Be on guard of rational thinking

On April 10, 2014, in the Moscow cafe “Tomorrow”, as part of the public lectures “Polit.ru”, the celebration of the 6th anniversary of our newspaper took place. We publish two short performances from this event.

Boris Stern, editor -in -chief:

Firstly, it is very pleasant that so many people have gathered, and to see so many very pleasant faces in front of them-now it is quite rare. Here I see many authors of the Trinity Option, which is also very cool. Well, now a few words about politics, and where you get from this. In order to end this and no longer return to this today.

From the last anniversary, as you know, many events have occurred, and the principle of ““ Trinity version ”was not always successful, because it climbed into all the cracks, this same politics ... Over the past year, the reform of the Academy of Sciences has passed, and now“ Crimea-Nash ”has come. We will still remain outside the policy, but we still will not always turn out to be, and therefore we need to indicate our position.

The position is simple: you need to do the opposite of what the surrounding life and the general line [party] requires you. The general line from us requires to brand enemies, and we will look for friends. And in Ukraine, I think that it is very important to promote the Trinity option, to find more authors there. The general line pushes us to such a “bestial” seriousness, and we will, I think, are more to ironize and treat everything with humor, including ourselves.

Well, what, what calls do our life put before us now? In the three-hobby, everything is fine with us, say, with physicists and with biologists, but now life requires good authors: sociologists, psychologists and even psychiatrists (laughter in the hall). I urge everyone who is sitting here, to look for such people, to try to sprinkle them somehow.

This is such an iron direction of our newspaper: to stand guard of rational thinking. Here we must stand like a rock and teach people to think rationally. Because such a terrible thing happens when, it would seem, inter alia, good scientists, suddenly completely lose their vision of a normal scientist and begin to evaluate what is happening, choosing facts on the one hand, just as if a person never heard what observation selection is. And these are good scientists of a high level. Therefore, for us cards in our hands, for this we must stand a mountain, so that a person who has read the “Trinity Option” would be easier to see the world with clear eyes from all sides. And here, physicists, biologists, and mathematicians, and psychologists, and psychiatrists are needed.

- Tell me, please, is it supposed to publish the “Trinity option” in English, French, German and Chinese, and send it to foreign countries and libraries? Thank you.

- We do not have enough strength for this, even for the English -speaking version. In principle, of course, such thoughts occurred to the head, but so far we are just “weak”. But this does not mean that we refuse it. Now, in fact, we are talking about something: about surviving. This is the priority task - to survive and expand in Russian, including in neighboring countries.

Mikhail Gelfand : ... I will try to talk in an unusual way for myself not about the bad, but good and comment on the discussion of the report of Pavel Chebotarev. He, answering questions, said that one of the areas of studying altruism is economic games and mathematical modeling of the behavior of the altruist population, which Cheaters (deceivers) fall into. If in the altruist population a mutation happens and he becomes a crook, then it hits this population at a wild speed, the population dies, and you can’t do anything.

My favorite result, which was published almost in Science , is different from what Pavel said. He said that 10% of altruists can save a whole country of egoists from ruin. And there the result is the opposite. We have altruists, Cheaters, and we add a third variety of people - those who follow the order. These are those people who are ready to give part of their resource to punish the crooks.

The newspaper "Trinity Option" for six years, apparently, has been doing exactly this. In addition to the education, which is an essential part of what we are trying to do, some noticeable part of the work, including the Dissernet column, which was told by Andrei Rostovtsev, is the punishment of Cheaters. One of the most powerful compliments that I once heard was this: I accidentally heard someone told someone about his boss that he refused to do some kind of disgrace, because he decided that you would not hide it, but in the Trinity version they would write about it.

Thanks to everyone who took part in this holiday, and I hope that we will have been overcome for some time.

The authors of the five best questions received a free annual subscription on behalf of our authors: astronomer Vladimir Surdin, teacher of mathematics Sergey Rushshin, mathematics-applied Pavel Chebotarev, physics of Nikolai Sybeldin, biologist Elena Pavlova.