Category: Politics

The «bad guys in Hollywood» are trying to pass a bill that is threatening the very essence of freedom and democracy on the internet.

Ivan Illich warned of a society enslaved by computers, at the Asahi Symposium Science and Man in 1982

France Culture hosts a discussion about the differences and similarities between these two social movements.

As the United Nations 66th session of the General Assembly opens in New York, the Cercle Martin Buber, a non-profit discussion group and think tank based in Geneva, is holding a special debate on the question of the admission of Palestine as a full member of the UN, at the University of Geneva.

In game theory, the prisoner’s dilemma tells about two people who have the choice between cooperating and not cooperating. If they both cooperate, it will benefit both of them. However, if one wants to cooperate, and the other does not, it can create a terrible disadvantage for the one who wanted to cooperate. Therefore, risk-averse people will tend not to cooperate, even though it would have been in everyone’s interest to do so.

Hamilton’s rule states that r > c/b, where r is the relatedness, c the costs and b the benefits.
It shows, in any society, to what extent living organisms are naturally willing to make exceptions and sacrifices in order to help others.
Relatedness can be purely genetic (percentage of shared genes), for the survival of the group or the species, or have something to do with intellectual kinship – what Goethe called “Les Affinités Electives” – in more complex individuals.