Ο "πολιτισμός" της ατιμωρησίας.

 Με αφορμή ένα thread για τις βαριές ποινές και τις συνθήκες στις φυλακές.

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    Σκεφτείτε έναν γραβατοφόρο οικονομικό αναλυτή. Μεταπτυχιακά, σερτιφικάτα, εμπειρία σε τράπεζες και εταιρείες, και αποφασισμένος να πολιτευτεί. 

    Ως είθισται, ο γραβατοφόρος αναλυτής είναι ορθολογιστής μέχρι το κόκκαλο, και μιλάει πάντα με επιχειρήματα και στοιχεία -δηλαδή στατιστικές και αριθμούς.  

    Και έτσι, αποφασίζει να αξιοποιήσει τις ορθολογικές του ικανότητες για την ανάπτυξη της οικονομίας. 

    "Νομιμοποιώντας την παιδική πορνεία", ξεκινάει ο οικονομικός μας αναλυτής, "θα αποφέρουμε δισεκατομμύρια στο κράτος. Θα ενισχυθεί ο τουρισμός, γιατί παιδεραστές από όλη την οικουμένη θα επισκέπτονται  τη χώρα μας για τις υπηρεσίες της, ενώ θα αυξηθούν και οι θέσεις εργασίας. Σύμφωνα με τις στατιστικές που κρατάω στα χέρια μου, μπορούμε να αναμένουμε μέχρι και 8% ανάπτυξη μόνο στα πρώτα δυο έτη. Συν τοις άλλοις, θα περιοριστεί η εγκληματικότητα, αφού πλέον οι παιδεραστές δεν θα χρειάζεται να απαγάγουν παιδάκια και να τα βιάσουν! Τα παιδάκια θα ναρκώνονται για να μην καταλαβαίνουν και να μην έχουν ψυχολογικά προβλήματα μετά."

    Συνεχίζει παραθέτοντας πλήρη στοιχεία από κάποιο αφρικανικό κρατίδιο που ακολούθησε αυτή τη... πολιτική, και είδε οικονομική άνθιση και μείωση της εγκληματικότητας.

    Αν είστε στοιχειωδώς φυσιολογικοί, θα τον έχετε διώξει πυξ-λαξ πολύ πριν προλάβει να σας αναπτύξει την επιχειρηματολογία του -και θα είναι απόλυτα υγιής η αντίδρασή σας. 

    Σε κάποια πράγματα οι ορθολογισμοί και οι στατιστικές δεν βρίσκουν κανένα έδαφος. Δεν έχει σημασία τι επιχειρήματα παραθέτει κάποιος υπέρ της παιδικής πορνείας. Εφόσον είμαστε εγκεφαλικά υγιείς, την αντιλαμβανόμαστε ως τόσο θεμελιωδώς λάθος που δεν θα γίνει καμία συζήτηση επ'αυτής.

    Κάτι αντίστοιχο (θα έπρεπε να) ισχύει και στην αντιμετώπιση των εγκληματιών σαν VIP πρόσωπα. 

    Περίπου όπως ο προαναφερθείς "ορθολογιστής" οικονομολόγος, εμφανίζονται κατά καιρούς διάφοροι αντίστοιχοι στομφώδεις "ορθολογιστές" νομικολόγοι, κοινωνιολόγοι, ψυχολόγοι, εγκληματολόγοι κ.α., που μας αναπτύσσουν με... επιχειρήματα, ότι το να αντιμετωπίζουμε τους εγκληματίες όχι σαν εγκληματίες, αλλά σαν παιδάκια που έκαναν κατά λάθος μια αταξία, μειώνει (!) την εγκληματικότητα.

    Και αυτό δεν ισχύει μόνο για πλαστογράφους ή 19χρονους παπακοκλέφτες, αλλά για βιαστές και δολοφόνους.

    Με μια σύντομη έρευνα στο google  θα βρείτε πληθώρα άρθρων για το ότι οι χώρες που κατάργησαν τη θανατική ποινή είδαν μείωση της εγκληματικότητας, καθώς και για το ότι τα κράτη που έχουν τετράστερα ξενοδοχεία για φυλακές έχουν τα μικρότερα ποσοστά υποτροπής εγκληματιών.

    Πολύ μεγάλη συζήτηση μπορεί να ανοίξει εδώ για την αιτιακή συσχέτιση μείωσης εγκληματικότητας και κατάργησης θανατικής ποινής ("correlation is not causation", που λένε και οι καλοί μας φίλοι και αξιόπιστοι σύμμαχοι Αγγλοαμερικάνοι), όπως πολύ μεγάλη συζήτηση μπορεί να ανοίξει και για το ότι οι περισσότεροι φονιάδες/βιαστές ούτως ή άλλως τελούν τετοια πράξη μόνο μια φορά (άλλο αν το νετφλιξ μας δείχνει τα βιογραφικά των κατα πραγματική συρροή βιαστών/δολοφόνων), και αν μετά εγκληματίσουν ξανά είναι για να κλέψουν επειδή δεν βρήκαν δουλειά. 

    Δεν θα ανοίξει όμως αυτή η συζήτηση. Όχι εδώ τουλάχιστον. Θα σταθούμε σε κάτι αλλο: 

    Πόσο πολύ διαφέρουν οι "ορθολογιστές" νομικολόγοι/κοινωνιολόγοι/ψυχολόγοι από τον "ορθολογιστή" οικονομολόγο του παραδείγματός μας;

     Δεν είναι μόνο η προστασία των παιδιών τεκμήριο πολιτισμού· είναι και η Δικαιοσύνη ένα πολύ σημαντικό σκέλος του.

    Και στην έννοια της Δικαιοσύνης, ενυπάρχει και η έννοια της Τιμωρίας. Άνευ της δεύτερης δεν υπάρχει και η πρώτη -και αυτό κατά βάθος παραμένει κοινώς αντιληπτό ανεξάρτητα από τη πλύση εγκεφάλου ήντινα εξ'απαλών ονύχων δεχόμεθα για να ταυτίσουμε την Τιμωρία με κάτι πρωτόγονο και ξεπερασμένο. 

    Άγνωστο αν κάποιος φιλόσοφος έχει σκεφτεί κάποιον ορισμό της Δικαιοσύνης, αλλά σίγουρα μπορούμε να δώσουμε έναν ικανοποιητικό ορισμό στην έννοια της Τιμωρίας. Τιμωρία σημαίνει στέρηση. Είτε της ζωής σου, είτε ουσιαστικών δικαιωμάτων και δυνατοτήτων σου.

    Όταν ένας βιαστής στη Δανία για περίπου μισή δεκαετία τρώει τσάμπα φαϊ σε μια φυλακή-τετράστερο ξενοδοχείο, με δικό του δωμάτιο, τηλεόραση και βιβλία στο κελί, κοινωνική συναναστροφή με άλλους κρατουμενους, πρόσβαση σε ιατροφαρμακευτική περίθαλψη και ψυχολόγους, τι ακριβώς στερείται; Το δικαίωμα να πάει στα μαγαζιά; 

    Αυτή είναι όλη και όλη η συνέπεια για κάποιον που κατέστρεψε ολοσχερώς μια ζωή; Αυτή είναι όλη και όλη η "στέρηση" που έχει; Πού είναι η Τιμωρία; Πού είναι η Δικαιοσύνη; Πού είναι ο πολιτισμός καν; 

    Αδιάφορο αν κάτι τέτοιο θα μειώσει την εγκληματικότητα. Εξίσου αδιάφορο με το ότι η νομιμοποίηση της παιδικής πορνείας θα δυναμώσει την οικονομία. 

    Αν είναι να νομιμοποιήσουμε την παιδική πορνεία για να έχουμε ισχυρή οικονομία, μη σώσουμε και την έχουμε. Και αντίστοιχα, αν είναι να απαλοχαϊδεύουμε τους εγκληματίες για να μειωθούν τα ποσοστά εγκληματικότητας, μη σώσουν και μειωθούν. 

    Το μόνο θετικό που υπάρχει με τον "πολιτισμό" της ατιμωρησίας, είναι ότι αν τυχόν κάποιος μας σκοτώσει το παιδί μπορούμε να περιμένουμε 5-10 χρόνια να αποφυλακιστεί για να πάρουμε τη κατάσταση στα χέρια μας. Το πολύ πολύ να πάμε 5-10 χρόνια σε προπληρωμένο ξενοδοχείο.     

Will AI replace software engineers (or any other professions)?

Written by a software developer with several years of industrial experience, and an academic background in Computer Engineering (including Machine Learning).

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Introduction

    Chat-GPT replacing programmers -among other professionals. Writers, journalists, academics, translators, help-desk technicians, and even lawyers. In the long term, no profession seems to be safe from chat-GPT-like Artificial Intelligence (AI) -capable of understanding human language and solving our problems within seconds.

    The case with software engineers (or programmers, if you prefer a less fancy title, though the two are not exactly the same) is pretty interesting, because nothing seemed to threaten our profession in the short term or even in the long term. 

    Virtually all low-code platforms were no more capable than delivering complex code, than 2005 Google Translate was capable of delivering accurate translations on more than a few words. Now chat-GPT writes pretty impressive functions, and refactors chunks of code better than most senior devs would. 

    So, what happens with programmers in the future? Or any other profession actually?

 

General assumptions

    Let's begin with something few would disagree with: chat-GPT is bringing a revolution. And when mentioning Chat-GPT, we don't necessarily mean OpenAPIs Chat-GPT itself, but the level of AI that rendered it possible. More likely than not, there are numerous competitors to Chat-GPT coming within the next months.

    Yet like every revolution, the outcome is tough to predict; it may lead to more freedom, like the French revolution, or it may lead to a disaster. In fact, historically speaking revolutions are more likely to have very controversial outcomes (like the Russian revolution), or clearly disastrous outcomes (like the peasants' revolt of 1381 in England, or the 1523 rebellion in Germany), than leading to something good. 

    One could argue that we are now talking about a technological revolution, but this does not make it very different. The industrial revolution has so far a controversial outcome, with some intellectuals regarding it as the beginning of the end for humanity thanks to climate change. 

    No matter the approach, we can begin with two assumptions. Firstly, chat-gpt style AI is bringing a revolution. Secondly, a revolution may have good outcomes, but it happens pretty often that it leads to a disaster. 

    But what disaster could the chat-GPT possible cause? Isn't AI meant to make our lives easier, free up our time, and lead to a better living standard for all of us?

    This sounds very nice and plausible, but in the current economic model, no technology is meant to make our lives easier; they are only meant to increase the profits of the owning class. 

    We produce way more food than we actually consume thanks to the modern industrial technology, yet a huge portion of it is thrown away without being consumed, while millions of people are starving. The industrial technology that could very easily be used to satisfy the need of all of us, is only used to increase the profits of people investing on a vague notion of productivity.

    The case with housing is pretty much the same, as we build houses easier and quicker than ever, and in many countries the amount of empty apartments far surpasses the number of the homeless. Still, working class people have to pay large portions of their income just to retain the right of living in a house or apartment they will most likely never get to own. 

