Unfixed ambiguities lead to errors in interpretation. The errors accumulate and snowball. All people have been raised in environments like that and continue to live in them.
This causes pain because our minds are capable of communicating unambiguously, but we don’t know how.
We are semiotic animals, beings that live in semiotic jungles.
Our pain and error-ridden communication makes us mean, simple, greedy, stupid, violent, selfish, crazy.
Communication errors, misinterpretations, cause ghosts to form in the mind. We need to imagine a role for ourselves and others, but since we experience so many errors, our imaginings are fundamentally wrong. They are like ghosts in our minds.
We are as ghosts speaking and listening to each other.
Russians regard Poland and Lithuania as their greatest enemies among a list of 12 countries (not including Ukraine) presented to them in a survey by the Levada Center, an independent polling organisation.
Asked how they assess the countries, 62% of respondents said that Poland and Lithuania are “enemies”. That was more than for the United Kingdom (57%), Germany (50%), Sweden (40%), United States (27%), Israel (25%), Turkey (3%), Iran (2%), North Korea (2%), China (1%) and India (1%).
Meanwhile, only 2% of Russians see Poland as a “friend”, the same proportion as for the UK and Sweden. The figure was even lower, at 1%, for Lithuania, Germany, and the US. Russians were much more likely to see China (29%), North Korea (28%), India (24%) and Iran (18%) as friends.
While that survey question did not include Ukraine, another part of the study, which asked respondents to name five countries that are the most unfriendly or hostile towards Russia, did.
The question has been asked by the Levada Center since 2005, and its results show that, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russians have generally been more likely to see Poland, Germany and the US as unfriendly or hostile than Ukraine.
However, the proportion regarding the US as unfriendly or hostile dropped sharply in 2025, with the Levada Center noting that last year saw a “Trump effect” in which attitudes towards the US warmed among Russians.
No report from China or on China can be believed without doubt, but this one sounds credible. This is an example of raw Kill-Or-Be-Killed (KOBK) Game Theory occurring within China. Xi Jinping has no way to be sure his enemies have all been neutralized; nor does he even have a clear sense of who his enemies are. So psychologically he is forced to take out as many suspects and potential enemies as he can. Intellectually, KOBK rules demand he do something like this, based on how he understands his situation. The kill in KOBK means only to render impotent and not necessarily kill. In cases like this, however, you can be sure many are being killed under KOBK reasoning. KOBK Game Theory rules the world of top players and thousands of wannabes.
Another example of KOBK Game Theory: By obliterating Iran’s nuclear facilities, Trump ‘killed’ Iran’s ultimate military prowess. Simultaneously, it seems, Trump also ‘killed’ Netanyahu’s never-ending reason for USA to go to war for Israel. Moreover, by forming the Gaza Board of Peace, and thus preventing Netanyahu and Jewish Supremists from controlling Gaza’s future, Trump has ‘killed’ them as well. This is speculation, but to me it seems likely that Trump has made these deft, even elegant, political moves, which should go a long way toward ensuring a better future for the region, USA and the world. Time will tell. ABN
This is reportedly from a few years ago in Taiwan before Jensen became super-rich and famous. Nothing very special about it except it shows a dimension of Taiwan culture and Jensen’s personality. They eventually sing a song in English. It’s a good ‘slice of life’ video. ABN
Jensen Huang speaks Taiwanese Hokkien and Mandarin Chinese, though his Mandarin is described as “rusty” and learned later in life. He was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and grew up speaking Taiwanese Hokkien with his parents, who were native speakers. He began learning Mandarin in the 1980s while working at AMD to communicate with Chinese photomask workers. He has since spoken Mandarin in public, including a notable speech at the 2025 China International Supply Chain Expo, where he said, “I am very happy to be here in China,” in Mandarin. He also frequently uses Taiwanese Hokkien when in Taiwan and has been seen speaking it in public events and interviews.
Speech proscriptions can be overt with legal ramifications.
Or they can be sort of covert, couched in ideas like good manners, respect, make no waves, maintain friendly relations, follow group norms, etc.
I believe the covert ones happen most basically because almost all people are terrible at speaking their own subjective truths. And this leads to being terrible at hearing others’ subjective truths, even if they are well-expressed which is rare.
This problem arises from the pervasive, inherent ambiguity of language in general but especially spoken language.
Speech flies by and we are required to extract coherent meaning from bits of it. We make stories out of it and judge people, including ourselves, based on bad evidence.
Ambiguity in speech also requires us to maintain the same personas and most of the same beliefs for decades. We travel in herds of ideological banality due to it.
Staying the same, conforming to the group, is a way of displaying a profoundly diminished species of unambiguous meaning, even though we may sense that deep down the whole thing is a bad game.
I used to be bothered by this, but stopped after I figured out FIML and practiced it with my partner for a few years.
After maybe five years, our speech started to become so much clearer it didn’t even feel like the same medium anymore. After ten years, it got so good it seems we may have transcended psychology as it is normally conceived.
This happened because psychology as normally conceived is massively based on speech ambiguity and the ways people react to it. Fact is, you probably should feel a bit crazy in most interpersonal situations because speech proscriptions mixed with compounding ambiguities cannot possibly allow the psychological freedom needed to be cognitively healthy.
This level of incompetence mixed with deliberate corruption is rife throughout USA. Most of it appears to be in Dem states which have drifted into woke emotionalism and concomitant corruption. The buck should have stopped at the governor’s office. At the national level, corruption is much the same, though much worse and more entrenched. All large organizations are susceptible to corruption and weak employees who dare not do the right thing. Many organizations can live a long time while burdened with parasites, but in the end, entire civilizations fall for these reasons. ABN
I have only spot watched segments of this but what I saw was good. Besides being interesting in itself, this topic is valuable for Buddhists as it shows the power and allure of delusions and how they can entrap us, especially if supported by many and by money. ABN
American Buddhist Net 