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For a kid, the revelation that Santa Claus is indeed not real is a bit of a rite of passage. Welcome to the real world, there’s no magic, you’re now an adult like us. It’s almost as if one wakes up from a dream to start his or her new life as an adult on planet Earth. A few decades after that revelatory event for me, I’m starting to see some irony in it.

The world of adults is a mixed bag. Adults with a developed brain are able to think rationally and to execute rational tasks, while also living ordinary lives immersed in irrationality. I suppose that we could all be excused for engaging in suspension of disbelief, given how inexplicable is the wider context of the universe in which we’re living in, both in terms of space and, even more puzzling, in terms of time.

Anyone that has ever paused to rationalize their existence, had to eventually crawl out of that rabbit hole and suspend their disbelief in order to go back to have a life. This is a prime example of how we’re able to engage in suspension of disbelief. It’s not just something that we can do, but it’s something that we must do.

Another, perhaps less profound reason on why our mind is able to put objectivity on the side, is a predisposition to skepticism towards what’s new and unproven. Prejudice is a necessary component for survival. Occasionally one may be better off selecting for the unknown, but the risk is higher, so, there’s a predisposition to go for what’s known.

At the societal level this can be seen with political movements or ideals. We tend to pick a side and stick with it. A person will defend their political party to extremes because, for example, some accusation of some misconduct may turn out to be invalid, or there might be a noble justification, or maybe one simply doesn’t want the other party to get a win, because they are perceived to be inherently and fundamentally wrong, if not evil.

There are many reasons why one may be willing to consciously or unconsciously allow for exceptions to the integrity of an ideal. Nevertheless, this happens and it’s part of how we function. Things get worse from here: although suspension of disbelief is a necessary trait of our minds, it’s also something that can be hacked and used. Any sufficiently unscrupulous and clever individual or small organized group, can target the mind of another person or group and get them to suspend their disbelief to an exceptional degree. This makes for a dangerous world. One where large swaths of the population may get hacked to operate against others and against themselves.

We study history and see how we’ve advanced, how enlightened we’ve come to be. To me, this is only a facade. We judge our progress by great practical achievements in the field of science, engineering and architecture, but I’d argue that great achievements were obtained by exceptional people, in spite of how primitive we are, not because humanity as a whole has made much progress. Literacy has elevated the level of mediocrity, but better mediocrity is not progress. You can train people to do exceptional things, but that only shows how good we’ve become to impart knowledge, how good we’ve become at producing very advanced robots, but robots nonetheless.

When we’re welcome in the world of adults, we leave Santa Claus behind, only to enter a world made of bigger, more sophisticated and much more consequential lies. At the top of the chain, there’s probably the lie that we’re following a path of progress for humanity. We’re like pigs in a stall that get excited for a new feeding machine, and don’t you dare complain about your living arrangements. You ungrateful pig ! You would be nothing without our democratically elected leaders and their appointed experts. Stop grunting and get your new tastier feed.

From time to time enough people find the collective energy to question the status quo, and maybe even gather some political power. But the system has a way to digest those flukes, either from the outside with oppression, or from the inside with corruption.

Happy New Year !

“Informatics” is the term used in the Italian education system in place of “Computer Science”. For one reason or another, I was never in tune with standardized education, however there have been times in school when I felt that I learned something that gave me a new perspective on things. One such moment was when a relatively rogue professor, spent a whole lesson explaining the fundamental importance of information and science of information, and how that encompassed the whole universe.

The concept of information is possibly the most important abstraction that our brain has ever conceived. Every living creature can collect and manipulate information. What sets humans apart is the ability to be self-aware of that ability.

With that self-awareness, together with observation of nature, also comes the ability to conceptualize recursion in the abstract. Recursion adds a dimension to abstraction. This is what allows us to contemplate quantities from the infinitesimally small to the infinitesimally large, both for material and immaterial things. Recursion is indeed embedded in nature (see reproduction), but the ability to use that in the abstract is what makes humans as intelligent as they are.

Now I wonder if there’s a concept that is more profound and fundamental than that of being able to recursively conceptualize/abstract things. Perhaps our brains already would have the plasticity to work on a new plane of thinking, but we’re stuck with what we can conceptualize by extrapolating only what we observe.

This pursuit of new fundamental planes of reasoning may be a necessary step towards answering the bigger questions in nature. The hope is that we may reach it by “bootstrapping” from the current analytical tools that we have, much like we do with mathematics. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what this would look like, because it’s one of those cases where one doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

Perhaps my view of what’s fundamental reasoning is too much a matter of interpretation, it’s hard to quantify something so abstract. Either way, it’s still something worth considering.

Deboonk-ism is a phenomenon by which people rush at debunking what’s perceived to be a wild conspiracy theory. Debunking, as in deconstructing a theory or a system, can be a great way to analyze a problem. However, in most cases it’s done out of faith and prejudice, without any real research to truly understand the root of the issue at hand, which is usually a lot more complex than initially thought.

The typical deboonker has a general idea of what the scientific method is about, but has also an idealistic view of science, as some religion that is practiced in academic circles and that is able to produce consistently objective results, all with an acceptable degree of confidence, and all vetted and communicated by benevolent gate keepers coming from the corporate world, political world and the press.

