Arquivo para a ‘Social Network’ Categoria
The political animal: prejudice and judgment
14
Oct
Hannah Arendt’s argument about the Zoon politikon is fundamental,
an argument that if the man had something political that belonged to his essence, it would not be something of the relationship between men, and thus, totally outside men, in the polis, or that is, in what Arendt calls the intra-space where the relationship is established.
Politics is thus a relationship, and it presupposes diversity among men, and thus resembles our prejudices, since most of us are not a professional politician, says in fragment 2: “such prejudices, common to all of us, they represent something political in the broadest sense of the word: they do not spring from the pride of educated people and they are not guilty of their cynicism, who have lived too long and understood less. ” However, it is evident that this justification of prejudice as a measure of judgment within everyday life has its limits, it is necessary that it does not become a judgment, so opinion (doxa) is the raw material of politics (and not philosophical, scientific knowledge) or technical, episteme e or techné) that defines democracy.
So it is necessary, as Hannah Arendt did to enter into the question of prejudice and judgment, “the danger of prejudice lies in the fact that a piece of the past always lurks in them”, and will say even further ahead: “The danger of prejudice lies in the fact that it was always anchored in the past, that is, very well anchored and, because of that, not only does it anticipate judgment and avoid it, but it also makes a true experience of the present with judgment impossible. ”
What happens if a prejudice becomes something imperative: “But it is a prejudice in itself that something imperative fits the judgment; the criteria, while they last, can never be forcedly demonstrated; they only serve, always, the limited evidence of the judgments on which everyone agreed and on which it is no longer necessary to fight or argue ”, and thus democracy must establish the limits between the judgment and the prejudices.
The fact is that prejudice anticipates judgment, so phenomenology establishes the need for epoché, precisely the suspension of judgment in recognition that we always have our preconceptions (philosophical hermeneutics uses it in a positive sense), in general we resort to the past, as explained by Arendt, because reason is temporal and limited to historical periods, forming in quantitative terms only many aspects of History, in which the new is rare and the old dominates politics.
What is politics?
13
Oct
Politics has become an absolute imperative, even in pandemic
times when health and sanitary issues should occupy the top of the concerns, they do not subside, and the polarization that has been serious for a few years becomes even more dramatic, polarizing even topics that should be unanimous, such as health.
Hannan Arendt has a thought-provoking essay, published as posthumous works, and organized and compiled by Ursula Lutz, and dating from 1950, had a publication in Brazil in 1998.
Concerned with the dramas of its time, two wars, it also seems to point to our current scenario: “the positive sense of the” political thing “starts from two basic experiences of our century, which overshadowed this sense and transformed it into its opposite: the emergence of totalitarian systems in the form of Nazism and Communism, and the fact that today politics has technical means, in the form of the atomic bomb, to exterminate Humanity and, with it, all kinds of politics ”, described the preface Kurt Sontheimer, from the German version of 1992.
Arendt in Fragment 1, elaborates seven assumptions and discusses them: 1. The policy is based on the plurality of men, 2. The policy deals with the coexistence between different, 3. When one sees more than participation in the family, that is , active participation in plurality, you start to play God, that is, to act as if you could leave, in a natural way, the principle of diversity. Rather than generating a man, we try to create man in the image of himself (I stretched this on purpose), 4. Man, as philosophy and theology know him, exists – or is realized – in politics only with regard to the equal rights that the most different guarantee themselves.
I would say that these are almost proto-principles, but it is in the following 3 that he bases his thinking on philosophy.
The fifth will have subtopics. Philosophy has two good reasons for not limiting itself to just finding the place where politics arises. The first is: a) Zoon politikon: * as if in man there was something political that belonged to his essence, in this the author disputes Aristotle saying that politics is “among men”, b) The monotheistic conception of God, in whose image man must have been created.
The sixth: it is difficult to understand that we must actually be free in a field, that is, neither moved by ourselves nor dependent on the given material. Freedom exists only within the particular scope of the intra-political concept. We are saved from this freedom just in the “necessity” of history. An abominable absurdity.
