SOCIAL NETWORK - Social Network to promote peace

How can Web 2.0 services support Open Society? This is the question we would like you to raise with this post Web 2.0 are second generation web-based communities, social-networks, wikis, folksonomies, etc. These services have one benefit in common: to facilitate collaboration and sharing between peers. We strongly believe that Web 2.0 can be a useful tool to support Open Society.These are some potential uses of Web 2.0 to support Open Society:
- social networks: create an open social network, which can facilitate users in keeping current connections; extend their network of peers; foster discussion about democracy, human rights and Open Society at large, especially in countries which are not yet open societies.
- wikis: to share facts, possible explanations and forecasts about Open Society.
- shared bookmarks: to identify already existing useful resources about democracy, human rights and Open Society at large.
- forum: to promote an open, responsible and fair debate among users, regardless of their opinion.
- blogs: to ensure sources independent information, even where freedom of press is not protected.
- online activism tools: to identify meritable projects, and then channel our energies to support them.

George Soros is the son of the Esperanto writer Teodoro Schwartz. Teodoro (also known as Tivadar) was a Hungarian Jew who was a prisoner of war during and after World War I and eventually escaped from Russia to rejoin his family in Budapest.

The family changed its name in 1936 from Schwartz to Soros, in response to the Fascist threat to Jews. Tivadar liked the new name because it is a palindrome and because it has a meaning. Though the specific meaning is left unstated in Kaufmann’s biography, in Hungarian “soros” means “next in line, or designated successor”, and in Esperanto it means “will soar”. Tivadar wrote of his ordeal to survive in Fascist Hungary, and help many people escape it, in his book Maskerado.

Born August 12, 1930, in Budapest, Hungary, as György Schwartz, George Soros is an American stock investor, philanthropist, and political activist. He peacefully promotes democracy in USA and abroad.

Currently, he is the chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute and is also a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. His support for the Solidarity labor movement in Poland, as well as the Czechoslovakian human rights organization Charter 77, contributed to ending Soviet Union political dominance in those countries. His funding and organization of Georgia’s Rose Revolution was considered by Russian and Western observers to have been crucial to its success, although Soros said his role has been “greatly exaggerated.” In the United States, he is known for having donated large sums of money in a failed effort to defeat President George W. Bush’s bid for re-election in 2004.

Soros has a keen interest in philosophy, and his philosophical outlook is largely influenced by Karl Popper, under whom he studied at the London School of Economics. His Open Society Institute is named after Popper’s two volume work, The Open Society and Its Enemies, and Soros’s ongoing philosophical commitment to the principle of ‘fallibilism’ (that anything he believes may in fact be wrong, and is therefore to be questioned and improved) stems from Popper’s philosophy. Some critics argue that Soros’ static political beliefs appear to conflict with the critical rationalism espoused by Popper, though Soros argues that these beliefs were arrived at through such rationalism.

Soros’ writings focus heavily on the concept of reflexivity, where the biases of individuals are seen as entering into market transactions, potentially changing the fundamentals of the economy. Soros argued that such transitions in the fundamentals of the economy are typically marked by disequilibrium rather than equilibrium in the economy, and that the conventional economic theory of the market (the ‘efficient market hypothesis’) does not apply in these situations.

Whether Soros is theoretically right or wrong on this issue, he certainly has the market credentials and proven track record to effectively maintain that his theory of reflexivity is practically relevant in the marketplace — at least for him. Soros has popularized the concepts of dynamic disequilibrium, static disequilibrium, and near-equilibrium conditions.

Reflexivity is based in three main ideas:

(1) Reflexivity is best observed under special conditions where investor bias grows and spreads throughout the investment arena. Examples of factors that may give rise to this bias include (a) equity leveraging or (b) the trend-following habits of speculators.

(2) Reflexivity appears intermittently since it is most likely to be revealed under certain conditions; i.e., the equilibrium process’s character is best considered in terms of probabilities.

(3) Investors’ observation of and participation in the capital markets may at times influence valuations AND fundamental conditions or outcomes.

