John Freeslow
About John Freeslow
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Jan Kuban (nom de plume - John Freeslow) - scientist and entrepreneur, founder and CEO of the Quality Business Software Company from Warsaw, mountaineer and mountaineering instructor, a traveler, an activist for freedom and economic development, polyglot, coach of young entrepreneurs, creator of Q-Line IT technology, biocybernetics, author of the books: "The Physics of Life", "The 59 keys for understanding the beginning of life" and "Backstage of Polish Democracy. Citizen and the System". "The guy who bluntly and in plain speech lectures on running your own business and encourages and motivates listeners to invest in their own personal development. We highly recommend his dictionary of The Physics of Life, indispensable to anyone who is interested in understanding the mechanisms that govern our reality. |
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| Interview with the author |
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What made you think about The Physics of Life? "Why?" ?! Perhaps the most important question is “Why?” I asked myself the same question at an early age when I did not understand many things, so I thought about the answers and also asked my friends. In the latter case, my curiosity was so strong that I often risked facing ridicule. I have always wanted to know the reasons and causes of things, what happens to make things as they are. This is a major passion in my life.
The second element that I discovered, relatively quickly, is that people are lying. In 1969, my father, a metallurgist expert, went to work in the Soviet Union and took me, so from the ages of 10 to 14 I was taught in an average school in Moscow. I thought myself as an independent observer of the Soviet system, and I saw many examples of exaggeration from the Soviet media. I remember being surprised that in almost every news broadcast on the radio a report was given stating that the Soviet Union had collected so many quintals per hectare, concluding that the Soviet Union was the global leader in food production. However, from the age of five, I used to go shopping in the grocery store and I realised that there was a greater selection of goods in Poland than in the Soviet Union, and less queues. Since 1991, managing my own business has led me to conclude that to succeed in the business world you need to know about the development of the human psyche and basic social mechanisms.
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Why did you decide to write a book? I know a lot about how a company operates and I wanted to share this knowledge. Moreover, I discovered a lot of new things that I did not know about. The desire to write a book was always inside me, coming out occasionally, telling my friends that I will write it eventually. The turning point came when I spoke to Joseph Pietrucha, with whom I worked with whilst doing my thesis at Warsaw Polytechnic, and he asked me why I had not written anything yet. This was the spark that lit the literary fuse. I started with an outline, calculating the topics that I should address. It turned out that, in order to explain well how a company works I had to explain peoples behaviour. To do this I needed to describe a person completely in a biological context, and more I have to provide strict rules of thought - the mathematico-physical basics of thought. And so I started. I thought it would take me a couple of pages, no more. Of course, I was wrong. Describing the basics of systems theory, game theory, cybernetics and all the other necessary theories took 165 pages, which in itself can be a book. I found, however, that all my arguments would be worthless if I did not explain, step-by-step, how the process works which creates living objects, starting not from the biological cell but from the very beginning - from the chemical elements from which we are formed. And it worked. I managed to gather knowledge from a wide variety of books, to add new elements, to understand, to unify all the knowledge and in the second part of the book to logically describe how life was established. |
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Are not you afraid that the word physics will deter potential readers? No, I do not think in this way. Maybe my thinking is wrong, but the title for a work of non-fiction should not be used as a marketing tool but as a provider of the subject matter. Besides, if I focus on such temporary things such as sales, I will not have time to write. Returning to the initial question, the title may deter people. The average person does not like the word physics, but on the other hand, I am writing about sheer physics, how life arose step-by-step, how living objects were created and how their subsequent generations turned into something like you and me. |
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What are you working on now? "Physics of man" is about the most difficult I have ever done and I do not know if I will live long enough to finish this book! Now I'm working on "Absolute thinking", because on the basis of this book, my prospective successors will be able to write about human physics. I write parallel drafts quite extensively - so I try to collect, classify and adapt the material to "Physics of the company". |
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"Absolute thinking" - what is it? I defined "thinking" as an analysis of the behaviour of abstract models of reality created in the brain. There are two goals of this analysis: the understanding of reality and generating the right decision. I have found that we think in the wrong way. Firstly we are not objective. There are two things which blind us: our self-interest and the interests of social groups to which we belong. Both of these distort our perception of reality, as well as our decision-making. Secondly, we do not have the appropriate methods of analysis. This is due to the fact that schools educate mainly in a reductionist way of thinking, and the opportunity to learn about systemic thinking is only found at some universities, and about game-theory thinking, none. This reductionist way of thinking, deeply rooted in the media plus our conformity, causes, in my opinion, that, as I said, we think in the wrong way. The book "Absolute thinking" has the three following goals:
My dream is that after reading "Absolute thinking" people will strive to fully understand each other and realize that, in the words of Cicero: nothing is more shameful than to affirm before knowing. |
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Newton said that he owes his discovery to the fact that he stood on the shoulders of giants. Will you have giants beneath you?
Oh yes, a lot! |
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What do you miss the most?