The seventh: It may be that the task of politics is to build a world as transparent to the truth as God’s creation. In the sense of the Judeo-Christian myth, this would mean: man, created in the image of God, was given the genetic capacity to organize men in the image of divine creation. Probably absurd – but it would be the only possible demonstration and justification for the idea of the law of Nature.
It is only from there that the author begins her introduction on the question of what is politics, in times of polarization the theme is urgent.
Arendt, Hannah, (1998) “O que é política” (1950), obras póstumas 1992, compiladas por Ursula Ludz. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil.
Pandemic fatigue and vaccine rush
12
Oct
WHO in its Europe office has released a document explaining
a “pandemic fatigue” estimating that 60% of the population is already at this stage.
Hans Henri Kluge, WHO´s regional director for Europe, says tiredness was already expected at this stage of the crisis: “since the virus arrived on the European continent eight months ago, citizens have made enormous sacrifices to contain the covid-19 , the cost was very high, something that exhausted us all, regardless of what we live or what we do. In these circunstancies it is easy and natural to feel listless, unmotivated, to feel tired”, he said to BBC News.
The measures that aim to continue the efforts to obtain a common center to seek common sense in the solution of the issue: understand the people who are doing it regularly and involve communities in debates and decisions, allow people to live their lives, but risks and seeking creative solutions, as it has been like virtual meetings, such as deliveries of food and consumer products, especially to vulnerable people.
The other worrying issue is a race for the vaccine, which should follow exclusively medical routes, but already point to a specific formation of profit with people, so the first vaccine to arrive on the market will not necessarily be the best, and to make politicians worse try to take advantage of this race.
Brazilian doctors are cautious, like Dr. Álvaro Furtado costa, infectious disease physician at HC-FMUSP: “everyone is very optimistic, but the study of the vaccine is very complicated, most of them stop in phase 3 of clinical tests, due to the problems that appear. It is important to discuss this possibility (of not having a vaccine) ”, and reaching stage 3 does not mean that it is nearing the end, as most vaccines stop at this stage, as are the cases of HIV and chikungunya.
What should be done in this case is to continue the search for medications that decrease the mortality rate and, therefore, recover those infected, for example, by the SARS-Cov-2 virus, and the clinical trial is also developed in Brazil by FioCruz , which partners with Solidarity International, from WHO, and in the country are in 18 hospitals in 12 states, with research on different medications.
The final stage of phase 3 is much more difficult to reach and it is not the political propaganda that solves it, but the health control agencies of the drugs.
Babette’s feast
08
Oct
Babette´s feast is one of Karen Blixen’s most celebrated tales 
(1885–1962), tells the story of two puritanical ladies, daughters of a Protestant pastor, who live a very oppressive life until her father dies, the tale became famous after being filmed by the Danish director, being the first Blixen film to be filmed by the Danish Film Institute , and the first to win an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
The script was adapted by Just Betzer, Bo Christensen and Benni Korzen, in it Filippa (Bodil Kjer) and Martine (Birgitte Federspiel) are daughters of the strict Lutheran shepherd, who after his death, appears in the village Babette (Stéphane Audran), a Parisian who offers to be the cook and cleaning lady of the family.
Many years after working in the house, she receives the news that she won a big lottery prize and offers to prepare a French gala dinner in celebration of the pastor’s 100th birthday, the parishioners initially fearful, accept babette’s banquet.
The symbolism of the film is strong, the shades of blue slightly contrasted, are on the border between heaven and earth is almost imperceptible, amid the gray landscape of Denmark, a first image foreshadows a different communion in a place between earthly and heavenly things.
Another aspect of symbology is the fish, very influential in early Christianity, but it is the table that was able to re-connect those people with a true self, and awaken them again a sense for the life they had lost some time ago.
The dance of the participants around the people (photo), also a religious symbology, is a high point of this resumption of meaning of the lives of those people.
