A comparison between the Conservation of the Homo sapiens: The survival of the Wise; on the Cybernetics of education; By Gihan Sami Soliman Published April 2014 (284678811 ©1/3/2014 UK Copyright Registration Service)
& BBC bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind By Yuval Noah Harari Published 4 Sep 2014 According to a TV BBC interview with its author on what makes us human. http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150612-why-imagination-makes-us-human The Homo sapiens: The survival of the Wise; on the Cybernetics of education – Copyrighted March and Published 01/04/2014 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapiens-A-Brief-History-Humankind/dp/1846558239 A Brief History of Mankind- Published 04/09/2014 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapiens-A-Brief-History-Humankind/dp/1846558239 –
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Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind
Conservation of the Homo sapiens: The survival of the Wise. On the Cybernetics of Education.
What sets us apart from other animals? Our real advantage is imagination.
What sets us apart from other animals?
Abstraction – conceptualization and strategic planning; The Capacity of “steermanship” or Cybernetics); and the use of cognitive artefacts.
Capacity of Cybernetics or “steermanship” (Weiner 1948 cited in Mindell 2000; Foerster, 1979)
Notes
Imagination is an oversimplified version of “abstraction and conceptualization”, both allowing strategic planning. Unfortunately, oversimplification usually leads to erratic findings. If animals had no imagination at all, they’d also have no cognitive memory. Some animals must be capable of processing
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The different between us and the previous human species is not in the brain. Human brain has actually been shrinking for the last 20,000 years.
The difference between us and the previous species has to be in the brain, one way or another, with a proposal that it might be the frontal lobe, based on some recent research.
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Agriculture is a turning point in our human history.
Agriculture and the use of artefacts are a turning point in our evolution – divergence of character – this can be understood through the “cybernetic phylogeny” illustration.
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What we imagine to be real becomes real – money as an example becomes real because we think it’s real: Money is an example.
The invention of the “monetary system” illustrates how all the human inventions belong – in principle, to the human kind.
mental image of the things you’ve previously seen or experienced. Abstraction, on the other hand, is the ability to process system information mentally, and/or edit them by applying them effectively to other situations, systems or even dead substance to create new living-systems. Our distinction as a human kind is in the faculties of abstraction, conceptualisation and thus strategic planning, and not the simple “imagination”. Again, not referring to areas of shrinking and growth, is an oversimplification, and the whole statement contradicts with his own finding; If the faculty of “imagination” is what sets us apart, the distinction must, one way or another, lie in a brain area, even if we have to admit we don’t know much about it. In my book, I don’t discuss brain size, but there is a suggestion of a possible distinction in a brain region in the frontal lobe. The “Cybernetic Phylogeny” illustrates a proposed divergence of character that has occurred about 10,000 years ago, more specifically through the ability to use cognitive artefacts and model natural living systems. Money is not an abstract and is not an imaginary entity. It is a materialistic item(s) linked to a “monetary system”, processing “information, energy and matter” (in light of the “Living Systems Theory” by G. Miller’s, 1978 cited in Umpleby, 2007). Money makes perfect sense when
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Myths – fiction is what “makes us control the world”.
linked to the concept of mobilization, and actually is the evidence that “imagination” alone is not our true point of distinction. You can spend the whole afternoon imagining that a blank piece of paper is buying you dinner, and it won’t! But a £10 note will. Again, this is a power of abstraction, conceptualization and strategic planning (all together) as related to the capacity of Cybernetics - or “steermanship” (the term was introduced by Norbert Weiner, 1948). A capacity to transform living system, create and recreate. Myths, religions, ethics are This is where the overby-products of both intellect simplification – perhaps just plus a natural disposition to to mock religion, is totally be “good”. Commonly illogical, producing erratic known as [wisdom]. findings. *“Good” in a natural sense is what serves “the survival of the fittest”(properly defined). * As argued in my book, the “survival of the fittest” paradigms involves a (causative) preference to the association of love/compassion and justice/fair share.
The idea the religions (among other aspects) contributed to the success of our species was introduced by Darwin himself. However, myths do not make us control the world, but rather the intellectual power of Cybernetics/”steermanship” – resulting in such cultural diversity and knowledge, does. It is worthy to note that animals are compelled by their biology; shaped by the forces of natural selection to act for the success of their species – if they are to survive. Religion (or spirituality), in this case, would only be a make-up for our paucity of “social instincts”.
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A prediction that we will be replaced by a reengineered species We are the only animals that can cooperate flexibly.
A prediction that “We might not survive artificial intelligence”. The Homo sapiens (human kind) is not just another species, and is rather a “sociophysiobiological kingdom”. When the Natural selection
Generally speaking, any human culture that provides a fixed code of conduct, is maladaptive on the evolutionary level. This has been predicted by scientists (BBC news, 2013).
This has been illustrated all over the conservation of Homo sapiens book, through the “human altruism illustration”. Wisdom, again, relating to the capacity of Cybernetics/”steermanship”.
results in a cooperative behaviour in animals, it produces a specific pattern; a code of conduct, while in cooperation/altruism in Homo sapiens cooperation is mainly rational with a small portion of natural dispositions and is modifiable through cognition/education. Ideally depending on “wisdom”, which explains the name Homo sapiens: or “The Wise Man” in Greek. Reference: BBC News (2013) How are humans are going to become extinct? Available at [http://bbc.co.uk/news/business-22002530 ] Foerster H.V. (1979) Cybernetics of Cybernetics, University of Illinios, Urbana. Umpleby, S.A. (2007) Physical relationships among matter, energy and information (Reprinted form Cybernetics and Systems ‘04, 2004). Syst. Res. Behav. Sci. 2007, 24, 369372. Mindell, D (2000) Cybernetics: Knowledge domains in engineering systems. MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Books for by Gihan Sami Soliman: Conservation of the Homo sapiens: The survival of the Wise; on the Cybernetics of education; Science and Theology; Cognition and Real-living-systems The Dynamics of change; The Capacity of transforming self and the society. Also please see: We Are Not Another Species An Open Letter to the IUCN World Parks Congress – July 2014. [ http://issuu.com/gihan-s-soliman/docs/an_open_letter_to_the_iucn_world_co ]