Views on Freud: Civilization and its Discontents Chapter 1 part 2

Last post I started writing about Freud’s opinions regarding what should be of true value to people; those whose achievements are completely foreign to those of the multitude.  One of those exceptional few is Freud’s friend, whom Freud sends a book to explaining that Religion is an illusion how and why he thinks that way Freud does not elaborate. Upon that fact his friend replies that he agrees with Freud’s judgment upon religion, but that the friend is sorry Freud had not properly appreciate the true source of religious sentiments. This, The Friend says, is a feeling he would like to call a sensation of ‘eternity’, which he goes on saying that this feeling is the source off of which all Churches and Religious systems direct their sources from and which they exhaust. Freud than says that his friends thoughts caused him no small difficulty which he than says that he himself never has felt such feelings and try’s to elaborate on the origin of this feeling and if this feeling is the “fons et origo” (source and origin) of religion.

I personally have never felt such feelings of an eternal entity though I truly believe there is a god or some sort of eternal power which began it all. Though the origin for religion has nothing to do with god. Religion stems for the need of society for order; A system of rules which people govern in order to enable peace and order in an otherwise chaotic society. In order to prove this we need to look through the Jewish tradition’s laws, where the problems and issues are all social related, it again can be viewed that during the holiest of days, Yom Kippur, when we ask for forgiveness from god we are told we cannot make amends for the sins we made towards man but only by asking for forgiveness from the person we actually hurt. Than why have god? And sins? And heaven and hell?

Well, god does and cannot or doesn’t have to since we don’t have free will in the first place (I will elaborate on that another time). But in order for us not to commit any crime there needs to be a constant watching eye over our actions. We must envision some sort of “Big Brother” to make sure we do the correct thing, so religion created this idea and all the things that stem from it; Heaven, Hell and so on.

Views on Freud: Civilizations and its Discontents Chapter 1 part 1

Freud starts out describing his feelings about humanity; “…that people commonly use false standards of measurements – that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.”   Freud stops here regarding the subject of the values of man, so these questions come to mind: What are the true measurements? Who are we to judge other peoples decisions on what is valuable to them in life?

Maybe what really should be asked is ‘Why’. What is the reason for this behavior, the need to acquire these loose and relative terms- wealth, power and success?  Well to answer that we should start from the beginning and the actual reason for us to do anything at all.   The answer is that everything we do is for our existence, clear and simple. Everything from the moment we wake up in the moment until we fall asleep is purely for the reason of existing or so we assume. During our course of life we observe others at their success and their assumed happiness, simply deducing that those attributes that we lack, those that are related to control, those are the ones to aspire to in order to achieve true happiness.

Freud goes on, “There are a few men from whom their contemporaries do not withhold admiration, although their greatness rests on attributes and achievements which are completely foreign to the aims and ideals of the multitude.”     Based on what are these considered achievements at all?  Again there is the problem of experience and how we deduce the value of objects, situations and the like.

Ok that was hardly the first page I dot want to continue because for the next discussed subject I will have to go into allot and I want these to be concise and informative regarding my thoughts as much as possible. I am planning on doing this every day so if this interests you, stay tuned.

Introduction to Opinions on Freud

I was very pleased to have recently come across one of Freud’s works Civilization and Its Discontents,   since I was eager to read his ground breaking opinions  which brought us psychoanalysis and a better understanding of the mind.  His work is important to me personally and to the reason for creating this blog because it enabled us to analyze our minds more precisely causing us to understand intelligence and trying to recreate it.

Though during my reading I found that I disagreed with many of his points of views and opinions, and since I believe this is an appropriate place to discus them, I will present here Freud’s thoughts and my opinions on the matter.

Presentation of the mind– conveying thoughts using digital tools and thier problems.

Communication of information is an ancient art practiced since 34^th century B.C using Cuneiform script, which at that time, as it seems, using pictorial representation was the most efficient way to describe and transfer information.

5400 years later things have changed. We no longer carve our presentations into a wall with a stick or stone but rather use more mobile and efficient utilities such as Microsoft’s Powerpoint.  Though the use of such quick means of describing information has caused us to be lazy with our resources, and so decided to represent out information in the simplest of ways – text.

Though to truly understand the problem we need to understand the objective of the current structure of text on changing slides.  Text is the simplest form to describe complex previous experienced information  using the changing slides  as a presentation of the changing timeline.  

How efficient are we with words?  Could we use a slideshow to describe a Monet?   

Edward Tufte   tackles the problem with complex structures presented in this graph of Napoleon’s March.  Though at first glance the design seems very interesting, what comes immediately  after is utter confusion what is presented is a complex use of multiple variables presented in non commonly fashion, which in turn confuses the viewer and does not inform until the graph is thoroughly explained.   At first seeming a step forward actually presents a step backwards, regarding one of the most fundamental reasons for actually using Powerpoint – simplicity of conveying information.

So to empower our ability to present information in the most efficient and rich way, a system must be devised which uses simple commonly understandable structures which can be taken apart and reused as simple representatives;  a program which is similar to power point though has the ability of knowing what is the objective of the presentation and forming simple pictorial representatives which describe the objective In the most efficient and conceptually rich manner.

A simple tool that does so with regard to statistical information is presented here and here.

First post and Introduction

I think I should start out with who I am before I begin explaining what this blog this will discuss.

My name is Shmuel , 18 from Israel but all that is irrelevant, what makes this situation unique is the single fact that for the past year I have been working on a new Artificial Intelligence program using new techniques I have been developing.

Which brings us to the reason for the creation of this blog;  Sooner if not later there will be change in the way we do things, be it interacting with others or with our own computers, hopefully I will be part of that change. Though the reason for this blog is to discuss those scenarios, how they will affect our every day lives and maybe come up with some insight into current ideas and problems with current artificial Intelligence.