    There are plenty of examples one can come up with, and they all "converge" to the same conclusion: no matter how technology makes our lives easier too, it is mostly meant to increase the profits and power of the owning class.

    I have no intention of writing (yet another) "lefty" rant here. But understanding that our current economic model is meant to serve only a handful, is vital before pondering our original question: what happens with our professions during or after the AI revolution? 

 

What happens to our professions then?

    Before abstracting and giving a general reply for all professions, I will try to give an answer for us programmers. 

    We can regard it as certain that AI will decrease job postings. It is already known that in many (if not most) companies, there are periods when developers don't have much to do, and spend their time on improving existing code or working on side projects. And of course, like virtually all professions including a desk, pretending to be working (a well-studied and widely known phenomenon we are typically reluctant to openly talk about).

    Now that improving code and even generating it becomes easier, these periods will become even longer. In a completely rational economy following the current economic model, one would expect lay-offs, but our economy is not rational. 

    We constantly invent new professions that barely produce anything just to keep everyone busy on an 8+ hour schedule. Millions of people in the western world spend their days on pointless meetings or editing excel sheets, just to retain the right to live in a house. Book lovers might appreciate the writings of David Graeber on the topic.

    Whoever has worked in a modern company is aware that many people with fancy-sounding professional titles, do actual work less than a couple of hours per day, and spend the rest of it literally pretending to be busy. It is the result of insisting that everyone must work at least eight hours to get access to food and housing, while industrial production and population increase have rendered it unnecessary that everyone works that much in order for society to have such needs covered.

    So, even though one might expect that many developers will now be laid off because they won't have much to do in their 8 hours, our economy is actually irrational and does not lay off professions that do not do actual work in their 8 hours. 

    But there is a vital difference between other office-related professions and ours: our profession was meant to be productive in the first place. The fancy-sounding "digital product  marketing communications super manager" was never meant to be productive all day long; the primary function was for other managers and CEOs to have an audience in their meetings (my apologies to any digital product marketing communications super manager who felt offended). 

    Now that the periods we won't be doing actual work will be even longer, fewer positions will be available. Why hire someone for a technical position if there isn't very much to do there? Why not hire him with a fancy title and use him as audience in meetings instead?

    The need for developers will drastically decrease, though never cease to exist, for the following reasons:

    1. We are often busy debugging and adding features to existing projects, and it is extremely unlikely that AI will be able to do it anytime soon. This will keep us busy for at least several years to come.

    2. Even if de-novo development  is carried out exclusively by machines within 10 years, someone will still have to check if the codes are safe to use. 

    3. Corporations will always need someone to bear legal responsibility for bugs that result in data breaches or lost money. 

    4. Corporations that have human developers too will be de-facto more trustworthy than random startups that just use generated code. 

    5. Someone has to program the AI platforms. Relatively few programmers will be active here, but there will be some.

    But AI will dramatically decrease job postings for developers, not to mention that many of us may switch to other professions literally because of boredom. Checking and refactoring generated code has nothing to do with the creative and joyful process of creating the code from scratch, solving problems, and knowing that the product is your creation.

    This is of course nothing that is very likely to happen withing this decade (not even job positions for train drivers and cashiers are drastically decreased in the last 30 years). But it will happen pretty long before we, millenials, are about to retire.

    You can use your brain's capability for abstraction and use more or less the same logic for all professions. Legal reasons and trust issues will always keep humans busy, so there isn't a danger that we are replaced. Instead, there are the very real dangers of us ending up being the constantly bored and depressed supervisors of the machines, or the equally bored and depressed audience of managers and CEOs talking to meetings. 

    That is the most likely (and best case) scenario. The less likely and worst case scenario is that mass layoffs are coming, and we all imagine the consequences.

    In either case, with the current economic model, AI will not be used to make our lives better.

You are a delusional monkey.

 Written after an interesting, albeit short, discussion at my workplace about our unique individuality and impression of who we are.

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    You. An individual. A unique, special person, with a complex personality, and part of the most powerful species on the planet. That is what you are. Or maybe...?

    We all like to perceive ourselves as unique and special, and that is pretty much expected; having such an impression of yourself not only helps you overcome psychological difficulties of the everyday life, like stress, but can even have an evolutionary benefit compared to someone who just perceives themselves as merely a common member of the group. 

    Our impression of ourselves as special and significant is the starting point of cultural phenomena such as religions promising us an eternal life (how significant are you if your existence is temporary?), and the individual-uber-alles modern western way of life . 

    The general assumption is that no two persons are completely alike, and that everyone is unique. Neuroscientifically speaking, no two brains have the very same structure and synapses between the cells, but this seems to be  the case for life forms we typically perceive as "lesser", such as rats. Yet even if it wasn't so and unique brains were limited to humans, it soon becomes clear that being unique is rather commonplace. 

    Really, how much does uniqueness matter if there are at least eight billion unique personalities on the planet?

    And if we bother thinking a little deeper, even our uniqueness is up to debate; yes, our brains indeed differ, but most of that difference doesn't seem to have much of an impact on our behavior and capabilities. After all, if we were fundamentally different, how would we ever be able to form up societies and collaborate, or even communicate with one another?

    It seems like all humans are variations of a common theme. Unless highly neurodivergent (e.g. the mentally ill), we all share the same emotions, see the same colors, hear the same sounds, and have pretty much the same capabilities at various degrees. Use and understand language, extract information by looking at symbols, have a certain understanding of numbers, and making more or less successful predictions of the behavior of the ones around us. 

    Not only our general capabilities, but even our special personality traits are not really unique or even ours. Most aspects of your personality and behavior are "lent" to you by the people you came in contact, or even your favorite Netflix character. 

    Your opinions, the way you talk, the way you show your interest to someone, the way you show your frustration or anger, the tone of your voice, even the way you pronounce particular words in particular contexts, most of what constitutes what we call a personality is taken by the people one came in contact with, watched behaving -like a Netflix character-, or empathized with -like a book character. What makes you somehow unique, is which aspects of other peoples personalities you choose to adopt. 

    In any case, even if we accept we are somewhat unique, unique is not a synonym to special or significant, and for my part I can't find something negative about that. It is OK not to be significant. Grasping this will make you overcome your existential dread. We are the products of a series of statistical accidents, and that is nothing to mourn about. 

    We are more or less delusional monkeys. We have "extended" the capabilities and traits of Chimpanzees and just "override" some of them (if you are a Java developer, you get the meaning here a little better). There doesn't have to be any real uniqueness or significance in us to take care of ourselves or enjoy life.

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PS: You are not even the most powerful species on the planet; species of bacteria are. 

Apor med atomvapen.

Det är nog allmänt vedertaget att det som pågår nu i Ukraina kan leda till tredje värdlskriget, och även om det inte utbryter nu då ska det i all sannolikhet ske om några år.

    Innan vi fortsätter, det är bra att förklara en liten grej på förhand: livet är ingen Netflix-serie. På Netflix-serier och Hollywood-movies, finns det alltid "good guys" och "bad guys", och det är alltid klart vem är vem. De "bad guys" är "bad" hela tiden, och samma gäller de "good guys". Men i livet så är det inte alltid så -det händer oft att det handlar om "bad guys" vs "bad guys", och det händer ibland att några "bad guys" agerar som "good guys", eller vice versa. 

    Det som pågår i Ukraina just nu är egentligen "bad guys" (Ryssland) vs "bad guys" (NATO, som använder Ukraina som proxy), varav båda visste att båda har atomvapen och att det finns nukleara reaktorer i sina länder. Med tanke på att båda visste att ett krig mellan dem kan hota männskligheten,  men ingen ville sluta provocera den andra som och valde istället att bråka,  är det otänkbar att vilken som helst sida kan betraktas som "good guys". 

    Kriget nu är kulmineringen av en konflikt som har pågått i decennier, och vi ser bara toppen av isberget eftersom det har funnits många hemliga möten där inga kameror fanns, samt flera hemliga dokumenter vi inte har sett. 

    Dessa innebär att det är minst sagt löjligt att låtsas att bara Putin är "the bad guy", eller att det är hans personliga fel att kriget utbröt. Konflikten mellan USA/EU/NATO och Ryssland har pågått i omkring sjutti år, och framtidens historierna (om det kommer finnas någon framtid längre fram) ska ha mycket jobb med att förklara hur och varför det blev så.

De så-kallade "think-tanks" av NATO och Ryssland kunde se kriget komma, men de förstås brydde sig inte om det. Kriget är ju profitabel för de hög-uppsatta sedan urtider, och det knappt är en tillfällighet att USA planerade slösa $700.000.000.000 (!!!) i "försvar" under 2022. Man kan lätt ställa frågan, hur ska dessa profits användas efter en mutual annihilation, men det är lättare för de rika att låtsas att ingen ska våga använda atomvapen.

NATO hade lovat i mitten av 1990-talet att den inte skulle expandera österut, men den egentligen skitade i löftet och expanderade vidare. Putin meddelande NATO redan i 2009 att han inte skulle acceptera att Ukraina skulle bli en medlem av NATO, och det var ganska förväntat. Skulle USA acceptera det om Kuba planerade bli en medlem av en anti-USA equivalent av NATO?

NATO skapades som försvar mot USSR och börde ha slutat existera efter att USSR gick sönder, men det var ganska lönsam att behålla det för att fortsätta sälja vappen till länder som Grekland och Turkiet. NATO fortsatt betrakta Ryssland som en elak fiende även om Ryssland gjorde inget mot dem, och bestämde sig att släppa Ukraina in i den för att kunna hota Ryssland. Om man funderar lite på det, det finns ingen riktig anledning till det; det handlar egentligen om att någon stark vill "show off" sin makt för någon annan stark.

    Så, trots att Putin var klar om att han inte skulle acceptera det om Ukraina blev en medlem av NATO, våra politiker i västvärlden övertalade en comedian som råkade bli Ukrainas ledare, att riskera sitt eget folk så att Ukraina skulle bli en NATO-marionett till.

Man skulle tänka att Ryssland hade inget att bry sig om. För min egen del, om jag var Putin och Ukraina ville bli en medlem av NATO, jag skulle skratta däråt och påminna om att jag har ett flertal vapen och även atomvappen ifall mitt land blir direkt hotad. Och med tanke på att NATO misslyckades även i Afghanistan, det är minst sagt urlöjligt att den skulle även försöka starta ett krig mot Ryssland på riktigt.

Men människan är egentligen bara en glorified apa, och en apa gör sin bästa för visa sin makt för att behålla sin plats i en påhittad hierarki. Därför NATO skitade i löftet att inte expandera österut, och gick vidare med att göra så delvis för pengarna, och delvis för att "skrämma bort" Ryssland genom att visa sin "makt". Nu gick Ryssland vidare med att starta ett krig för att visa sitt eget makt, och därmed "skräma bort" EU och NATO, .

Vi löper en stor risk av att sluta existera som art, och anledningen till det är att vår teknologisk advancement var inte i samma takt som vår mentala. Människan är fortfarande en apa i hjärnan, och apor ska göra sin bästa för en plats i hierarkin, samt för ännu flera bananer även om de redan har många. Så är människan, och det ser ut som att ett fåtal rika i Ryssland och västvärlden kan riskera allt för en plats i någon idiotisk hierarki, samt några pengar till.