What Babette’s art, the food made with love and art, was to create on the table a “kind of loving involvement”, but “in a loving involvement of that noble and romantic category in which the person no longer distinguishes between appetite or satiety, bodily and spiritual!”, as the author of the original play herself describes, Blixen thus expresses the deepest of his expression in this tale.
And if the pandemic continues
05
Oct
Fredric Jameson drew attention years ago about the possibility of a
cosmic catastrophe (an asteroid that threatens life on earth or a virus that matters to humanity), and the threat would awaken global solidarity, small differences are overcome and everyone works together to find one. solution in real life, now the pandemic shows whether this is possible or not, if the question were asked today the clear answer would be no, we are divided and not very sympathetic.
The speculations about the new normal were exhausted, in the political polarization curiously the two poles are seriously wrong, one in stating that the pandemic is the sign of exhaustion of the society we live in and so we will go for a utopian change, and the other that insists on saying that the pandemic does not exist, they lack realism.
An example of this utopian change is in the “Wuhan Soup” in which several famous authors on the left pointed to a “collapse of capitalism” due to the pandemic.
Jameson’s logic is to understand postmodernity as a “cultural logic” and that this would be a third phase of expansion of capitalism, the so-called late capitalism, what he seeks is behind the cultural manifestations of our time to understand what kind of “logic” they have, without the necessary criticism of them.
The discussion by Daniel Bell and Jean-François Lyotard are points of reference in this discussion from the 1970s onwards, because Bell placed the position of understanding that the new economic phase has put the notion of industrial capitalism in the past, and Lyotard has unveiled a change in the statute of science and technology from the computerization scenario in developed societies, but conventional criticism was stuck with a superficial criticism of the so-called “techno-science”.
What both advocate and here give strength to a third way of change, neither capitalism nor socialism, is a split with modern thought and with the very experience of modernity, something that is linked so much to the impact of scientific and technological revolutions from the 1960s, and that collapsed all modern narratives, which are historically situated at a point in the past of recent history and do not point to a clear future.
So is the pandemic, the absence of a clear future, it challenges us to rethink the future without conventional narratives, and the second cycle of the pandemic crisis is already the logic that points to the future, without changing social attitudes and behaviors the future it will not be promising, regardless of the appearance of the vaccine, other viruses may come and we will not accept a moment of pause, isolation and less haste in everyday life, we are stuck with the logic of industrial production and consumption.
There is a deeper logic that is the aortic relationship, the inorganic about the organic, that Sloterdijk defends and that Hölderling spoke about, some mystics too.
Nets and Bubbles
02
Oct
A society that already lived in bubbles, be they cultural, political or 
religious, found itself even more stuck in its leaves with the pandemic and social isolation, although this had a positive aspect of recovering intra-bubble relations, however extra bubbles appear to have ended up being harmed.
The pandemic has shown that it is impossible to live in isolation, even though in many places rigid measures have been taken, and I defend them as necessary in many cases, the virus has no boundaries, race or limits that it cannot reach, and the end of social isolation it may not be as beneficial as one imagines, the health risks and also the social problems aggravated by the pandemic create a complex scenario.
We need to review intra-bubble thinking, one that causes social isolation, voluntary or involuntary, as is the case with discrimination of all kinds and I do not exclude religious ones, and it is necessary to heal the extra-bubble relationship, the one that leaves our security group, takes us to meet the Other.
Social networks are an encouragement, always remembering that social media are not exclusively media, the concept is broader, it is precisely in the analysis of these outlines of bubbles that the potential of networks is manifested: the importance of weak links, the analysis of “small worlds” and even the pandemic can be viewed from a social network perspective, helping to analyze contagions and helping control plans.
Looking at history, it was people and situations that created new situations and solutions, those conditions that are at the limit or outside the bubbles, that are important and that as a rule society and conservative thinking exclude them, because somehow destabilize the “bubble”.
Prophets and oracles in antiquity were rejected, including by the bubbles to which they belonged, are the iconic cases of Jesus and Socrates, for example, but in history there are many cases that are within this limit, and one must identify who these cases are at present, to be on the lookout for new and really creative solutions.
