CDS Journal

  Treaty 6 notes In reading more about Treaty 6 and Treaties in general, I've learned some basic things. Treaties are just agreements... contracts. Nothing more. However, the reason there seems to be a different name used for them is because they are typically created outside any single country's legal system. This is due to the fact that they are usually agreements between sovereign nations. There are three important things I learned at this point. First, there is no clear authority to enforce treaties because while there is such a thing as International Law, it is not an absolute authority... adherence to it is voluntary and therefore "possession is nine tenths of the law" is the reality of that system. Second, while treaties can be between any kinds of entities (individuals, businesses, etc), the most common kinds are nations... and the bigger and more established the nation, the more power it has to decide whether or not it wants to honor the treaty. The collectio...

I learned of Quentin Tarantino's thoughts on the movie Joker and was interested in his explanation of what he called "subversion". The term means " a process by which the values and principles of a system in place are contradicted or reversed, in an attempt to transform the established social order and its structures of power, authority, hierarchy, and social norms ". Tarantino uses the term to explain that this is what is happening in the climax scene of Joker because he says the filmmakers " got the audience to think like a fucking lunatic and to want something they would never normally want ". I disagree with Tarantino and, possibly, with the understanding of Subversion itself. As I have come to understand human psychology, it is far more likely that what's being changed in the process Tarantino is describing is that a more honest level of morality is being revealed. The definition of Subversion suggests that people's morality i...

"In order to understand how people were induced to obey unjust regimes and participate in atrocities such as the holocaust, Milgram set up an experiment. Volunteers were told they were taking part in scientific research to improve memory. Separated by a screen, the teacher would ask the learner questions in a word game and administer and electric shock when the answer was incorrect. They were told to increase the voltage with each wrong answer. Two thirds of volunteers were prepared to administer potentiall fatal electric shock when encouraged to do so by what they perceived to be a legitamite authority figure... in this case, a person in a white coat." Milgram experiment 1963 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzd6Ew3TraA Milgram experiment - https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

Curiosity Cures Addiction Instead of relying on willpower, the brain makes choices and forms behavior based on a built-in, primitive, reward-based system called reinforcement learning. Whenever the brain has a choice, it gravitates toward the more rewarding option. By intentionally bringing awareness and curiosity to any action, you upend the reward value of a habit, and in turn, change your response to it. https://www.inverse.com/mind- body/curiosity-awareness- behavior-change/ This can be tied in with: - TED talk about breaking bad habits by being more curious about them,   - A toddlers' natural expression of curiosity by asking "Why?" - The "AI Stop Button Problem" (pressing your own stop button becomes a way to hack your own reward system) - The idea of "doing things backwards" in order to slow down to override our brain's tendency to ignore detail to be efficient (ie. reading a paragraph backwards makes it easier to spellcheck it) - The use of...