Just numbers. Notes about the Nature of a Digital World

Only digits really exist in the digital world as only matter exists in a material world. In the first one, all physical things are pure abstraction, similarly as all numbers in the second one. Digits are the only substance of the digital worlds. This hi-tech Pythagoreanism leads to a very serious consequences, not only for philosophy, but also for practice. Various concepts and rules, evident here, in the digital world may not work at all, or work improperly, and guide us to absurds when used mindlessly.

Intelligence as a tool of Chinese foreign policy – contribution to research

The article takes up the problem of Chinese intelligence as a tool of support foreign policy. In the first place, the theoretical concepts and assumptions concerning this domain of state policy have been systematized. A review of selected foreign policy definitions in Polish-language political literature was conducted in this respect. Next the authors discussed the specificity of foregin policy determinants, structures and instruments. The key determinants of China’s foreign policy of political, military, geographic, economic, and doctrinal character were discussed in following part of article. In the last part of the paper, an attempt was made to answer the question of how the above conditions affect the demand and performance of Chinese intelligence activities.

Intelligence Creation: Information Activities in the Field of Security Policy

The enormous changes and constant developments in the applications of technology and communication have changed the way the world is perceived. The information revolution has impacted intelligence gathering, processing, analysis and dissemination, as well as how decision-makers can access reliable information in a timely manner, and the sources they are likely to rely on when concrete information is needed to make decisions. This article attempts to describe, analyze and explain the nature of the ongoing information revolution, its main impact on intelligence and security policy, and the importance of intelligence analysis in the context of peacekeeping operations.

The material scope of the research problem presented in the text encompasses the issues concerned with the possibilities for and limitations of recruiting secret collaborators by the Polish civilian intelligence service. The analysis of the problematics of secret collaboration focuses mainly on institutional and legal aspects, which can be seen in its inclusion in the systemic legal perspective, encompassing such dimensions as administrative and legal, criminal and legal, civil and legal, and ethical one. Next to the normative aspects, the text addresses sociological and psychological aspects of recruiting secret collaborators by special services, thereby depicting the main recruitment methods. The methodology adopted is chiefly based on the institutional and legal approach, in which use is made of, inter alia, textual, functional and systemic interpretations. The problem of possible abuse concerned with the recruitment of secret collaborators by special services is illustrated with an abstract case study and a relevant legal interpretation. Besides, to extend the analysis of psychological and sociological aspects of recruiting secret collaborators, the study uses limited open interviews with former officers of the civilian special services operating in Poland before 1990.

The research study presents the results of observations on the relation of cognitive style adaptation-innovation, creativity levels, as well as traditionally understood intelligence and capacity factors of personality. Differences between adaptors and innovators are observed in relation to selected personality factors. A comparison of cognitive style among our candidates of teaching and other population files in the world is interested, too.

The presented study is devoted to the examination of the threshold hypothesis (TH), which assumes a curvilinear relation between creative abilities and intelligence. The article focuses on methodological problems, particularly on analytical strategies relevant to confirming or refuting the TH. The TH was tested on more than 100 middle-school students. Intelligence was measured by Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM) test, and creative abilities by eight divergent production tests measuring fluency and originality of thinking. Different criteria of acceptance / rejection of the TH were applied and discussed. The TH was confirmed when the relation between creative abilities and intelligence under the threshold was greater than zero, while above the threshold it was not different from zero (the so-called A strategy). However, the TH was refuted when differences in the strength of the correlation below and above the assumed threshold of intelligence were compared (B and C strategies).

In the present paper a triad of intelligence – task solving strategies – cognitive styles is taken into account Rather than renouncing the traditional methods of studying intelligence, it was decided that separate qualitative ways of information processing, constituting the underlying cause in solving test tasks, shall be explained with the example of the Wechsler`s WAIS-R Scale of Intelligence in order to show their relationship with interindividual diversification of adolescents within the scope of the level of cognitive tasks performance From the research it follows that the intellectual functioning of adolescents while solving a certain type of cognitive tasks (called psychometric intelligence) should be estimated both on the basis of quantitative ratings (the level of task performance difficulty) and qualitative ratings (the identified manners of task performance) The effectiveness of the intellectual functioning of an individual is defined by the choice of such task solving strategies which are determined by an interactive influence of many variables, among which one can find cognitive tasks, psychometric intelligence and the preferred style of thinking The less intelligent subjects functioned effectively in the research only when they applied a strategy in line with their cognitive style The analysis conducted among highly intelligent subjects showed that they solved the tasks consisting in inferring similarities with the same effectiveness, applying both strategies, regardless of their preferred style of cognitive functioning