It is symbolic to explain this situation the evangelical parable of the vintner that when the time of the harvest arrives, he sends employees to his vineyard to receive what was needed in Mateus (Mt 21,33-43), the employees are beaten, stoned and killed, after two shipments, the owner of the vineyard decides to send his own son, and he awakens an even greater greed and is killed, and then these bad wine producers had the lesson they deserved.
It is important to note that it is the ones who take care of the vine that do these perverse attitudes, that is, they are inside the bubbles, so the first contradictions are born inside the bubbles and then reflect outside, having an open attitude helps to solve problems and prevent situations limit.
Work on pandemic network analysis
01
Oct
Chinese scientists have proposed a method of visually showing, in
a simple way, the risk of a pandemic in regions with different degrees of connection, from the databases of infection cases (reported and confirmed by COVID-19) using network analysis, in article published by Elsevier in Journal of Disaster of Infections.
Network analysis has already been used in medical research for studies on gene coexpression, disease co-occurrence and topologies of the dynamics of the spread of infectious diseases.
The study looked at confirmed cases of COVID-19 in China from late January to March 2020 and these cases were divided into 9 time periods.
The graphs of networks constructed based on the correlation of changes in the number of confirmed cases between two geographic areas (for example, in the provinces of China), if the correlation was greater than 0.5 meant that the connected areas were in a network.
The pandemic risk was analyzed based on the frequencies in different regions connected in the network graphs, with this it was possible to assess the levels of co-evolution between the regions and, with this, to take measures according to each case.
What the study demonstrated was not just relying on reported and confirmed cases of COVID-19, network analysis provides data for a powerful and clear view of pandemic risk and network analysis can complement traditional modeling techniques, and seconds the authors of this data can provide more timely evidence to inform future preparation plans.
Future work quantifying the network connection should be considered in research and pandemic plans.
Soa, M.P.K; Tiwarib, Agnes; Chud, Amanda M.Y.; Tsangd , Jenny T.Y.; Chan, Jacky N. L.. Visualizing COVID-19 pandemic risk through network connectedness Mike. International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 96, 2020, p. 558-561. Available in: https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30317-9/fulltext , Access: sept. 2020.
Weak ties and the pandemic
30
Sep
The weak ties are important in the theory of networks as we already
showed in the previous post because they are the ones that can dynamize the networks and make them leave their niches and walk around others, but how is this on social media is the most interesting.
What Mark Gronovetter, a professor of sociology at Stanford University demonstrated with his article entitled The Strength of Weak Ties, is that not only does the quality of relationships between friends and family matter, quantity also matters, and this will be reflected in a another curious article by Duncan Watts and Stevie Strogatz.
They started to work with entomologist Tim Forrest to try to understand why the crickets at one time sang in unison when they reached a certain number of these insects in the forest, they also wanted to understand if this is related to the so-called six degrees of separation of the nets.
In perfectly regular networks, the neighbors of each node tend to be connected to each other, and this local redundancy, or “grouping”, acts as a natural stoppage of the spread, for example, of a virus, clearly, if all neighbors of an infected node are also already infected, the disease will have few places to go if they are isolated, already in a random network, means that all neighbors are likely to be infected.
The results seemed obvious, but what they found is that it is less obvious that when only a fraction of links on a regular network are randomly linked, diseases can spread almost also when on a random network, so by the theory of networks only Complete isolation from the grid can prevent contagion.
Their 1998 article in Nature, “Colletive dynamics of ´small-word´ networks” demonstrated the effect they have on a large scale from small worlds with six degrees of separation, and their influence for the current pandemic is that social isolation is necessary, and even more necessary would be the initial foci of the pandemic now spread throughout the country, and in few parts of the world there have been effective measures against its spread
However the Watts-Strogatz model is not generic, as there is a need for a fixed number of nodes, and thus it cannot be used for an expanding network, another model was made later by Barabasi and Reka Albert, called free-scale , this model also has limitations as it cannot work with high levels of nodes in real networks, so it also has limits to analyze, for example, a pandemic that affects millions of people worldwide.