Contacting people who share the passion of the discovery and understanding of the nature of things By the way, I call this phenomenon the Prometheus syndrome: you're doing something really useful and, in return, somebody causes you eternal pain. Also significant are the words of Max Planck, undoubtedly based on his own experience: new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing and enlightening opponents, but due to the fact that they die and a new generation grows up with knowledge of a new truth. The first review of "Physics of Life", which appeared on the internet, exactly followed the Beveridge schematic. A vicious attack was carried out by a lady with a doctoral title, and the most interesting thing was that, at the very beginning, she admitted that she had only read the introduction. Returning to the question: I am sorry that I am alone, like Mendel, but on the other hand I am very glad that I have not been guillotined yet, like Lavoisier. And because I could not find many with whom I could share my findings amongst my peers, I am trying to bring the physics of life to young people. |
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What role was played by the fact that you have created and you built up your own company? Huge. For about 10 years I was an employee of the Department of Biocybernetics at the Warsaw Institute of Sport. There I learned the theory of systems, I was creating computer programmes for tactical and strategic analysis in various sports and I was introduced to game theory. Then running my own company forced me into the practical use of both of these theories. I would argue that running your own company, operating in the market of new technologies, is the best school of life. I am faced with not only physical issues, information technology and economics but also to the whole sphere of human behaviours. First, just like Lech Walesa, I thought that when we were freed from the shackles of communism Poland (economically weak at this time) will quickly build a second Japan (economic power), but life quickly deflated my optimism. It turned out that no one had taught me that people can, for example, cheat or steal. It does not happen everywhere or all the time, however the effects of such actions may affect us all. Since one of my main personality traits is the desire to compete, I expected my business to grow exponentially. I started to read a lot. I chose factual books, such as diaries and scientific journals on management. It turned out that this knowledge, I had missed and no one had taught me, was as scattered crumbs. I started to collect them and put them together, and over time more questions began to appear. Because I want to understand the basics of everything. The answers to the most fundamental questions I found, what is hard to believe, in the textbooks of organic chemistry and biology. And putting the crumbs together using my theoretical background gained at the Institute plus years of working with people, led me to the discovery of the physics of life. This knowledge that no one had taught me... |
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How has sport influenced you? I once met with a very interesting definition of sport: the simulation of the struggle for life without the risk of loss. Because, as you know, as defined by the physics of life, life is a game of resources, so any sport brings about all life issues. Training is a process of self-improvement, competitions are a confrontation and feedback whether my self-improvement process is going in the right direction. A team is a collaboration focused on confrontation. Victory, in turn, often depends on a few insignificant details, like life. I love sport, but as a child playing football I was worse than average, in martial arts it was similar. In high school I tried many disciplines: fencing, wrestling, basketball and judo. But it was only in college that I discovered that I was perfectly suited for climbing. It was my discipline and I was devoted to it for 15 years. |
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How has mountaineering helped you? I learnt how to plan may path and find the most effective way to reach my goal. I also found out how important it is to pay attention to details; in the mountains, the smallest mistake can kill you! Besides, as someone once said, every climber is unique in his own way and therefore, staying in the environment of intelligent and brave people was a better teaching source than television. |
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What has given you the greatest pleasure in your research? A few things:
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What is science for you? Discoveries, generalizations and creating better and better cognitive models, and, if possible, building better prognostic models. |
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People are saying that you work a lot? I would put it this way: I perform pretty well. |
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What do you think prevents a worldwide popularization of the physics of life? There are several factors, but the most important is the third principle of life, which shows that people do not search for the truth, but they look for tools to fulfill their hierarchy of needs. To make anything popular, you need to constantly widen the circle of people interested in the further transfer of this knowledge. People tend to transfer their own judgements and opinions rather than accepting new models of cognition, which are quite complicated, and still do not generate money quickly. Solzhenitsyn put it quite aptly: I have to admit that politics takes up too much time of the educated people, proportionately, far too much time. They soak it up from magazines and newspapers containing too many political items, although these items are very fleeting and short-lived. Of course, everywhere in the world there are people, not just writers, who deal with matters of a higher order, but they always have a modest audience, and they sometimes seem to be a group of strangers from the periphery of life. However, the truth is that the more spiritual items and something so damn trivial as politics can not be compared at all. Modern society is no longer able to discuss the fundamental issues of life and death anymore. People are ready to stuff themselves with anything and talk about everything, just to prevent themselves from thinking about the most important ones. It is a cause of progressive pettiness of our society, the fact that it focuses on small and insignificant matters. See, almost all of us, at the beginning of our lives, learns about Lenin, Napoleon, and Che Guevara, and it is usually in a positive sense (As far as Napoleon and England are concerned the sense is negative). But nobody teaches children the classic of social thought enshrined for example in the humble book "The Psychology of the crowd", written one hundred and fifty years ago by Gustave Le Bon. This is an example of a treasure trove of knowledge about which, unfortunately, little is known. Neither the people in power nor the media are not interested in popularizing this knowledge, because such popularization brings no benefits. Incidentally, today this great work can be bought for the price of just two cans of the cheapest beer. As you can see the economy is merciless: there is no supply, because you can't make a profit, and the demand for the unknown does not exist, because how can you want something, if you do not have the faintest idea that "something" even exists. In addition, certain ideas, such as rumours, are self-supporting and self-replicating, which is not the case of Newton's anf physics of life's principles. |
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If the "golden fish" from the proverb could grant you one wish, what would it be? I understand you mean an unrealistic wish? I would like to change the media from stupefying the people and making them reliant on the state, to teaching the people and try to establish the essence and root of things. In other words, i would like journalists to think in an absolute way rather than in a reductionist way, so they think pro-socially (which does not mean in a socialist way) rather than servilistic. |
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And finally, tell me in one sentence what is, "Physics of Life"? In this book I collected the previous knowledge in many areas of science, and I've added a few elements, in the most understandable way that I could, I described a general theory that explains all phenomena of life, from chemical particles to societies. |
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will answer the questions you want to answer to:
You are invited to take part in a lecture explaining the physics of life. A unique exploration into the world as we know but have limited understanding of. An interesting insight how we got to this place and how we must proceed. The Physics of Life is an advanced and logically consistent attempt to define the physical laws and rules of life, resulting in the emergence of living objects out of chemical particles, which has been continually transforming and are still functioning. The only definitive guide for life in all its forms. Cognitive model supplied by the physics of life is complete, logical, consistent, universal and understandable in any language. From now on, anyone with a little intellectual effort, can comprehend the social processes, the next step is to answer the question can we make them better. |