   

    Det är ingen "good guys" vs "bad guys" som på Netflix. Det är "bad guys" vs "bad guys". Och i grund och botten apor vs apor, men dessa apor har atomvapen istället för sten.

How ethical is it to test the IQ of your prospective employees?

     To begin with, and with genuinely no intention of being boastful or sounding arrogant, the scores of the IQ tests I have taken so far in my life are not exactly low. You can be certain that my motive for posting this is not that I got a bad score at some IQ test -on the contrary, I actually scored very high just yesterday when asked to take one after applying for a job. 

    But I know better than anyone that I am by no means the super-smart person that test claims I am. I often do silly things, sometimes mess things up at work, not to mention several unwise life decisions I've made. I don't know if I'm stupid (they/we never do!) , but I know I ain't as above average as that test result says I am. 

Flattering, but just because something sounds good it does not mean that it is true. 

    Yet I wouldn't claim I reject the notion of IQ testing altogether. Several years ago I had the curiosity to pay MENSA to take the IQ test (and paying for something like that is actually a very good sign that you may be stupid), and I also got a pretty good score, similar to the one of the recent test  -even though the too tests were not at all alike. This kind of consistency may indicate that those tests actually measure something pretty reliably -definitely not intelligence itself, but something (perhaps an ability to score good at IQ tests).

    So my motive for this post is neither some low score I got, nor to doubt about the reliability of IQ tests measuring something. This posts is to cast some doubt on whether it is ethical to test the intelligence (if we suppose that IQ tests actually test that) of your candidates as an employer -and it doesn't seem to be. 

    If someone is actually pretty unintelligent for a particular job, that becomes apparent in the interview. To demand that your prospective employees take an intelligence test (that is, IF such a thing actually exists) merely sets a burden to the ones that may score pretty low yet would otherwise fit fine for the job. Testing the intelligence is not only unfair for low-scorers that otherwise fit for the job, but based on erroneous assumptions as well: who told you that your employee will use the full range of his intelligence at the workplace?

    Even we, software developers, whose profession has a reputation of needing a higher-than-average intelligence, do not use our full mental capabilities at our everyday work. A "highly intelligent" developer would not be noticeably better than an average one in debugging a Weld-exception after updating  the version of Wildfly. The nature of many tasks is such that a high intelligence would not play a big role.  So, unless you are looking for some chief engineering architect for Google, a high intelligence does not make much difference than an average one, and in some cases even a lower-than-average might suffice. 

    I won't even elaborate in detail for selecting prospective employees for supposedly "unskilled" professions (the very notion that "unskilled" professions even exist is a classist myth to justify outrageously low wages). It would be at the same time shameless and idiotic to test for the intelligence of candidates for low-wage workplaces. 

    Even if someone applying for a low-wage job is intelligent, he will most likely deliberately be inefficient since you don't pay well;  there is no motive in being an efficient slave of the bosses. And even when it comes to someone being unintelligent, this kind of testing might only be used to justify horrible working conditions -as if someone born with lower capabilities does not already have enough of a burden, they should live a true hell at their workplace and have economic trouble too. 

    Testing for the intelligence or, more accurately, what supposedly is indicative of the intelligence of a candidate, has another issue as well: is makes it even more stressful and painful to apply for a new job, even for good scorers. I, a high scorer of IQ-tests (which are NOT intelligence tests), got very stressed when noticed that I had to take an IQ test for that job. And this, even though I already have a job and I am in no hurry of getting a new one. I can't even imagine the stress if I had to take IQ tests while desperately looking for a job to pay the rent.

     Nor I can imagine the depression a jobless worker might fall into, if they were desperately looking for a new job not to get evicted, and got a low score. Why the funk would you put your candidates through this? Are you that inhumane that have thought of such issues and ignored them, or are you that stupid that you didn't even think of them in the first place?

    If someone is that stupid that is unsuitable for a job, you will notice during the interview. It is needless to put your candidates through such stress (and low self-esteem if they happen to score lower than the average), and idiotic to sincerely believe that your employees use their full intelligence at the workplace. Someone with an IQ of 120 will not necessarily use the whole of it and be more productive than someone with an IQ of 90. That is, if the IQ tests actually measure intelligence.  

    I, a good scorer, find this idiotic. I will happily accept that if you blame my disagreement to my stupidity -thereby accepting my argument that such tests do not mean much.

Ένα μάτσο ηλίθιοι με κατσαβίδια στο χέρι

 Με αφορμή μια συζήτηση που είχα πρόσφατα με έναν φίλο επί τεχνολογικής προόδου, κλιματικής αλλαγής, κ.α. .

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    Ο σύγχρονος ανθρωπάκος φαντασιώνεται ότι είναι τέρας ικανότητας και ευφυιας. Και φαινομενικά έχει  βάσιμους λόγους να το πιστεύει·  χειρίζεται μηχανές, είναι εξοικειωμένος με τεχνολογίες που οι άνθρωποι πριν 100 χρόνια θα κοιτούσαν αποχαυνωμένοι, και ενίοτε έχει δεξιότητες όπως π.χ. επίλυσης ανώτερων μαθηματικών. 

    Πιθανότατα και εσεις, θεωρείτε τον εαυτό σας πολύ ευφυέστερο και ικανότερο από τους προγόνους σας ή τους "πρωτόγονους" λαούς που δεν έχουν ρεύμα. Έχετε σκεφτεί όμως ποτέ τι θα συνέβαινε αν κάποιος μας κατέβαζε το διακόπτη της ΔΕΗ; 

    Χωρίς ρεύμα και τηλεπικοινωνίες δεν είμαστε ικανοί στη κυριολεξία για τίποτα απολύτως. Αν κάποιος μας στερούσε το ρεύμα και το ιντερνετ, θα μέναμε να κοιταζόμαστε μεταξύ μας σαν βρέφη που δεν μπορούν ούτε τα οπίσθιά τους να σκουπίσουν. Όλα αυτά που κάνουμε ή που νομίζουμε ότι κάνουμε, βασίζονται στο ρεύμα, τις τηλεπικοινωνίες, και κυρίως τη δουλειά άλλων (θα μιλήσουμε παρακάτω για αυτό). 

    Χωρίς ρεύμα και ιντερνετ δεν θα έχουμε στη κυριολεξία ούτε να φάμε, αφού όλα μας τα φαγητα όχι μονο χρειαζόμαστε κουζίνες και φούρνους για να τα προετοιμάσουμε, αλλά παρασκευάζονται σε βιομηχανίες που χρειάζονται ρεύμα και τηλεπικοινωνίες για να λειτουργήσουν.

    Ο "πρωτόγονος" (ή σκέτα πρωτόγονος, αν προτιμάτε) του Αμαζονίου ξέρει και κάνει ένα σωρό πράγματα για να φροντίσει τον εαυτό του. Παπάδες. Κατασκευάζει αυτοσχέδιες παγίδες για ζώα με τα χέρια· ξέρει όλη τη διαδικασία που χρειάζεται το για να φάει ένα ζώο αφότου το πιάσει χωρίς να αρρωστήσει· κόβει ξύλα και κατασκευάζει το σπίτι του μόνος του, έστω και αν αυτό είναι μια ταπεινή καλύβα· προσανατολίζεται στη ζούγκλα χωρίς gps· ξέρει ένα σωρό φυτά που τρώγονται και άλλα που είναι δηλητηριώδη· γνώσεις και δεξιότητες που ο smartphonάκιας του πολιτισμού δεν είναι σε θέση ούτε καν να ονειρευτεί πως αποκτά. 

    Αντίστοιχα πράγματα ισχύανε για τον προπάππου μας από το χωριό, που μπορεί να μην ήξερε να λύσει διαφορικές εξισώσεις, αλλά πάντως ήξερε να κάνει ένα σωρό πράγματα -από το να φυτέψει επιτυχώς ντομάτες και να 'χει να τρώει, μέχρι να φτιάξει πηγάδι με τους συγχωριανούς του για να αντλεί νερό.

    Εμείς, με τις φανταχτερές τεχνολογίες και τα smartphones, δεν ξέρουμε, ούτε κάνουμε για τίποτα αν κάποιος μας στερήσει τις τηλεπικοινωνίες και το ρεύμα. Δεν είμαστε τόσο ικανοί όσο θα θέλαμε να πιστεύουμε. 

    Ούτε και τόσο έξυπνοι. 

    Πέρα από το γεγονός ότι τα εγκεφάλια του μέσου χαχόλου δεν πάνε σπιθαμή παραπέρα από το τι σειρά θα δει στο νετφλιξ και τις τάσεις της μόδας, και ότι παρά την παιδεία οι περισσότεροι απέχουν παρασάγγας από το να χαρακτηριστούν φιλόσοφοι, ακόμα και η υποτιθέμενη "τεχνική" ευφυια  και κατάρτιση είναι παντελώς ανύπαρκτη στους περισσότερους ανθρώπους. 

    Χρησιμοποιείτε smartphone και υπολογιστές. Κατανοείτε όμως και πώς δουλεύουν; Ξέρετε τεχνικές λεπτομέρειες για την ARM αρχιτεκτονική του επεξεργαστή στο smartphone και το πώς διαφέρει από την x86 του υπολογιστή σας; Τη δομή των λειτουργικών τους συστημάτων, έστω; Κάποια γνώση του πώς δουλεύει μια κάρτα δικτύου και του τι ισχύει για τον driver της στο ΛΣ; Εναν όρχι γνωρίζετε, κοπελιές και παλικάρια. 

    Εδώ όμως διαφαίνεται και ένα άλλο ζήτημα: ακόμα και στους πολύ "τεχνικούς" ανθρώπους, κανένας δεν γνωρίζει όλα τα προαναφερθέντα μαζί και σε βάθος. Άλλοι ειδικεύονται στα ΛΣ, άλλοι στις κάρτες δικτύων, άλλοι στις αρχιτεκτονικές επεξεργαστών, δεν υπάρχει όμως πληροφορικός που θα μπορούσε να φτιάξει smartphone ή υπολογιστή από το μηδέν. Να ενώσει δισεκατομμύρια τρανζιστορς για επεξεργαστή, να κατασκευάσει τυπωμένα κυκλώματα, να γράψει τον kernel μόνος του, κτλ. 

    Το ίδιο ισχύει για κάθε τεχνολογία επίσης. Υπάρχει μηχανικός που μπορεί να φτιάξει αυτοκίνητο από το μηδέν; Να κατασκευάσει τον κινητήρα μόνος του, το κιβώτιο ταχυτήτων, το τιμόνι και τα φρένα, κτλ, από πρώτες ύλες; 

    Όλα αυτά είναι το αποτέλεσμα της συλλογικής συνεργασίας και του μακροχρόνιου μόχθου εκατομμυρίων τεχνικών, ερευνητών, επιστημόνων, και εργατών, που ο καθένας μόνος του περιοριζόταν σε ένα πολύ μικρό πράγμα. Και, μεταξύ μας, η πρόοδος έγινε πρωτίστως με retarded trial and error και δευτερευόντως με εις βάθος κατανόηση και ιδιοφυή σχεδιασμό. 

