In the last week of the Systems theory class the topic we talked about was entropy. As far as I understood the subject entropy is a physical term that describes chaos which destroys the order of a closed system. That is often irreversible. One example I remember from class is putting milk into a coffee – the milk mixes with the coffee and cannot be isolated again, so both orders of the systems, the milk and the coffee have changed. But at the same time, they created a new system, which I love by the way! And this brings me to a thought that has been supported by the video “The Physics of Entropy and the Origin of Life” that can be found on the main page of the course. In the video the speaker talks about certain systems that might be seen as disordered or even some kind of chaos from a specific perspective. This kind of view is often limited to a part aspect of the whole but when the perspective changes to a comprehensive view it is visible that those aspects form a functionable, beautiful system! Those systems could be spectacular things such as weather phenomena or the universe itself but can be also very small systems like the traffic in Athens.   

Thinking of this phenomenon it is not farfetched to transfer it to the life of a human being and the world we live in from a sociological perspective. I want to take you with me on a train of thought about entropy in different systems.  

While watching the video I mentioned before I started thinking about the concepts chaos and order. How often we find ourselves in situations where we look back at a period of our life and suddenly all those chaotic adventures and experiences assemble to a completed entity that just make sense?! Or how often we act chaotic from an outside view but in our reality the chaos is actually a specific order that is understandable just for ourselves?! Quit often, I would assume. At least I can affirm both questions for my own.  

I myself never understood why I have to clean up my room because I had and still have a very specific kind of order in it whenever it’s not cleaned up in the view of others: It might seem like everything is at a random place, it’s impossible for them to see my system but I know exactly where everything is. Then I clean up my room and can’t find my stuff anymore… So, the first conclusion that I want to make a note of, as simple as it may sounds like, is that a chaos to you is maybe or most probably an order for someone else.  

Which brings me to my next step of this train of thought: Chaos is accompanied by such a negative connotation! Whenever we mark something as chaotic, we mean it’s bad, it’s stressful, it is something not acceptable, something that says about us that we are unorganized, we don’t have – whatever we are talking about – under control. The integration of chaos as a negative term starts at the very beginning of our lives when our parents say sentences to us like “Your room is a chaos, clean it up!”, “Separate your school stuff from your toys!” and so on. Later it’s not getting better: The society wants us to have our life completely in order by the age of eighteen and we are blamed if we don’t follow those expectations. We have been educated according to those moral concepts for our whole lives. I’m wondering where this dividing of things into tidy good stuff on the one hand and the chaotic, bad stuff at the other hand started and why it has such a high priority for people. Maybe because order helps the majority of people to live their daily life, but what we tend to forget is that sometimes it is helpful to reorder certain aspects of living and to do so we need to allow the chaos to exist. Furthermore, the chaos can be responsible for new connections and contexts that we would never see if we exiled the chaos out of our lives. Another reason why people love order might be the need of being functional. And I would suggest that order is one of the requirements of functionality. A characteristic that is essential for the modern society. But it is also undeniable for the survival of human beings? Yes it is, but maybe not in the way we’re thinking! 

Let’s have a look at a bigger system than an individual life: The society is a system that has a certain order itself and maintaining this order is the key to our modern life as we know it nowadays. One part of that is to integrate us in that order. This process is called socialization and is indeed a super complex topic that I will definitely not explain in all details in this blog post. But I’m sure we all know the most important parts of this process: We learn how to behave in the society by learning about it in very different ways, such as being educated by others, watching others and learning from experience. In fact, all humans who live in a society are a part of holding it together and create a never-ending process of learning and creating at the same time, as we know from talking in class. This system helps us to orientate ourselves, create routines and make daily life simpler.  

Another aspect that I want to point out here is that the society is formed and constantly influenced by humans. It is not a natural system like the water cycle or the moon phases. In my opinion to not treat these matters equally is extremely important: The main difference between them is in my opinion that in natural systems events that are not planned in timing, extend and exact consequences, are included into the system. To us it might seem like disorder or even chaos but in fact the processes are connect with each other in a fluent way and create a complex system that has thousands of functions. The systems specific order is characterized by an uncontrollable interacting of processes while within systems created by humans other rules apply. Humans try to get rid of every disordered and uncontrollable part of the system because we tend to believe a system is only functionable if it is completely ordered by our definition of order. Otherwise, it would be claimed as chaotic. It is so important to keep in mind that there is more than one definition of order and I think we chose the wrong one, but more about this later. 

