Friday 31 August 2007

Opinion formation in real societies

When I have published the previous post, which was simply prompted by my personal interest in modelling social phenomena using some tools coming from physics, I had absolutely no idea of connecting it to current turmoil in Polish politics.

For those of you from abroad, who (rightly so) are not really interested in Polish power struggle, I owe a brief exposition: the Polish government, since about a month led by minority Law and Justice party is making crazier and crazier decisions. Should you want to look, with imparial eye on the situation, here is the Reuters news bite Polish government critic detained, opposition outraged.
The opposition and human rights groups say the government's anti-corruption drive has turned into a witch-hunt in which anyone who does not share the ruling party's views is branded a criminal or a traitor to Polish interests.

But this blog is not political (although I do have very definite political opinions). So why do I mention the topic? It is because of the statement issued by the Prime Minister to Gazeta Pomorska, in which he reiterates not only his opinions about the existence of `the system' (układ) - setup of criminal activities linking everybody to everybody (excluding only his closest collaborators). This is old story. But the interview confirms that the government conducts a scientific investigation using computer model that shows that the układ is real!

Wow! And I called for developing the model only two days ago! There must be really powerful people reading my blog.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Today's issue of my favourite Polish weekly opinion magazine Polityka brings an article commenting "scientific" modelling of Układ. Worth reading.
For those, who can read in Polish: Sieć rzuca cień

Xawer