimately be falling under the greed, corruption and witless decadence of itself.
Thank you Gringo for all of your explanation of system science and system bias. What confuses me is how very educated people can not see how some religious bias create hate and division. What I mean is I want to know if some people truely believe in their god, or do they use their god to keep power, but not really believe?