I think the particular reason why humans chose that kind of order is the fear of losing control combined with the goal of improving things till perfection. Politicians, big companies and organizations want to reach the highest and the best. Of course, the direction of goals depends on the political beliefs and the interests, but what all parts of the society have in common is the non-stop derivative in sometimes unbelievable speed. Natural systems behave different: We all know they are changing as well but compared to the society very slowly – except the changes for which people are responsible like the climate crisis. Not every single part is perfect in nature, therefor our environment is characterized by balance. And balance is the central character of nature. Something that is clearly missing in the society. As I tried to make clear before, all kind of systems have an order, it’s just a different one. 

Along my train of thought we are now at the point where I have to ask: Is it really necessary to choose control and improvement till perfection over balance? Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate human skills of developing, engineering, integrating as much people as possible, implement human rights, discovering new places, learning about the world we live in and every other thing that we have accomplished without hurting others. But along that journey we, the human race, have done so many horrible things and we keep doing them. We have established a system, the capitalism, that is about to ruin several other systems: the society, the nature and the whole world. Would it not be a good idea to slow down the speed of developing and at the same time renew the balance of living together? Renew our relationship with ourselves, with animals and nature that humans had once? For me the answer is clear.  

To build a bridge to the subject of entropy and the title of this reflection: I think the chaos that destroyed and still destroys the world system is the capitalism. We should come back to an understanding of the world as a whole system where we are a part of and which we can influence towards a more wholistic version. 

greetings, your alwayshungryandtired 

For my last weekly blog post I want to end with a comment about my first post, where I wrote about the new situation that we all have faced for the time we’ve spent here:

First of all I have to say that moving to another country within the erasmus programm wasn’t such a big deal as expected! Don’t get me wrong, I was very nervous and exicted, but because you are embedded in a university you always have a orientation and I’m happy I choosed this one as my first longterm experience abroad!

I was and am still quite surprised how quickly I created a new comfortzone for me in Athens! Aspecially for the daily life, which I was a bit afraid of in the beginning. Once again I expierenced that I love routines and need them to feel secure and arrived. This was for sure not the most difficult challenge to deal with during my Erasmus time. Are you wondering what it was then? Well, it was beeing myself even if my surroundings chanced completely! That was because I’m a person who has not that much social energy and need to reload it with a lot of me-time. At the same time I felt a huge pressure to meet as many persons as possible, go partying a lot, make lots of new friends and build lifelong relationsships with them! All this was so difficult for me to balance…can you relate?

In the end I think it was healthy for me to listen to my needs, but I wished I had done more to be honest. Nevertheless, I learned so much about myself during the last months and I’m more than grateful for that! Also this posts helped me to reflect more and put my thoughts in order!

greetings, your alwayshungryandtired

In todays class we watched a video about an artifical intelligence which had the function of a therapist. As shown in that video she has all the information that is needed in therapy and a lot more than that: She had all information about the patient and made that more than clear! But besides that she acted very “cold” and unempathetic. Even when she said something like: “Don’t worry, I want to help you.” it sounded so mechanic and gave me a really scary feeling while imagine that this could be real in the future!

As I explained in my other plog post about AI, I think one of the most important parts of the development of AIs is the reflexion and the discussion about the possitions, i which a AI could be helpful and in which it just would make things worse! And this would be the case if politicans/scientists would suggest an AI as a therapist! We need a human beeing as a therapist who is able to be kind, friendly and to create an atmosphere were the patients feel free to be themselfts and open up to them and of course he has to be educated in his field. Also its important that the patient tell the therapist only those things he want to work on! Also the therapist should notice tiny facial expressions and changes in the patient’s voice etc.. All these points wern’t the case in the video.

A friend of mine added in the group discussion that even not all human therapists are able to reach a high level of the skills that are needed for this job. How could an AI do this then?