    Η ανθρωπότητα δεν είναι τόσο έξυπνη όσο θέλει να πιστεύει. Ούτε λίγο ούτε πολύ, είμαστε ένα μάτσο ηλίθιοι, άλλοι με κατσαβίδι, άλλοι με σφυρί, και άλλοι με γυμνά χέρια, που από αυτούς που έχουν κατσαβίδι άλλοι ξέρουν μόνο να βιδώνουν και άλλοι μόνο να ξεβιδώνουν, αυτοί με το σφυρί ξέρουν μόνο να κοπανάνε πρόκες όπου τις δούνε, και αντίστοιχα οι υπόλοιπου ξέρουν π.χ. να βάζουν το ένα τούβλο πάνω στο άλλο χωρίς να καταλαβαίνουν πραγματικά γιατί. 

    Και όλοι αυτοί οι ηλίθιοι με τα κατσαβίδια και τα σφυριά στο χέρι, κάπως έχουν καταφέρει να χτίσουν ένα μεγάλο και φαινομενικά αξιόλογο κτίριο. Αντέχει όμως και σεισμούς; 

    Ο τεχνολογικος μας πολιτισμός και η ανθρωπότητα γενικότερα, θα αντέξει π.χ. μια ηλιακή καταιγίδια που θα δημιουργήσει πρόβλημα στα δίκτυα ηλεκτροδότησης για μήνες;  Ή μήπως μοιάζει πιθανό να αντέξει την επερχόμενη κλιματική αλλαγή;

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Biology and the Left: Does a disagreement even exist?

Introduction

     After several decades of Freudian and Marxian explanations to human behavior and social phenomena prevailing in academia, the plain old biological determinism seems to be making a roaring comeback, with plenty of research indicating that individual behavior and traits can be a result of genetic factors. 

    This has resulted to heated debates about phenomena related to criminality, mental capability, and social behavior, not to mention race, with people mainly from the left side of the political spectrum dismissing the research of the last couple of decades as biased or even completely fake. To an impartial observer, this may seem like a disagreement between biology and the left. 

    Yet the left, like most non-experts and even several experts, seems to have misunderstood the indications of the research, without even realizing that it can actually favor leftist views. 

The main controversies in a nutshell  

    Without getting into much detail, we can name some of the main controversies related to conclusions of biology (often plain statistics presented as biology by the media).

• Influence of genetics on complex behavior. 

    The research of the last decades indicates that our genes can play their role even on complex behavior. Anti-social tendencies, criminality, sexual preferences, mental illness, and proneness to substance abuse, have been confirmed to be genetically influenced. The proof is often statistical, based on twins raised by different families, and biologists have so far few particular genes to point out for particular behaviors, and even less whose precise mechanisms are known. The findings are often backed by neuroscience.

• The role of biology in sexuality and gender-related behavior.

    According to the research, not every aspect of gender-related behavior is socially constructed. There have been recorded plenty of cases in which an infant had to undergo sex reassignment surgery for medical reasons, and experienced gender dysphoria later in life. There are cross-cultural studies and meta-analyses showing that there are differences between the genders that cannot be explained in purely sociological terms.

• Differences between human populations

    The term "race" has found its' place in the trash of pseudo-science since decades, yet some of the implications of the so-called "scientific racism" seem to have been backed up by recent research. Those  include statistical differences between human populations in intelligence, aggressiveness, sexual behavior, even when the socio-economic background and living standards are pretty much the same. African Americans, for instance, had been found to score lower on IQ tests than white Americans of the same socioeconomic status, leading to further research that suggest innate differences between populations.

• Biological basis and inheritability of IQ  

    Much research on IQ suggests that it is genetically influenced -since twins raised from different families have pretty much the same IQs, with minor deviations, and people tend not to score much differently than their parents. The so-called "Flynn effect" is a strong indication that one's IQ is influenced by environmental and economical factors as well, yet fails to explain the IQ similarities between twins. 

• Various implications of evolutionary biology and psychology 

    These implications include, but are not limited to, the notion that humans may be selfish and/or aggressive in nature, that even altruism can actually be masked egoism, that hierarchies and discrimination can be a part of our nature, and that we may have an innate inclination to particular behavioral patterns, independently from our nurture. 

Taking the research with a grain of salt

    Even though we have no reason to believe that the research is biased, it should be taken with a grain of salt. As mentioned, much of the research is based on plain statistics, and when it comes to statistics there are literally dozens of things that can go wrong. This kind of statistical research, presented as biological by the media and popular science websites, often neglects to take into account  epigenetic factors that can alter the expression of genes, or factors that can alter the brain of a person during its' early development, thereby affecting ones personality in the long term.

    A prominent example of something that is hardly taken into account -since there is limited control over it-, is the life-style of a mother during pregnancy. The nutrition, stress levels, and even body fat, of pregnant woman has been shown to affect both the expression of genes on the baby, and its' neurological development. 

    Which means that, for instance, the indications of IQ differences between white Americans and African Americans of the same income, even if true, they are not necessarily to be attributed to genetic factors, but to epigenetic, or factors related the differences in the lifestyles of pregnant women between the two populations. 

    Same applies to the research on twins adopted by different families at birth. It remains uncertain whether their similarities in e.g. their IQ are to be attributed to their genes per se, or to epigenetic factors, and even their mothers' lifestyle during pregnancy. The gene-based explanations also do not explain their differences when they exist, thereby making clear that even if the genetic influence on social traits is existent it is definitely not the sole factor.

    Last but not least, most of the statistical research that ends up indicating the influence of our genes on complex traits and behavior, is deliberately arranged so that "all factors are equal". That is, the participants are more or less from the same socioeconomic background, often come exclusively from developed countries, and with no medical problems. Yet in real life, these factors are almost never "equal", and researchers have actually a tough time making them so.

    

Do these implications really mean anything?

    Suppose for a moment that all of the above is not only true, but that each and every sociological or psychological explanation we give to social phaenomena and individual behavior is wrong. Suppose that races in an 18th century sense do exist, that complex behaviors depend entirely on our genome, that our IQs are purely genetic just like gender-related behavior and sexuality, and that we are indeed of selfish nature. 

    Should this affect how we lead our lives and treat our "inferiors"? 

    Even if races did exist, and even if races of color were indeed of lower intelligence and higher aggressiveness, would that give us the right to treat people of color like garbage? To conquer their homelands and control their natural resources? To pay them less and socially exclude them? To enforce our "genetically superior" culture upon them? Perhaps preventing them from having children with us or even having children in general?

    Even if IQs were indeed purely genetic, would that render it right e.g. not to care about the education of people with lower IQs on the grounds that "they are not going to become smart anyway"? Would that justify paying them so low wages that they can barely pay their bills? Shall we make the lives of people with low-IQs a true hell for a choice they didn't make?

    Even if there is an evolutionary background favoring sexist behaviors, should this affect how we treat our women?  Force them to just take care of their (our) kids because that is what chimps do? 

    Even if gender-related behavior is purely genetic, is this supposed to mean that whoever  deviates from the norm should become an outcast, or even put to death as in some countries? 

    Even if our nature is indeed more selfish than altruistic, should we just make shameless and obscene selfishness a guide to our lives? Should we just "live for ourselves", pretend that there is "no society, but only individuals"? When some of our cells claim that "there is no human body, but only individual cells", the cancerous tumors they become end up killing that human body, including themselves. Are you sure this "logic" is a wise guide to follow?

    It seems that even if these implications were true (they aren't!), they would really mean absolutely nothing when it comes to society and politics, and if we made the mistake take them at face value or use them as policy makers, we would end up living in an hellish mixture of brutal late-stage capitalism and nazism, which would almost certainly lead to our extinction, and a life not-so-worth-living for the vast majority of the people before that extinction eventually occured.

Biology describes how nature is, not how human society is supposed to be.

    The examples above should have convinced you by now that the observations of biologists are neither a guide to our morals, nor suitable policy makers. That is, even if they actually were the ones proposed above. Races in the 19th century sense do not exist, it is still disputable whether our nature is more selfish than altruistic, sexist and gender-related behaviors are far from being products of pure biological evolution, and IQs are not purely genetic either. 

    The claim is that even if we were in a parallel universe where they were, it would still be wrong to use such observations as policy makers. Which means that in our own case, where those hypotheses are far from being technically true, this fact is not even debatable: one cannot use such premises as moral guides or policy makers.

    

Does the Left deny science? 

    Short answer: no. 

    Long answer: there are indeed some far-leftist "denominations", including some ultra-anarchists or communists, that just obviously deny every scientific observation challenges or seems to challenge their beliefs. But isn't this the case with virtually all parts of political spectrum? Even the so-called centrists will deny science if it refutes their beliefs, and indeed do so when it comes to e.g. economic policies. 

    The left, in general, does not deny science more than its' opponents. Asking if a political affiliation denies science is the equivalent of asking if someone is speaking loudly during a  party in a night club: everyone does, so, given the context, we can only say "yes" if he does so to a degree that everyone notices. Which means that the most proper answer to that question is a plain "no". 

    Whether there is a disagreement between scientific consensus and leftist beliefs is another question. It initially seems that modern science, especially biology, refutes most of the core leftist beliefs. Yet this is far from being the case, not only because science actually indicates something else than what pop science websites claim in their titles, but also because most of the debates named above, are to a great extent moral and not technical. For instance, even if races in the 18th century sense did exist, there would still be nothing right with slavery. 

    It seems that, morally speaking, there is not even a disagreement, as science was never supposed to dictate our morals in the first place.

    

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©George Malandrakis

INBooks in Växjö: Not to be trusted!

This was initially meant to be a Google Review. Yet Google's policies explicitly mention that no reviews from a current or former employee reviews may be published on Google Reviews, and since my Google account was apparently somehow connected to INBooks, my review got filtered out right after being posted.

Which means that, according to Google, if your employer is fraudulent and untrustworthy like in this case, or even if he sexually assaults you or physically bullies you like in other cases, you have no right to let the customers know. We, who want to give our money exclusively to companies that respect their employees, cannot just take a look at the Google reviews of a company to make sure that this is the case. 

Still, there is nothing illegal or morally wrong in informing the would-be customers and employees of a company about its' trustworthiness and quality, so I chose to post the review here instead. 

In case INBooks AB proceeds to sue me, they have the right to know in advance that not only there is nothing in the review below that breaks any law, but also that I have no money to pay in damages (at least, no money that the Swedish state can touch), so suing me would be pretty pointless. And shameless, given the circumstances.