What these historical works of analysis of social networks infer about the pandemic is that at a time when the pandemic has already become widespread, that is, the Barabási / Albert free scale, it is no longer possible to control only outbreaks and a protection measure on a large scale it is necessary, in short, broad social isolation.
It is clear that economic pressure should not leave this, and so the use of vaccine becomes essential, but what ?
The importance of weak links
29
Sep
In network theory, weak links are important, not in network media
like facebook, instagram or other media, networks are forms of interpersonal relationships linked to certain interests and groups (hubs) that are important and could be more if they were understood dirty features and operating modes.
The weak link of a network, someone who is on the periphery of it and with little contact with the central group (the hubs) are in fact the great potential of these networks, in social life, in science and even in politics they were people with little connection with the power groups that made a difference.
Li from Alan Turing, creator of the modern digital computer model, who are “the times of people that nobody expects anything to do things that nobody can imagine”, he participated in a secret project at Bell Laboratories that unveiled the secret of the Enigma machine, of codification of messages of the Nazis during the 2nd. World War.
Einstein went to several schools, and it is not true that he was a poor student, he hated them all. his parents and teachers thought he had mental limitations, when in fact the school did not inspire him at all, he considered them weak.
Stevie Jobs, too, took little interest in his studies and was an easygoing student in the classroom, in a primary classroom when a teacher asked if they understood the universe, heard his reply that he did not understand “it is because we were so broke”.
Many are the simple people who point to a period of great difficulties, only media thinkers, networks of interests with audiences who want to hear certain responses to the current situation that are successful, in general they say that the pandemic is nothing, that when it passes let’s be happy, so it’s not just politicians looking at a complex reality with simplistic and poorly elaborated responses.
At the end of last week we said that “the last ones will be the first”, now we say something more than that, they are the ones that can make a difference, especially in the context of social and health severity that we are entering, in the “social network theory” Mark Granovetter, who studied the subject, explains that because they are distant, it is these weak ties that are able to take the message to be “shared” with people and groups from other circles, expanding the network.
GRANOVETTER, M. (1973). The strength of weak ties. In: American Journal of Sociology, University.
Hurry is the enemy of precaution
28
Sep
The country’s newspapers announce that Brazil will make an
agreement to have the Russian vaccine, the race for the vaccine is causing some governments to abandon the precautionary measures necessary to arrive at a safe vaccine that does not cause even greater harm than pandemic, vaccine testing procedures are not any requirements, they are necessary and therefore the testing phase is long.
The data show that the pandemic is not controlled in Brazil, and that the data are growing in Europe, although in Italy, the growth is small, since restrictive measures are tougher, we enter autumn and winter will come.
The most optimistic deadlines were for December this year or the beginning of next year, some promising vaccines such as the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine that is also tested in Brazil by FioCruz and Pfizer that works in agreement with the German BioNTech, and make the forecast of vaccine for the end of the year, three more months can avoid lives and compensation.
However, the desire to appear as saving heroes, to tell the world that we teach a lesson, and especially to relinquish the economic pressures of sectors that are little concerned with the lives that are being lost, make the rush give way to the necessary medical and sanitary precautions in the midst of the pandemic, which even in Russia is growing.
We have already posted here that the principle of the Pfizer vaccine is the messenger RNA (mRNA) technique that gives instructions to the body to guide the production of antigens that allow the immune system to react to the disease.
The pharmaceutical company also assesses the potential of tofacitinib and aziotromycin for the early treatment of Covid-19.
The Russian vaccine follows the same principle as the Chinese one being tested in Brazil in partnership with the Butantã Brazilian Institute, that of a reduced viral load that awakens the immune system that produces antibodies necessary to fight the virus, however this technique is questionable since the virus suffers mutations and viral load may not be harmless.
Caution is needed, but government and health officials appear to have entered the dangerous path of haste
