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Showing posts from May, 2017

“Birds of a feather flock together” - Building a Tribe Detection System

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As voiced by his press secretary Sean Spicer, US President Donald Trump frequently seems to live in an alternative reality. Reality is different for every living being, and that of course includes us humans.   Artists illustrate this very nicely, for them what is truth might change from one day to the next. For example, famous French painter and sculptor Matisse changed his perception of truth quite drastically over two years, repeatedly sculpting his model Jeannette from 1910 to 1913, shown in the progression of heads just below from highly realistic to highly abstract. There are however groups of people, whose realities and definitions of what is “truth” are quite similar within their group. I call those groups “tribes”. Tribes, as defined in anthropology, share a name, a sacred symbol, rituals and beliefs, and they trust their leaders. For example, a well-known (although highly negative) example of how tribes are defined was Nazi Germany. It had its own name, the