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I was unfortunate enough to work for INBooks AB. I was assigned a very important project despite having barely two years of experience, and was left all alone to cope with it along with their main project without much help or supervision. I would push new chunks of code yet would only once in a blue moon get any kind of feedback -except for my major task, for which I literally never got an opinion. I was promised a tillsvidare anställning, and while looking for an apartment in Växjö I informed my superior that the only landlord so far willing to give one to me, the immigrant, wanted me to keep it for at least a year, otherwise I would have to pay three rents if I wanted to leave. He encouraged me to proceed, giving me vain promises of soon getting the tillsvidare contract. I was promised to have it within a couple of weeks. That was during the end of February 2020. Not even twenty days afterwards, I was informed that I had delayed my project -while I was never even given a deadline for it, and no one ever bothered asking me how it was going. I was given ten days to complete it, otherwise my 6 months contract would not become a "tillsvidare". Still, my superior gave me his word that even if I didn't succeed, I would not be fired straight away. Instead, I would stay there until my 6 months were over, and then seek for a job somewhere else. I delivered everything in a couple of days, since the main functionalities were ready, and I spent the rest debugging and improving the code, and waiting for some kind of feedback from a senior developer. I had not gotten any kind of feedback on my assignment for a couple of weeks, so I almost begged them to look at it so that I would know if everything was fine, and they pledged to review it and inform me later that day. They are still reviewing it. Ten days after the discussion I had with my superior, and even though I delivered my project, I was announced that I was being fired on that very day. Not just not having my contract extended, as he had promised, but that I had to pack up and leave straight away. I had been promised that even if it wasn't delivered in time, I would just not get an extension of my contract. I delivered it in time, and actually more than a week before the final deadline. And instead of getting the tillsvidare anställning I expected, I was fired straight away. Not even one month after being repeatedly promised a tillsvidare anställning, not even one month after being encouraged to sign to rent an apartment in the vicinity for at least a year. They claimed that I wasn't suitable for them, that I don't fit into their team, and even that my codes do not work (!!!). The day of our previous discussion I  showed the superior who informed me I am fired, a major functionality depending on the others working without any problem whatsoever, and he congratulated me. Now he was claiming that "according to the Senior Developers" (who still had not bothered to even look at my codes), my codes were not working, even though everything was tested again and again before being pushed and even though he had seen them in action himself. When I asked for details about the codes that were supposedly not working, I did not get a reply. Just like I did not get a reply on why didn't anyone look at them earlier and inform me -I had been waiting for weeks for feedback. Or a reply on why did he claim that I would in no case get fired straight away. Or a reply on why I was left working all alone, while they knew I was just a junior developer. The only "answer" I got was something like "there are many whys, but they don't matter".

I was thrown out of the company that repeatedly promised to keep me "for a long time" right after delivering my assignment. I was lied to and exploited. I ended up on the verge of becoming homeless, since because of the coronavirus no one was hiring, and I literally hadn't a single krona to pay for the rent. If you cannot trust them as a coworker, how can you ever trust them as a customer?

On criminal behavior and the death penalty

Greek version 
(Original title: On criminality and personal responsibility)

Introduction 

I recently had a disagreement with the owner of a quite popular facebook page, because of a post of his, in which he asserted that no one is born being something and that we are all victims of our social environment. That is, even if someone commits a heinous crime, what he needs is help rather than a punishment. That post was the beginning of an exceptionally interesting conversation, as well as of some dismal observations concerning the beliefs of most people nowadays.

One of them is about the percentage of those that seem to embrace this -almost radical- view when it comes to the personal responsibilities of criminals: in the 21st century's western world (at least in Europe), though the advocates of death penalty and even forced chemical castrations for sex offenders are existent, the other extreme, claiming that criminals are victims of society or their genes themselves and deserve de facto humane punishments, is -especially in the juristic circles- more popular.

The other is about the widely held (at least in Europe) belief that all criminals deserve a second (and not only) chance and help, which has resulted in many legal systems not only abolishing the death penalty but setting a limit to how many years one can stay in prison.

The extent to which genes are responsible for criminal behaviors was the beginning of my disagreement with the page's owner, who seems to hold the nowadays-prevailing view in the humanitarian fields, ascribing the responsibility of our social milieu or criminal behaviors to experiences. Though this view has some powerful arguments (which I shall elaborate later), there is evidence that criminal predisposition, especially for violent crimes, can depend on genetic factors.


Criminal behavior: genetically determined or depending on nurture?

Research on twins, as well as on children of convicts that were adopted as infants, indicates that there can be an -often heavy- genetic influence on criminal behavior (an example) -though that does not render it necessary that the genes to blame will be "activated".

There are several mechanisms via which genes can affect behavior and the degree of criminal predisposition. For instance, the way genes can influence testosterone levels in our body and its' effects on the brain can play a significant role. Even though high testosterone levels have been connected to increased aggressiveness, it is not testosterone itself to be blamed: there are countless men with high testosterone levels that are not violent and wouldn't even harm a fly, so the way testosterone can lead to aggressiveness may have to do with other substances interacting with it (there may be genes that somehow require high testosterone levels to be activated, and it may be them that lead to aggressiveness) or the brain structure and how it gets affected by testosterone.

When it comes to the latter, the research indicates that criminals tend to have a thinner pre-frontal cortex -a part of the brain contributing to decision-making, altruism, and empathy. There is also research indicating that psychopaths and violent criminals tend to have a problematic limbic system, which controls emotion and the degree to which they can prevail over reason, as well as research indicating that criminals tend to have a lower intelligence quotient (IQ).

The impact of one's brain structure to one's behavior is undeniable, given that we are basically our brain (rather than an immaterial entity that is going to exist after our physical death), and if this brain is problematic the odds are that so will be the case with us. So is the case with our body chemistry.

Nevertheless, when it comes to criminality, there seem to apply the same rules as in heart disease: just like one can be born with a genetic predisposition for heart disease yet remain healthy until the end of his or her life thanks to a healthy lifestyle, so can one be born with a genetic predisposition for criminal behavior and aggressiveness and yet never commit a crime or harm anyone. Conversely, one may be born with no genetic predilection for a heart disease and yet end up suffering one, thanks to a long-lasting unhealthy lifestyle, just like one may end up being a criminal without being genetically predisposed to, thanks to a long-lasting rough lifestyle and personal problems.

Though there is stark evidence that criminal behavior can be affected by genes, the other view -that whether one will commit a crime or not depends exclusively on the social environment, the nurture and the needs of someone- has some unassailable arguments on its' side: according to the statistics (source: The better angels of our nature by Steven Pinker), during antiquity and the middle ages the probability of someone to murder or be murdered was significantly higher than nowadays. That is also the case with today and several decades ago. Did our genome undergo considerable changes in some decades? Or violent and criminal behavior depends more on the social environment?

The advocates of this view have, thus, a strong argument that made their opinion prevail: the dramatic and impressive reduction of the use of violence during the last decades, indicative of the degree to which our behavior depends on our social environment and way of life rather than genes.

Still, what is certain is that no matter how much are we influenced by our social environment, some people are born with a criminal predisposition. There are countless people living in awful social environments yet the vast majority of them does not commit a single crime during their lifetime -just like there are people who lived a perfectly normal life yet committed heinous crimes. And, bizarrely, they tend to have very particular brain dysfunctions (atrophy of a region and limited blood flow toward it is, technically, a dysfunction) and body chemistry (high testosterone levels, possibly affecting the brain or particular genes)


Free will and personal responsibility

Hundreds of books have been -and are being- written on the influence of our genes and way of living on our behavior. Yet sooner or later arises the question of whether a criminal is to be blamed for being a criminal. No matter if criminals are "victims" of their nurture and social environment or their genes, why should we blame them for their actions if the responsibility lies on an external factor -something they have no control over? That was the main topic of our disagreement, and it was that that led me to dismal and disappointing observations on the prevailing opinions.

Those lovely cultivated humanists that talk about lenient punishments for criminals on the logical grounds that they are not responsible for their actions, commit a gross logical fallacy: they use a reasoning that applies exclusively to philosophical issues to voice an opinion for a social one.

By philosophical/realistic aspect, no one is really  responsible for one's actions, not because one is determined by one's genes or social environment, but merely... because our very existence as entities separate from our environment is just a figment of our fantasy. We are made out of cells, which in turn are made up of molecules, which are made out of atoms, etc, which means that we, just like all of our universe, are a superstructure of interacting quarks arranged in highly intricate structures. There is nothing that separates our quarks from the rest of universe's.

Even where our body ends and "the rest" of the environment begins is unclear: in the quantum level, not a single particle is in a particular position in space. Where do the particles of our bodies (which in fact are constantly interchanged with the ones surrounding us) end, and begin those of the rest of the universe?

The bitter reality is that our behavior arises neither from our instincts nor out of our social environment, but from the laws governing the sub-atomic particles. We are parts of the universe and exist as separate entities, basically, only in our fantasy. Millions of years of evolution resulted to us having a brain, and for the brain to be able to control our body and ensure our survival, it had to have the illussion that the body which it had control over (whatever was controlled by its' nervous system) was an entity distinct from the rest of the environment. Yet that is not the case.

Think, you who had the time and the patience to read until this point: would you consider as sane someone who would ask in earnest for murder's decriminalization with arguments like "no one really dies because his atoms still exist in the universe"? Or someone who would use the vanity of existence and that we are just particles obeying to the laws of physics, as grounds to elaborate his argument that it is not bad to slaughter a family?

Whoever would say in earnest that killing and raping is not really bad because life is an accident, because we "exist" only in our fantasies, and because no one is really responsible for what he does, would end up as a case study for psychiatrists and psychology graduates. For the simple reason that he would have been talking with arguments of the wrong level. To be too much of a rational realist and to mix philosophical and cosmological issues with the social ones, is to end up having strange or even insane opinions.

From a realistic aspect, no one is really responsible for his/her actions, nor has he/she influence to the surrounding world and is just a sort of marionette of it (though there is a pretty convincing counterargument* for the opposite view, of us having a free will). We don't have to talk about instincts, genes, and social determination: everything is interactions of particles. But that is realistically speaking. By a social aspect... there are other logical rules, and we don't take the universal reality into account.

By a social aspect, the only thing we care about is what we are -no matter if it has a free will and individuality or not- to be able to survive and be happy, and that requires a functional society. In order for a society to function, the members that cause problems are to be punished, no matter if they chose to or not. By a social aspect, the philosophical question of whether we have a free will or not is irrelevant. Even if we do not, we can only pretend that we do. Just like a criminal may have had no other choices, we have no other choices either.


*[When it comes to free will, some asseverate that they have found the solution to the problem of its' existence in a deterministic universe. The sub-atomic particle level is chaotic and works with probabilities (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle) -which means that there may be some "space" for free will to exist. Since nothing is predetermined in the particle level, by choosing to do anything, you disturb and unbalance the probabilities of the next situation of the particles around you, which means that they depend, to a certain degree, on you -and not exclusively you on them. That's the counterargument.

I do not intend to elaborate, advocate, or refute this view in the present article, so what we ought to keep in mind for the time being is that we simply cannot care for the subatomic (or molecular, or gene)  interactions when speaking about social issues, and that the quantum chaos may allow to what we call a "free will" to thrive. Let us accept this point and proceed. ]


Confusions and misunderstandings

It is a gross logical fallacy to be led to take into account things that are true only within a philosophical or cosmological context when it comes to how we act and behave in a society. Should we free all serial killers and rapists because "it wasn't them, but the interactions of the electrons"? Well, it is equally illogical to reduce their sentences' length because "it was not them, but their genes/family environment/dysfunctional brains". And beside being logically untenable, given the capabilities and intricacy of our brains, but also devastating to the process of administrating justice.

