Thanksgiving Lunch and Debriefing – D48

After a tough week, we got a little relief by having a Thanksgiving lunch. We invited the people who are supporting us and have been close to us, those are, Giancarlo Ibargüen, Helmuth Chávez, Carla Hess, Kassandra Rugg, Kyle Passarelli, Dylan Evans, Gabriel Calzada, Juanma Bonifasi, Daniel Herbruger, Adrián Ravier, Tony Ung, Kira Martins, and Ana Isa Gadala. We also invited Amable Sánchez, Sam Bonis, Moris Polanco, and Zach Caceres, but they couldn’t join us for lunch. Of course, all MPC’ers were there as well as Bert and Ingrid. We had a great time eating a lot of food and having great conversations. I sat with Giancarlo, Juanma, Mabe, and Alejo, and we had a nice conversation about knowledge, the mind, psychology, the MPC, ants, economics, freedom, and the history of Thanksgiving (it started as a celebration of private property and freedom!). Everything went great and as planned, and everybody loved the sweet potatoes with marshmallows and nuts I brought!

For the debriefing, we read what everybody wrote on our Thanksgiving tree (I’m thankful for…), had some laughs, and talked about the good things of this day. Nice way to end the week…

I’m thankful for… – D48

As I already told you, we decided to move the Thanksgiving activity for until everybody was at the MPC. We gathered and circled up at around 10:30 and started to say what we were thankful for. It was a great activity, very emotional, and there was a lot of crying (only the ladies). I liked it a lot, and it made me reflect of what I’m truly thankful for. It was kind of difficult to put it into words, but when I finally said it, it was great. Just seeing everybody share what they are thankful made the environment a very trustful one.

What I said was this, “Well, I’m thankful for being me, for having the capacity to actually think for myself, the capacity to make decisions, and with what Javier just mentioned, I mean I was trying to put this into words and I think you explained it very very well. I mean this series, I don’t know if I can call them coincidences, but as Alejo was saying, I mean we were studying economics and we were only three semesters from graduating and while as different from Alejo I did started the semester, but then we encountered in the faculty and we started talking about the assignations and all that stuff and he mentioned the MPC, and then while, I mean, the whole Deirdre McCloskey dialogue was like a huge coincidence for me, because I then realized that when I saw you guys and the group, I knew it would be a great group, so it encouraged me to actually make that move from what I was studying and get to the MPC. Well, actually it was the whole day. At first I attended the conference of Deirdre McCloskey and then went to the dialogue, and after it… I mean, I was working with this idea of education the whole year and when we had the dialogue (although it was not the best one (laughs)), but after I was talking with Bert, I mean it was just a, I don’t know if a coincidence of events that led me to actually make the decision that I was going to get to the MPC. And of course, for my family for supporting me. I’m thankful for that. And yeah, I’m thankful for being here, for having the capacity to reason, and to I mean, practically live with you guys and learn from you and from the people around me.”

I say a lot “I mean” haha. 

Morning Meeting and Dialogue with Dylan (Thinking… Ch 7 & 8) – D48

After a debriefing like the one on yesterday, you may think that everyone reflected about their behavior and realized they were not doing a good job at the MPC, but apparently no. Only ten of us arrived on time. For the morning meeting we had planned an activity in which we would tell what we were thankful for, since it’s Thanksgiving, but because of Bert’s petition and common agreement, we moved it until everybody were here.

Later, at 9:30, Dylan arrived for our dialogue on Thinking, Fast and Slow, chapters 7 and 8. Some of the topics we discussed (although some in a very superficial way) were finding someone attractive is not a “basic assessment”, automatic processing in visual system/internal chatterbox, halo effect (Is there a way to control our subconscious halo effect?) (Our mind is a network of associations that activate other areas.), are there objective judgments?, WYSIATI (what you see is all there is). It was an interesting dialogue, but I have to admit that I didn’t take full advantage of it since I was not well prepared for it.

A book Dylan recommended us: “A Journey Around My Room” by Xavier Maistre.

The most real debriefing so far – D47

As I mentioned before, one of the reasons of this hot debriefing was the disrespect towards Kata on the earlier tour. She told us she felt really bad and that we have been the worst group she has ever guided. Isa, Mabe, and Kata wrote a letter that they read and this led to further discussion of many topics. I will not detail them since it would be too long, but the main topics we discussed were the influence of Bert in the group (some are still seeing him as an authority), the lack of commitment, the lack of a common ground of things to do and principles and values, the lack of trust we have in the group (although we like to think of us as a family, clearly we are not there yet), the lack of standards and the confusion some have regarding this, the lack of good communication and the nonconformity with “the rules of the game” that Bert omitted to tell us when we entered the MPC, and the lack of bonding we have as a group. We discussed many things in a deep sense, so the debriefing lasted for more than 1.5 hours, all leaving around 8 p.m. Long and productive day. I think almost everyone and I can surely talk about myself, that we left the MPC with more energy and without a weight in our chests because we liberated things that needed to talk. I’m not saying its perfect now, it’s far from that, but it improved our process of culture building.

Programming class (Sinatra) – D47

For the programming class, Kyle showed us how to build a web app using a program called Sinatra. We didn’t finish building it because there were some details Kyle didn’t know, but it was a good start. I have to say that the class was a little disappointing because of the disrespect of almost all of us to Kyle. At first I have to admit that I was distracted viewing dog photos with Isa, but then I engaged in the class while others were very distracted and kept holding back our progress in the class. They were doing something else and not paying attention to Kyle, so they got frustrated because they didn’t understand and basically they were kind-of whining. The MPC’ers were Marce, Gaby, Chacho, Lucía, Lore, Mabe, Isa, and I. I felt a little embarrassed with Kyle because of our behavior so I apologized with him at the end of the class. By the way, at the middle of the class Dylan interrupted and started to talk with Mabe, and Kyle, well, he basically told Dylan to go.

Visit to the Popol Vuh Museum – D47

Today I had physiotherapy so I lost the performing arts and arrived at 2 p.m. just before Kata’s tour to the Popol Vuh Museum. Everybody seemed excited about it, but within the first 5 or 10 minutes some lost interest and went on their own way, disrespecting Kata’s effort of giving a good tour. I tried to stay with the Kata and most of the time I achieved that, although I must admit that at some times I got distracted, mainly because I didn't like the rhythm of the tour since it was a little slow. Nevertheless, only like 5 or 6 people stayed with Kata, an action that was going to be discussed later at the debriefing.

Are machines going to control us? (Consilience) – Dialogue with Chris Lingle – D47

For our third dialogue of Consilience, Christopher Lingle visited us. There were many neuroscientific topics, and one of the most important was the materialistic implications and possibilities of eventually creating artificial intelligence (AI) and emotions (AE). I mean, if emotions are just chemical reactions in our brain, can’t we create an artificial organ that simulates this? You may say that emotions are connected with memories, so how about creating a machine with enough capacity to gather databases and based on these knowledge, form opinions, criteria, and emotions. By doing this, you would be able to talk with a computer and not find a difference with a human interaction, making an exception to the Turing test. So, can we achieve a state in which we can control our minds? Read thoughts? Control them? Change our perspective of time and space, being able to control it? Are these AI and AE machines have the instinct of survival and therefore capable of rebelling themselves against humans? Is this process of controlling us, humans, inevitable and only a matter of time? Maybe, I don’t know yet…