To submit my thoughts: The work in therapy includes a complex relationship between two people and, as I do believe, has a lot to do with special human skills that never could be done by an Artifical Intelligence. Do you agree?

greetings, your alwayshungryandtired

First of all, I have to say that this movie was unpleasant to watch for me, because it seams like the film is a text read aloud, while the people who read it are filmed. There is nearly no plot or tension and the dialogues are the opposite of natural. But besides that I was very interested in the topics that have been discussed by them. Aspecially at the beginning: I agree totally with Sonia when she is saying that we need a different few of the world. So many routines and methods of acting need to be improved. And also the complex “world system”, which is divided into millions of other systems that are in connection with each other, needs to be established in the way politicans, developers, employers etc. are thinking and acting. There is a lot of work, even when I disagree with Sonia’s opion, that they all don’t think this way right now.

The detailed explanation of the structure of the atoms and the fact, that they have not a solid structure as scientists had believed was not that interesting for me, but when Sonia started to explain that all this is about interconnection and that there are even physical interconnections between humans and things, it was a small mind blowing moment for me: This means that the Systems theory is not only true in a sociological and psychological way, but also in a physical way! And this is amazing!

Also this fact reminds me of something that I have noticed quite often at my home university: Some people think that natural sciences and the humanities work against each other or at least try to explain the same things from different perspectives and only one side could have the right answer. For example when it cames to explanations about the society and humans it self. The question that arises often is as follows: “Is the certain topic explainable by socialization or evolution/genetics?”  Of course I know that certain topics are only explainable by one of them, but I believe that a huge percentage needs both fields to be fully explained. So all sciences have to work together to get a complete knowledge. But in many cases there is no exchange between those disciplines.

This short example reminds me once again of the importance to remember the interconnections that are everywhere in this world and no single perspective that can explain everything. There is no black and white, but a huge variety of grey shadings.

greetings, your alwayshungryandtired

In this post I want to give an update about my expierences during the semster as well as a reflexion and some criticism of the class:

I feel very unmotivated at this point of the semester. Also I‘m very tired and since last week it started to feel like the semester comes already to an end. It may be because of the coming christmas holidays or because I have organized my life after the Erasmus Semester in the last weeks…my thoughts are revolving around job and internship applications so I’m not very focused at the classes anymore. On one hand this makes me feel kind of disappointed of myself because first I’m missing the chance to learn something and second I can’t focus on the Erasmus semester in general as much as I would like to. But at the other hand its fun to organizing my life, to think about what I want to do next and it feels very good to have settled plans after my semester in greece!

All in all my expierences are much more dynamic than I thought they would be: At the beginning I was so excited and motivated, after that it started to feel more like daily life, more comfortable but less thrilling, and now I’m thinking about how it will be when I arrive home. I don’t expected that much change of my feelings about the university and Athens.

But back to the class of this week:  In general I like the course. It’s an interesting topic and the relaxed way of teaching works well for me. Also I enjoy the exchange in the small groups! But to be honest I wished we have  done more different things in this class to make it more exciting and variegating for everyone. Also I would have liked it more so far if we would had spoken more about certain topics in a deeply way than speak about so many different aspects of it in a superficial way. Maybe we could also answer other questions than before? And speek about more topic related things in the small groups?

What do you think about my suggestions?

greetings, your alwayshungryandtired

Artificial Intelligence is a multifaceted topic with very different kind of views to look at. First there is a technical and mathematic aspect which is very facinating for many people. The follow the improvements or work on it themselves. Second there is the question how to use it correctly. There are so many opportunities. For verious scientific subjects it could be or is already very useful to get new answers or get help for certain tasks by AIs. And theird there is the psychologiest and sociologiest view which is coming with different opinions how to use AI and what could be positive and negative about it for the idividual or the society. Both sides have valid arguments, but there are also extrem sides that think either AI will solve huge problems such as climatechange or it will destroy humanity/kill humans and will rule the world. Like so often I think, we will end up somewhere in the middle. There are definetly some things that scientists have to risk so that we can benefit as much as possible from AIs but at the same time they have to be very careful of how many power they transmit to them. especially when it comes to decision making. As we discussed today in our group, I think it’s very important that the goverments establish regulations that make sure that AIs cannot be used against human beeings, that there is a control person for decisions that are taken by AIs and so on.

For example some scientist are working on an AI that diagnoses the illnesses of patients in the health system. Many people think that a machine can be more accurate than a human doctor, but what about the humanity that gets lost? We need doctors that are talking to people in a emphatic way, don’t we?!