In the US juries, it is typical for an attorney to blame the dysfunctional brain or the problematic family environment of their clients in order for them to get a lighter sentence. Indeed, in several states, if a convicted rapist and murderer is proved to be mentally retarded can avoid a death sentence and get a plain life sentence instead. Such criminals, technically, do not get the punishment they deserve just because they happened to be born some way. For a choice the didn't make, for a purely statistical mistake, they avoid the death sentence they deserve for a crime they consciously chose to commit.

One could claim that in those states, the ones who get a death sentence, get it because they committed a crime without being retarded. For, as we all know, a retarded criminal is a better person than an intelligent one, and therefore deserves a "lighter" sentence. Where is justice -or even rationality- in this? Especially if we consider the fact that it is not mental retardation that leads someone to crime, and that the vast majority of people with retardation doesn't even harm a fly.

The same applies to the ones that happened to grow up in problematic families. There are hundreds of thousands of them, yet not even one tenth of them ended up robbing, murdering, and selling drugs. Simply put, belonging into that category may increase the odds that you will choose a life of crime. Yet the choice remains yours.

And even if it isn't, as I elaborated, even if behaviorists were right and we are indeed completely predictable automata reacting to stimuli, possessing no free will whatsoever and choosing our deeds as much as a planet chooses being trapped into the gravitational field of a star, what we care about in a society is the survival and well-being of its' members. If some member happens to be problematic and does not allow society to function normally, we have no choice but to make sure that society gets rid of it.

So, regardless of which logical approach we choose -behavioral determinism or not- the conclusion remains the same: a criminal is to be punished. The only question is whether we ought to help some criminals and give them a second chance. The only ones to be helped and given a second chance are those who committed a crime on grounds of a compelling need -a starving homeless stealing something to eat, for instance, or a long-term unemployed who ends up slinging for to have his children fed. When it is society itself that pushes some of its' members to a criminal life, the root of the problems lies on its' structures.

Consider someone whose parents had an accident when he was an infant and ended up in an orphanage. He was most likely never given the proper education and preparation to get a college degree or even finish high school -the state did not take care of him. He ended up doing minimum-wage jobs for a choice he didn't make, and it is well-known that the ones getting the minimum wage are highly more likely to commit a crime than the rest of the population. Take into account cultural factors (i.e. it once was highly respected in mountainous Greece to rob the wealthy), and you may agree that in some cases it is the society that is problematic, and not such criminal members of it. If our hero committed i.e. a theft, he would most likely deserve help rather than plain punishment.

When the reason someone was led to crime is clearly a problematic society or state, or even a serious personal disaster (who would want a harsh sentence for someone who killed the rapist and murderer of his daughter?), then we can discuss second chances and help. Still, that depends on the particular case and no general rule can be applied to the whole category.

Do the same principles apply to people who committed hideous crimes with no apparent reason other than their biology and psychology? A serial killer who carefully planned his murders, committing them merely for joy and pleasure, can ever be considered to deserve a second chance? Why should we take into account their past and even their genetic make-up before deciding whether they are to be executed or not? And if we are to pardon or give a lighter sentence to someone because it was his past or "his genes", why not do so with everyone because, after all, it was the interactions of elementary particles?

And this is the second disheartening observation: not only more and more seem to commit the logical fallacy of confusing the genetic, the psychological, and the social level but, as if that wasn't enough of a fallacy, they typically insist that the lighter the sentence, the more just and humane. Let me show you why this premise is ridiculous.

I want to believe that we do not disagree on that the punishment of a crime ought not be disproportionate to the harm it caused. Stealing a chocolate-bar (an act lasting several seconds with technically no harm and damage for its' owner) ought not be punished by chopping the offender's hand off (which lasts for a lifetime and it is devastating in all aspects of life). That would be unfair, since it would be a disproportionately heavy sentence compared to the offense itself. The most fundamental principle of justice is the analogy of misdeed and punishment -not necessarily literally an eye for an eye, but one should have his life ruined when willingly ruining the life of another.

Once we accept this as a fact, why should we consider more just a "humane" punishment for a murderer?

Let us accept that if you killed only once you may deserve a second chance. Let's say that you were very young when you did it and that you have become another person in the meanwhile, or that you were led to such an act after the victim attacked against you, or that he harmed your family and got what he deserved. A second chance and mild sentence for someone who committed a serious crime only once, may be reasonable and just (even thought that is still debatable and depends on the particular case).

Is it so for someone who committed multiple offenses? Is someone who is behind the murder of six people and the rape of four other getting a second or an eleventh chance after being released from prison after 25 years -the longest time one can be held as prisoner in Greece, where I happen to live? When Norwegians release Brejvik after 21 years in jail, how just and "humane" will it be that the "man" who ruined dozens of families by killing their members is once again in the streets?

The punishments ought to be proportionate to and suitable for the offenses, and in some cases the proportionate and suitable is... the death row. The widely held principle that all strict punishments and death penalties are unjust and unsuitable, has the prerequisite of us abandoning the most fundamental principle of justice, that a punishment should be proportional to the offense -which happens to be simultaneously reasonable and in accordance to our instincts-, and is based upon an arbitrary -almost superstitious- bias against strict sentences. This prejudice treats such punishments as de facto unjust, without providing many reasonable arguments. And it is very dismal that the ones in favor of the death penalty in Europe are, on average, less educated: it is as if we have been brainwashed into connecting in our minds the death penalty with primitives, as if we try to seem "cultivated" by talking about second chances and "understanding" for each and every psychopath.

This belief is logically falacious. "Humane" punishments are not necessarily just, and in some cases the "primitive" ones may be more suitable. There is no real rationale that can support the arbitrary beliefs about second chances even for dangerous criminals, and no such arbitration can stand a rational analysis.


In conclusion

Criminal behavior, as the statistics of the last decades indicate, may depend largely on the social environment, yet the role of the genes and body chemistry is undeniable. As an interlocutor put it, you inherit the probability to become a criminal and whether you will engage in criminal behaviors or not depends on your nurture and social milieu too -genes alone cannot determine it. Nor can nurture. There are countless people living an awful life yet never harmed anyone -just like there are people living perfectly normal lives yet committed hideous crimes. Just like there are countless people with "criminal" genes, yet are well-behaving and law-abiding.

When it comes to determinism -whether it is social or genetic-, it does not diminish the personal responsibility of a criminal. Our brain is intricate enough to pretend that it provides us a free will, and to blame a behavior on a set of genes to get a lighter sentence is equally illogical with blaming it to the interactions of the subatomic particles we consist of and our inability to control them. There is no reason to get to so fundamental levels of nature, as the genetic, the molecular, and the subatomic, to explain the behavior of a human being -let alone justify it.

We can only talk about helping a criminal only if he was led to a criminal act due to a compelling economical need or personal disaster, and his psychological world, genetic make-up, and cognitive abilities are absolutely irrelevant and not to be taken in to account. If he suffered from psychological problems, he could have consulted a psychologist. If he has a problematic gene, to take it into account in order to give him a lighter sentence is equally unjust and irrational to take into account his racial origins for the same purpose -just like it is unjust and irrational to give a harsh sentence to someone who happened to be born with African genes, it is unjust and irrational to give someone a light sentence because he happened to be born with "criminal" genes. When it comes to cognitive abilities, it is outrageously idiotic to take them into account since mental retardation does not increase the odds of becoming a criminal, nor is a mentally retarded offender de facto a better person than an intelligent one who committed the same crime.

The punishments ought to be lenient for otherwise law-abiding people that were led to crime clearly due to a need, yet strict and harsh for the ones who committed a crime with no reason other than their psychopathy or problematic genes. In extreme cases -such as serial murderers, rapists, and arsonists-, the "primitive" punishment of the death penalty may be more appropriate. A "primitive" punishment is not necessarily unjust; it is a logical fallacy and an arbitrariness to consider harsh punishments as de facto unjust and humane punishments as de facto fair.

One of the typical "arguments" of those who want to abolish the death penalty is that executing a murderer does not bring the victim back. Well, not executing him does not bring the victim back either. But at least the offender gets a punishment proportionate to his deed -as is justice supposed to be-, and society gets rid of a problematic member.

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©George Malandrakis
All rights reserved

Περί εγκληματικής συμπεριφοράς και θανατικής ποινής

Εισαγωγή

Είχα πρόσφατα μια συζήτηση με το διαχειριστή σχετικά γνωστής σελίδας στο facebook με αφορμή μια δημοσίευσή του, στην οποία ισχυρίστηκε πως κανένας δεν γεννιέται κάπως και ότι είμαστε θύματα του περιβάλλοντος -κοινωνικού τε και οικογενειακού. Ως εκ τούτου, ακόμα και κάποιος που έχει διαπράξει ένα ειδεχθές έγκλημα χρειάζεται περισσότερο βοήθεια παρά βία και τιμωρία. Η δημοσίευση αυτή έδωσε μια καλή αφορμή για ενδιαφέρουσες συζητήσεις, αλλά και θλιβερές παρατηρήσεις.

Μια εξ'αυτών αφορά στο πόσοι φαίνεται να υιοθετούν αυτή τη -μάλλον τραβηγμένη- άποψη περί περιορισμένης ατομικής ευθύνης των εγκληματιών: στο δυτικό κόσμο του 21ου αιώνα, αν και υπάρχουν αυτοί (κυρίως μεταξύ των λιγότερο καλλιεργημένων) που μιλάνε για θανατικές ποινές και ευνουχισμούς εγκληματιών, τείνει να κυριαρχήσει -ιδίως σε νομικό επίπεδο- το άλλο άκρο, εκείνο που θέλει τους ταλαίπωρους εγκληματίες να είναι οι ίδιοι θύματα της κοινωνίας ή, σύμφωνα με τους των θετικών επιστημών, των γονιδίων και των έμφυτων παρορμήσεών τους.

Το κατά πόσον ευθύνονται τα γονίδια ήταν και η αρχή της διαφωνίας μου με το συντάκτη -ο οποίος φαίνεται να υιοθετεί την επικρατούσα άποψη, των θεωρητικών κλάδων, που αποδίδει την ευθύνη των προσωπικών μας ιδιοσυγκρασιών ή και εγκληματικών τάσεων σε βιώματα. Αν και έχει και αυτή κάποια ατράνταχτα επιχειρήματα (θα αναλυθούν παρακάτω), υπάρχει και πληθώρα αποδείξων ότι οι εγκληματικές τάσεις, ιδίως για τα βίαια εγκλήματα, ανάγεται σε βιολογικούς παράγοντες.


Εγκληματική συμπεριφορά: γενετικά προκαθορισμένη ή αμιγώς ψυχολογική; 

Έρευνες που έχουν γίνει σε δίδυμα, αλλά και σε εν βρεφικῂ ηλικιᾳ υιοθετηθέντα παιδιά εγκληματιών, δείχνουν πως υπάρχει -ισχυρή ενίοτε- γενετική ροπή προς την εγκληματικότητα (ένα παράδειγμα) -χωρίς όμως αυτό να συνεπάγεται πως είναι απαραίτητο πως θα "εκφραστούν" τα γονίδια που ευθύνονται για αυτό.