Soros argues that the current system of financial speculation undermines healthy economic development in many underdeveloped countries. Soros blames many of the world’s problems on the failures inherent in what he characterizes as market fundamentalism. His opposition to many aspects of globalization has made him a controversial figure. Victor Niederhoffer said of Soros: “Most of all, George believed even then in a mixed economy, one with a strong central international government to correct for the excesses of self-interest.” Soros draws a distinction between being a participant in the market and working to change the rules that market participants must follow.

Credits: Wikipedia (edited as necessary)
Links:
George Soros Official Website
Open Society Institute and George Soros Foundation Network
George Soros: recent interviews
George Soros: video interview at Google
George Soros: MP3 interview on “The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror”

Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH, FRS, FBA, (July 28, 1902 – September 17, 1994), was an Austrian-born British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. He is counted among the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century, and also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy. Popper is perhaps best known for repudiating the classical observationalist-inductivist account of scientific method by advancing empirical falsifiability as the criterion for distinguishing scientific theory from non-science; and for his vigorous defense of liberal democracy and the principles of social criticism which he took to make the flourishing of the “open society” possible.

In The Open Society and Its Enemies and The Poverty of Historicism, Karl Popper developed a critique of historicism and a defence of the ‘Open Society’ and liberal democracy. Historicism is the theory that history develops inexorably and necessarily according to knowable general laws towards a determinate end. Popper argued that this view is the principal theoretical presupposition underpinning most forms of authoritarianism and totalitarianism. He argued that historicism is founded upon mistaken assumptions regarding the nature of scientific law and prediction. Since the growth of human knowledge is a causal factor in the evolution of human history, and since “no society can predict, scientifically, its own future states of knowledge”, it follows, he argued, that there can be no predictive science of human history. For Popper, metaphysical and historical indeterminism go hand in hand.

In the same book, he defines an “open society” as one which ensures that political leaders can be overthrown without the need for bloodshed, as opposed to a “closed society”, in which a bloody revolution or coup d’état is needed to change the leaders. He further describes an open society as one “in which individuals are confronted with personal decisions” as opposed to a “magical or tribal or collectivist society”. In this context, tribalistic and collectivist societies do not distinguish between natural laws and social customs. Individuals are unlikely to challenge traditions they believe to have a sacred or magical basis. The beginnings of an open society are thus marked by a distinction between natural and man-made law, and an increase in personal responsibility and accountability for moral choices. (Note that Popper did not see this as incompatible with religious belief). Popper argues that the ideas of individuality, criticism, and humanitarianism cannot be suppressed once people become aware of them, and therefore that it is impossible to return to the closed society. Attempts to do so would necessarily involve brutal and anti-humanitarian measures.

Popper’s concept of the open society is epistemological rather than political. Based on his theory that knowledge is provisional and fallible, it implies that society must be open to alternative points of view. Claims to certain knowledge and ultimate truth leads to the imposition of one version of reality. Such a society is closed to freedom of thought. In contrast, in an open society every citizen needs to form his or her own view of reality and that requires freedom of thought and expression and the cultural and legal institutions that can facilitate this. An open society also has to be pluralistic and multicultural, in order to benefit from the maximum number of viewpoints possible to the given problems.

Humanitarianism, equality and political freedom are fundamental characteristics of an open society. Another important characteristic of an open society is competition for social status. Indeed, social mobility is sometimes used as a measure of the ‘openness’ of society. The importance of social mobility for an open society was recognised by Pericles’, a statesman of the Athenian democracy, in his funeral oration: “…advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life.”

Democracies are examples of the “open society”, whereas totalitarian dictatorships and autocratic monarchies are examples of the “closed society”.

Popper’s influence, both through his work in philosophy of science and through his political philosophy, has also extended beyond the academy. Among Popper’s students and advocates at the London School of Economics is the multibillionaire investor George Soros, who says his investment strategies are modelled on Popper’s understanding of the advancement of knowledge through falsification. Among Soros’s philanthropic foundations is the Open Society Institute, a think-tank named in honour of Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies, which Soros founded to advance the Popperian defense of the open society against authoritarianism and totalitarianism. We also provide more detailed informationa about George Soros.

Credits: Wikipedia (edited as necessary)