I would like to learn more about the negative consequences that results from human interactions with AI instead of interactions with humans. How do people react to a bad diagnose when its outspoken by an AI? Do people feel more or less safe with using AI for safety reasons and so on. I think it could change way more than some people expecting.

greetings, your alwayshungryandtired

It‘s always facinating for me to learn more about ants. Those little animals are able to do almost everything if they work together. Did you know that ants exist that build tree houses to escape the dangerous animals on the ground?

I think one reason why I’m so impressed by them is their self-organization. As explained in the video there is no ant-guide or something like that. Somehow they now exactly what to do. Or do they don’t know it but just following the others?

Because of their size they have to work together to manage their daily life. It’s mandatory for them in order to survive. I ask my self if it is so for human beeings aswell. Many people nowadays think that they need nobody else. They want to be free and independent. But what those people don’t realize is that they are part of a society from their birth. It’s impossible to be truly independent. Even if you live for your own in the nature you’re dependent on the weather, the plants and so on. But it might be a huge difference if you live in a self-organized ecosystem or in the society, which is built by human beeings.

Is the society a self-organized system? An argument for it is that human beeings act and interact in the society without thinking about it and without someone who is telling them what to do. An argument against it is that a society is most of the time ruled by someone who make rules for the society and is controlling some aspects of it. Maybe some parts of it are self-organized and some others not.
In any case, we can learn so much about teamwork from the ants.

greetings, your alwayshungryandtired

Last week we talked about home. We were allowed to hear personal stories of the homes of the others and we had to think about our special connection to our own home. First, it was amazing to hear such different stories about places from all over the world, that you get to know not often from this perspective. 

Second, this task was very special for me because it’s not a question that I’m often asked. As soon as I started to think about it, many memories started to pop up in my head and I had to choose one! But I realized that not a single thing can explain this unique feeling. For me it’s indescribable. How would you describe it?  

A group of the course concluded their thoughts as follows: “It’s not a place that make it your home, but the people”. That might be true in some cases but for me it’s a combination of both, because when I create memories with my friends or family at some place over a long time the memories are bound to the people but also to the place.  

And in general, I think nearly everything can make you feel home: A landscape, a language, food or drinks, a smell and of course your loved ones. It’s confusing for me that “home” is a combination of thousands of things for me, but when I connect myself with one fragment of it, I get the whole feeling of home. Why?  

Now that I’m thinking about this topic, I ask myself also if more places than one can give me this feeling. My guess is, that you can have a similar feeling to many places, in my country it’s often called “second home”, it’s very close to the feeling of home but it’s not exactly the same. I hope that I can call Athens my second home after some months. 

greetings, your alwayshungryandtired 

When you have lived your whole life in the same city or the same area as I did before I went to Athens, you find yourself in a total new situation when you travel to another country to live there. Not only in a new situation but also in a new feeling.  

Why? First, you’re faced with managing the everyday life in another culture and living habitat. And second, nobody knows you! For me this has been and is still very refreshing. I was used to live at a place where nearly everybody knows me for a long time. I never realized this before I went to Athens, but as soon as I arrived here, I understood that many people saw me as a person that I have been in the past but that I’m not anymore. Or leastwise not totally. I guess that’s normal because everybody changes themselves during life and especially during your early life. And people that joined you at this journey tend to see you not as the version of yourself that you are now, but as a collectivity of all your development levels. Of course, this is a great value because to be accepted for your completely self and having strong connections with your friends and family is a wonderful feeling and for many people one of the most important things in life. 

But sometimes it can be hindering for your growing. We all have some characteristics that we don’t like about ourselves, but we accept them as a part of us. But there are also some that we want to forget or at least don’t be remembered of them when we meet people. This can be things that you left behind you, but fellow human beings believe that this is still a part of you. I think this happens subconsciously.  

But because nobody in Athens knows my past, I can give a new impression of myself. And this allows me to see myself in a different few as well! And that’s why I enjoy the situation I’m in right now so much! I feel like we all are white pages that meet other white pages. There is no drawer that I must fit in or that I’m using to range you. This has also a lot to do with the fact that we’re all in the same situation, we’re all open-minded people that want to meet people. 

I had the same feeling at the first course meeting last Thursday. It’s so easy for me to connect with people at the moment, even if I was kind of shy in a meet-new-people-situation at home. Getting to know this new page of myself is giving me so much self-confidence and I hope that I’ll keep these feelings when I return home. 

greetings, your alwayshungryandtired