Υπάρχουν διάφοροι μηχανισμοί μέσω του οποίο τα γονίδια μπορούν να παίξουν ρόλο σ'αυτό. Ένας, φερ'ειπείν, είναι το πώς τα γονίδια επηρεάζουν τα επίπεδα τεστοστερόνης στο σώμα, αλλά και το πώς επιδρά αυτή στον εγκέφαλο, γιατί τα υψηλά επίπεδα αυτής μπορούν να οδηγήσουν σε αυξημένη επιθετικότητα αλλά δεν συμβαίνει σε όλους κάτι τέτοιο: θα βρει κανείς πολλά άτομα με υψηλά επίπεδα τεστοστερόνης που έχουν πλήρη αυτοσυγκράτηση και "δεν πειράζουν μύγα", οπότε το πώς μπορεί να οδηγήσει σε ακραίες συμπεριφορές είναι ζήτημα αλληλεπίδρασης γονιδίων (μπορεί να υπάρχουν γονίδια που προϋποθέτουν υψηλή τεστοστερόνη για να εκφραστούν, και να είναι αυτά που οδηγούν σε επιθετικότητα) και εγκεφαλικής δομής.

Όσον αφορά στην τελευταία, οι έρευνες δείχνουν ότι οι εγκληματίες τείνουν να έχουν πιο ατροφικό προμετωπιαίο φλοιό -που συνεισφέρει στη λήψη αποφάσεων αλλά και στο κατά πόσον είναι κάποιος εμπαθής και αλτρουιστής. Υπάρχουν και έρευνες που υποδεικνύουν πως οι βίαιοι εγκληματίες τείνουν να έχουν προβληματικό limbic system, που παίζει ρόλο στο συναίσθημα και στο κατά πόσον επικρατεί επί της λογικής, όπως υπάρχουν και οι έρευνες που δείχνουν πως οι εγκληματίες τείνουν να έχουν χαμηλότερο δείκτη νοημοσύνης (IQ).

Είναι αδιαμφισβήτητος ο ρόλος της εγκεφαλικής δομής στις συμπεριφορές κάποιου, δεδομένου ότι βασικά είμαστε ο εγκέφαλός μας (και μάλλον όχι κάποια άυλη οντότητα που θα επιζήσει και μετά το βιολογικό μας θάνατο), και αν αυτός βγει ελαττωματικός μάλλον θα βγούμε προβληματικοί και οι ίδιοι.

Παρ'όλα αυτά, φαίνεται να ισχύει και εδώ ό,τι και για τις καρδιοπάθειες, και ο ρόλος του περιβάλλοντος είναι επίσης αδιαμφισβήτητος: όπως κάποιος μπορεί να γεννηθεί με γενετική προδιάθεση για καρδιοπάθειες αλλά ουδέποτε να του "χτυπήσουν τη πόρτα" επειδή κάνει υγιεινή ζωή και διατροφή, έτσι μπορεί κάποιος να γεννηθεί με γενετική ροπή προς την εγκληματικότητα αλλά να μη γίνει ποτέ εγκληματίας επειδή εκπαιδεύτηκε και συνειδητοποιήθηκε κατάλληλα. Αντίστοιχα, μπορεί κάποιος να πάθει καρδιακό από μακροχρόνια, κάκιστη διατροφή, όπως μπορεί κάποιος να γεννηθεί χωρίς "εγκληματικά" γονίδια και να γίνει εγκληματίας από μακροχρόνια, κάκιστα βιώματα και προκύψασες ανάγκες.

Εξίσου αδιάσειστες είναι και οι ενδείξεις ότι σε τεράστιο βαθμό η επιθετικότητα εξαρτάται από το κοινωνικό περιβάλλον: με βάση τις στατιστικές, κατά την αρχαιότητα και το μεσαίωνα η πιθανότητα να φονεύσει ή να φονευθεί κάποιος εν καιρῲ ειρήνης ήταν σημαντικά υψηλότερη από σήμερα (παράδειγμα, [πηγή: "the better angels of our nature" του Steven Pinker]), και πριν κάπου έναν αιώνα ανάμεσα στη σημερινή και τη μεσαιωνική. Άλλαξε το γονιδίωμα του ανθρώπου σε διάστημα λίγων δεκαετιών ή και αιώνων; Ή μήπως απλά εξαρτάται από το περιβάλλον κατά πόσον θα εκφραστεί, και επομένως όλα εξαρτώνται από το τρόπο ζωής και το κοινωνικό περίγυρο;

Οι των θεωρητικών επιστημών έχουν λοιπόν αυτό το πολύ δυνατό χαρτί στα χέρια τους, που κατέστησε επικρατούσες και τις περί κοινωνικής επίδρασης στην εγκληματικότητα θεωρίες τους: την δραματική και εντυπωσιακή μείωση της χρήσης βίας στις κοινωνίες τις τελευταίες δεκαετίες, που δείχνει πόσο μεγάλη είναι η επίδραση του περιβάλλοντος στις ημών συμπεριφορές.

Γεγονός όμως είναι ότι, ανεξάρτητα από το ρόλο που παίζει το περιβάλλον, σίγουρα πολλοί γεννιούνται με εγκληματικές ροπές. Υπάρχουν χιλιάδες άνθρωποι με κακά βιώματα και κακές επιρροές, αλλά δεν έγιναν όλοι κατά συρροήν βιαστές και φονιάδες -όπως υπάρχουν κατά συρροήν βιαστές και φονιάδες που είχαν μια φυσιολογική ζωή. Και, περιέργως, εκείνοι που διαπράττουν

A guide to everyday Greek expressions, slang, and phrasal verbs

This is a guide to common Greek phrasal verbs, slang words, alternative word meanings, and expressions, that are, most probably, not mentioned in guides for learning Greek.

Focusing on everyday slang, it is intended to help whomever is willing to learn modern Greek in-depth, and one ought to be somehow familiar with this language before attempting to learn the words and expressions described here.

In case you are new to Greek, this guide will be rather confusing, and may even discourage you from learning such an anomalous language. After all, whoever has ever made serious attempts to learn Greek for whatever reason, is very much aware of the difficulties of thinking like a native speaker of this language and use its' words properly, but one will definitely not expect expressions like the ones to be described in this publishment. Greek is a notoriously tough language to learn, and sometimes tougher than one can even imagine.

Even if Greece was a country of 100 million residents and a very prosperous economy, few would bother learning its' language without intending to move there, and the main reasons are its' uniqueness and difficulty -with expressional patterns that have nothing in common with the ones of other European languages. Thus, it doesn't come as an aberration that one will find extremely few people who learn Greek as a foreign language.

Yet the difficulty in learning it and finding people to practise speaking ought not be discouraging for a language learner; difficulties should be seen rather as a challenge, and engaging in exploring a language's peculiarities can serve as an introduction to a whole new way of thinking and perceiving words and their meanings.

Greek is a very peculiar language, indeed.

This guide is under constant update. I shall renew and add expressions to it whenever I can, and

Μιχαήλ Η' Παλαιολόγος

Εισαγωγή

Οι ύστεροι Βυζαντινοί αιώνες ήταν αναμφίβολα από τους δραματικότερους της Ελληνικής ιστορίας. Μετά από μια περίοδο ακμής και οικονομικής ευημερίας που κορυφώθηκε τα χρόνια του Βασιλείου Β' του Βουλγαροκτόνου, η Βυζαντινή αυτοκρατορία βυθίστηκε απότομα στην παρακμή εξαιτίας της διαφθοράς των διαδόχων του. Η ήττα των Βυζαντινών στη μάχη του Ματζικερτ το 1071, και η εκμετάλλευση των Τουρκικών επιδρομών από τις αριστοκρατικές οικογένειες για να ρίξουν τον Ρωμανό Δ' Διογένη επειδή αποτελούσε εμπόδιο στα σχέδιά τους, είναι επαρκείς ενδείξεις της κατάστασης της Βυζαντινής αυτοκρατορίας μετά το 1025.

Η πολιτική και οικονομική παρακμή του Βυζαντίου εκείνα τα έτη δεν αποτελεί μυστήριο: μετά από κάθε ακμή επέρχεται η παρακμή, και η Βυζαντινή αυτοκρατορία είχε ακμάσει. Σε κάθε αυτοκρατορία του κόσμου υπάρχει και διαφθορά, και αυτή βρίσκει πάντα έδαφος σε περιόδους ακμής και ευμάρειας. Η διαφθορά είναι ο κοινός παρονομαστής της παρακμής όλων των μεγάλων αυτοκρατοριών -και η Βυζαντινή δεν αποτελεί εξαίρεση.

Μετά από περίπου δύο αιώνες διακυβέρνησης ηγεμόνων που αποδείχθηκαν, για διάφορους λόγους, ανίκανοι να ανακόψουν και να αντιστρέψουν την παρακμή αυτή, η Βυζαντινή αυτοκρατορία κατελύθη το 1204, όταν κατά την Δ' σταυφοροφία οι Φράγκοι με τις ευλογίες του Βατικανού και της δημοκρατίας της Βενετίας, κατέλαβαν την Κωνσταντινούπολη σηματοδοτώντας το (προσωρινό, όπως αποδείχθηκε) τέλος της Βυζαντινής αυτοκρατορίας.

Την κατάληψή της ακολούθησε ένα άνευ προηγουμένου πλιάτσικο στα ιερά της και όχι μόνο, που κάνει το αντίστοιχο της κατάληψης της Ζάρα δυο χρόνια νωρίτερα, στα πλαίσια της ίδιας σταυροφορίας, να ωχριά. Ο σκοπός των σταυροφόρων, ειδικά σε εκείνη την επιδρομή, ήταν καθαρά ο προσπορισμός οικονομικού ωφέλους. Ακόμα και αν δεχτούμε ότι κατά την πρώτη σταυροφορία υπήρχαν θρησκευτικά και ιδεαλιστικά κίνητρα, στις επόμενες, και δη στην τέταρτη, τα κίνητρα και τα αίτια ήταν πολιτικά και οικονομικά, πράγμα που απέδειξαν περίτρανα οι Λατίνοι στις επιδρομές τους στο Βυζάντιο.

Στα εδάφη της διαλυθείσας Βυζαντινής αυτοκρατορίας ιδρύθηκαν πολυάριθμα φραγκικά και ελληνικά κρατίδια, με σημαντικότερα την Λατινική αυτοκρατορία της Κωνσταντινούπολης και την αυτοκρατορία της Νίκαιας αντίστοιχα. Η τελευταία δεν ήταν το μόνο κρατικό μόρφωμα που διεκδικούσε την ηγεμονία επί των Ελλήνων: η αυτοκρατορία της Τραπεζούντας και το δεσποτάτο της Ηπείρου επίσης απέβλεπαν στην ανακατάληψη της Κωνσταντινούπολης, με τον ηγέτη της καθεμιας να θεωρεί εαυτόν νόμιμο διάδοχο του αυτοκράτορα των Ρωμαίων -όπως αυτοαποκαλούνταν οι Βυζαντινοί.

Η κυρίως Ελλάδα και η Μικρά Ασία μετά την τέταρτη σταυροφορία. 

Τα Ελληνικά κράτη ανταγωνίζονταν έντονα μεταξύ τους 

για την εξουσία επί των ορθόδοξων πληθυσμών. 

(πηγή εικόνας: wikipedia.org)

Η αυτοκρατορία της Τραπεζούντας, λόγω της γεωγραφικής της θέσης, ακολούθησε δική της ιστορική πορεία μέχρι την κατάλυσή της το 1461, ενώ οι της Ηπείρου και της Νίκαιας συνέχισαν να επιδιώκουν την επικράτηση στον ελλαδικό χώρο. Αυτό είχε ως αποτέλεσμα την έχθρα μεταξύ των αυτοκρατοριών αυτών, που ιδανικά θα συνεσπειρώνοντο εναντίον των σταυροφόρων, είτε στο όνομα της ορθοδοξίας, είτε στο όνομα κάποιου είδους εθνικής ενότητας. Δυστυχώς, οι Έλληνες πάντοτε άφηναν κατά μέρους τα όποια κοινά τους συνέδεαν όταν επρόκειτο για τοπικιστικούς και προσωπικούς ανταγωνισμούς.

Σχεδόν έξι δεκαετίες μετά την κατάληψη της Κωνσταντινούπολης, την εποχή που η -βραχύβια, όπως αποδείχθηκε- Λατινική αυτοκρατορία είχε αποδυναμωθεί, ένας χαρισματικός ηγέτης ανέλαβε τα ηνία της αυτοκρατορίας της Νίκαιας και εκπλήρωσε τον σκοπό των ιδρυτών της, την ανακατάληψη της πρωτεύουσας της πάλαι ποτε Βυζαντινής αυτοκρατορίας. Ο αυτοκράτορας αυτός -ένας από τους πιο αμφιλεγόμενους των Βυζαντινών χρόνων- ήταν ο ιδρυτής της δυναστείας των Παλαιολόγων, Μιχαήλ Η'.

Ο Μιχαήλ Η' Παλαιολόγος -μια από τις πιο 

αμφιλεγόμενες μορφές της Βυζαντινής ιστορίας

(εικόνα: wikipedia.org)

Σε μια απ'τις πιο ταραγμένες εποχές της ανθρωπότητας, στους σκοτεινότερους αιώνες της Ευρωπαϊκής ιστορίας, ο Μιχαήλ προσπάθησε με κάθε θεμιτό και αθέμιτο μέσο όχι μόνο να αναστήσει τη Βυζαντινή αυτοκρατορία, αλλά και να την καταστήσει κυρίαρχη στη Μικρά Ασία. Δεδομένων των διεθνών συνθηκών, της οικονομικής κατάστασης της αυτοκρατορίας, των εχθρικών προς την αυτοκρατορία κρατών που τη περιέβαλλαν, και του κινδύνου απ'τη δύση, το εγχείρημα της επαναμετατροπής της Βυζαντινής αυτοκρατορίας σε κυρίαρχη δύναμη των εδαφών που κάποτε κατείχε ήταν εξαρχής καταδικασμένο σε αποτυχία.

Στη μη-επίτευξή του συνέβαλαν και οι πολιτικές κινήσεις του αυτοκράτορος, που λόγω της αδυναμίας των περισσοτέρων να κατανοήσουν τις διεθνείς συνθήκες και την έννοια της διπλωματίας, δημιούργησαν στις τάξεις του λαού όσο και των κληρικών τόση αντιπάθεια για το πρόσωπό του, που είναι απορίας άξιο πώς κρατήθηκε στην εξουσία. Επρόκειτο αναμφίβολα περί ενός δυναμικού ηγέτη με ατσάλινη θέληση και μεγάλη πολιτική οξυδέρκεια, που, όπως συμβαίνει πολλές φορές με τους μεγάλους ηγέτες, το έργο του δεν αναγνωρίστηκε όσο βρισκόταν εν ζωή.

Παρά ορισμένες άτσαλες κινήσεις του σε οικονομικό και πολιτικό επίπεδο και ορισμένες πράξεις αμφιβόλου ηθικής τις οποίες τέλεσε για να έρθει και να διατηρηθεί στην εξουσία, κατάφερε με τα πεπραγμένα του να εξασφαλίσει στη Βυζαντινή αυτοκρατορία άλλους δύο αιώνες ζωής. Πιθανότατα αν δεν ήταν ο Μιχαήλ αλλά κάποιος άλλος στη θέση του, η ανάσταση της Βυζαντινής αυτοκρατορίας να αποδεικνυόταν πολύ πιο σύντομη.


Η άνοδος του Μιχαήλ Η' Παλαιολόγου

• Γέννηση και πρώτα χρόνια - Κυβερνήτης της Νίκαιας

Ο Μιχαήλ Η' Παλαιολόγος γεννήθηκε το 1224/5 στα εδάφη της αυτοκρατορίας της Νίκαιας. Γιος του Ανδρόνικου Παλαιολόγου και της Θεοδώρας Αγγελίνας, εγγονής του Αλεξίου Γ' Αγγέλου, είχε άμεση συγγένεια με κάποιες από τις επιφανέστερες Βυζαντινές οικογένειες της εποχής. Λίγα είναι γνωστά για την παιδική του ηλικία και τα πρώτα χρόνια της σταδιοδρομίας του. Καταγόμενος από οικογένειες αριστοκρατών και στρατιωτικών καθώς ήταν, ήταν εξαρχής βέβαιο ότι θα ακολουθούσε τις οικογενειακές παραδόσεις γενόμενος και ο ίδιος στρατιωτικός. Και δη τη στιγμή που η οικογένεια των Παλαιολόγων ήταν από τις σημαντικότερες της Βυζαντινής αυτοκρατορίας.

Ως τόπος καταγωγής των Παλαιολόγων θεωρείται το Viterbo της Ιταλίας -παρόλο που δεν υπάρχουν επαρκείς αποδείξεις για την εν λόγω υπόθεση. Μόνη ένδειξη υπέρ της είναι το όνομα της πόλης, το οποίο έχει, στα Λατινικά, την ίδια έννοια με το επίθετο "Παλαιολόγος" (vetus verbus = παλαιός λόγος). Οι Παλαιολόγοι συναντώνται πρώτη φορά κατά τη διακυβέρνηση του Ρωμανού Δ' Διογένη (βλ. μάχη του Ματζικέρτ), όταν το πρώτο γνωστό μέλος της οικογένειας, ο Νικηφόρος, στράφηκε μαζί με άλλους εναντίον του αυτοκράτορα. Μέλη της οικογένειας έκτοτε ανέλαβαν διάφορα πόστα στα ανώτατα κλιμάκια του Ρωμαϊκού στρατού και συγκαταλέγονταν στους ισχυρότερους στρατιωτικούς της αυτοκρατορίας. Ο Μιχαήλ δεν θα αποτελούσε εξαίρεση, και διακρίθηκε ως στρατιωτικός από νεαρή ηλικία

Κατά την διάρκεια της βασιλείας του Ιωάννη Βατάτζη στη Νίκαια κατηγορήθηκε για εσχάτη προδοσία θεωρούμενος ως συνωμότης κατά του αυτοκράτορος. Δεν μπορούμε να αποφανθούμε ως προς το κατά πόσο αληθείς ήταν οι κατηγορίες. Γεγονός είναι ότι αθωώθηκε ελλείψει στοιχείων, πράγμα ωστόσο που δεν άλλαξε τη δυσπιστία της αυτοκρατορικής οικογένειας για το άτομό του. Και η οποία, τελικά, αποδείχθηκε δικαιολογημένη.

Μετά τον θάνατο του Ιωάννη Βατάτζη, ο Μιχαήλ υπηρέτησε στον Σελτζουκικό στρατό του Ρουμ ως μισθοφόρος, ενώ σύντομα διορίστηκε αρχηγός των χριστιανών μισθοφόρων του στρατεύματος. Όταν ο διάδοχος του Βατάτζη, Θεόδωρος Β' Λάσκαρης, εκστράτευσε κατά των Βουλγάρων, ανακάλεσε τον Μιχαήλ στη Νίκαια και τον διόρισε  διοικητή της Βιθυνίας και της Νίκαιας αφήνοντας κατά μέρους τη δυσπιστία του.

Ο διάδοχος του Ιωάννη Βατάτζη, Θεόδωρος Β' Λάσκαρης.

Η επιλογή του Γεωργίου Μουζάλωνος από εκείνον για τη 

θέση του προστάτη του διαδόχου Ιωάννη εξόργισε τον Μιχαήλ.

Κατά τη διάρκεια της εκστρατείας ο Μιχαήλ κατηγορήθηκε εκ νέου για συνωμοσία εναντίον του αυτοκράτορος, αλλά για άλλη μια φορά αθωώθηκε λόγω ελλιπών στοιχείων. Όταν ο Θεόδωρος απεβίωσε το 1258 άφησε την εξουσία στον οχτάχρονο γιο του, Ιωάννη Λάσκαρη, εκ μέρους του οποίου κυβέρνησαν, για ευνόητους λόγους, ο Γεώργιος Μουζάλων και ο Πατριάρχης Αρσένιος.

Ο Μιχαήλ εξοργίστηκε από το γεγονός αυτό. Θεώρησε ότι, κατέχοντας τη διόλου ασήμαντη θέση του διοικητή της Νίκαιας, έπρεπε αν όχι να στεφθεί ο ίδιος αυτοκράτωρ, σίγουρα να κυβερνήσει εκ μέρους του Ιωάννη. Με την επιρροή που είχε ο Μιχαήλ στο στράτευμα ο Μουζάλων δεν επέπρωτο να κυβερνήσει επί μακρόν.

Στο μνημόσυνο του Θεοδώρου ένα εξαγριωμένο πλήθος στρατιωτών εισέβαλε στη μονή όπου βρίσκονταν οι αδερφοί Μουζάλωνες και τους δολοφόνησε με απίστευτη αγριότητα. Ήταν τέτοιο το μένος του πλήθους εναντίον τους που τα κομμάτια του Γεωργίου έπρεπε να μαζευτούν αργότερα σε σάκο για να ταφεί. Είχε προηγηθεί η δολοφονία του γραμματέως του Μουζάλωνος, τον οποίον πέρασαν για τον ίδιο, και όταν συνειδητοποίησαν το λάθος τους εξαγριώθηκαν ακόμα περισσότερο απ'ο,τι πριν, όταν τον γιουχαραν μόλις πλησίασε τον τάφο του Θεοδώρου.

Η οργή των στρατιωτών οφειλόταν πιθανότατα στο ότι δεν τους έδωσε τα χρηματικά ποσά που έδιναν συνήθως οι προσφάτως στεφθέντες αυτοκράτορες ή αυτοί που κυβερνούσαν εκ μέρους τους. Αλλά θεωρείται σχεδόν βέβαιο ότι το πλήθος υποκινήθηκε από τον Μιχαήλ, ο οποίος αργότερα