It becomes then a tribal and religious act, one that does more harm than good. Tribalism is a human thing, but modern social media has certainly amplified the effect. We all have a tendency to hypercorrect trends. Truth may be in the middle, but we tend to get there by arguing by extremes and holding certain beliefs for years at the time. Anything that doesn’t conform to a prescribed narrative, is immediately ridiculed an belittled, no room is given to skepticism and actual critical thinking. Hypotheses that are ad odds with the mandate of the day are quickly shot down. Any evidence, or lack of evidence, is dismissed on the spot, as some infectious disease that will rot the mind in minutes.

From a social perspective, it pays to follow the mainline, because the infrastructure of conformism gives some form of insurance towards mistakes, it’s a shield against humiliation. As long as you stick with the plan, you have moral right to debunk the skeptics. You won’t be criticized in case of obvious mistakes, because you were simply following a narrative coming from above, and those that are above are professionals at deflecting blame (see “George Carlin on the language of politics”, a must watch in my book).

On the other hand, being a skeptic is dangerous, because any mistake becomes automatically confirmation that one should not have dared to stray from the herd. Even worse, one is automatically bundled together with any other person that is considered to be a skeptic, also known as “guilt by association”… i.e. “you’re not one of those flat-Earthers, are you ?”.

The social pressure makes things worse, because the more rational skeptics tend to be silent for fear of reprisal, leaving the job to speak out to those that may be a bit too obsessive if not downright paranoid. This amplifies the effect of conformism, where the deboonkers can go wild, and wild they go. It’s a power trip to be right on social media, dispensing smackdowns on the few that still dare to bring up points that sound too crazy to be true, whether or not there’s any actual truth to be had.From a purely practical perspective, being a conformist and toning down critical thinking is necessary to make things work in a collective. There’s no doubt that humanity gets in the way of productivity. As technology improves, we employ more and more robots to help us with labor, but robots aren’t necessarily mechanical. Historically, the majority of humans have been employed to work in a very organized fashion, something that requires limited critical thinking and limited creativity.

Even in a future in which less labor will be required of us, for as long as we’re considered an asset, or even just a competing force to be discouraged, there will be a structure in place to sustain uniformity of thought. I guess that deboonkers are here to stay.

As years go by, it’s harder and harder to find movies that I’m interested to watch. One could say a lot on the evolution of the movie industry and how high budgets correlate with low creative risk. For sure, we could do better than yet another “retired hitman is forced to do one last job“… kill me now ! However, as creative and intelligent a script can be, at the fundamental level there are only so many narratives that attract the general public.

Story lines follow the demand from a public that has certain basic fundamental tastes, some of which are timeless, just like our own biology (we do evolve, but primordial instincts are hard to shake off). Entertainment may have cultural flavors, but at the core, the stories that are told are revealing of human nature. The popular themes and tropes clearly show what we consider exciting and what we’d be curious to experience. Under that light, we should also note how much of what we consume does include extreme danger, loss of life, crime, violence, wars, torture, post-apocalyptic settings, dystopic settings and more.

Some say that portrayal and glorification of those themes is a form of instigation. That may be true in part, but there’s clearly a positive response from the public. It’s not like we’re unable to demonstrate disgust and to walk away from what we don’t like. Conflict and violence clearly attract us (generalizing here, this certainly varies across genders, age groups and individuals).To me this is revelatory of the “dark” side that exists in people both individually and as a collective. The risk of war, mass discrimination, oppression and self-inflicted totalitarian regimes, is always present, because as humans, we still crave for some kind of strong experiences, some drama and strong feelings. It’s a form of masochism that we need in order to check some of our biological boxes.

It’s no surprise then, that at the first appearance of something remotely reminiscent of a zombie apocalypse, millions and billions of people jump in to play the game. Finally some entertainment where one isn’t just a spectator, but also a participant. It’s all so much more interesting than the old boring life. There are things to do, procedures and rituals, dictated by patriarchal and matriarchal leaders and their high priests. Suddenly, living becomes surviving, as well as having the power to save lives, and the power to prevent others from endangering lives.

Many live a life of struggles and may sometimes wish for a collapse of society, hoping that a new throw of the dice may give them something better. This is understandable, but what intrigues me more is how people that live a generally comfortable life are so often also ready to jump in and play, simply because their life is boring, and normal forms of entertainment are just not enough.

This is probably also what happens with organized violence that tends to come out from supporters of sports like soccer, where some younger spectators enact urban battlefields for no reason other than to let loose and to get a fix of violence and the relative adrenaline rush that comes with it. It would be too easy to categorize hooligans as crazy… they are men whose ancestors survived because of their fighting skills. There is a genetic component that cannot simply be repressed.If you’re a leader aspiring to more raw power, this state of relative boredom should help you to steer the masses where you want. However, from a perspective of an ethical leader that aims at a more stable and rational society, a society that is less “hackable”, it would be important to promote a lifestyle that is just less boring.

Some here will quickly point the failures of the education system… if only institutions could impart more knowledge and a better civic sense, but this avoids the root of the problem. No amount of schooling is going to erase certain instincts. Education can help to repress instincts and primordial needs, but repression breeds instability.

I’m not sure what would take to build a society that is both efficient and not too deprived of the kind of experiences that fulfill certain primordial calls. Because work tends to take a good chunk of life, and it’s often a source of boredom and frustration, the ability to let people periodically rotate on more exciting jobs may be helpful, although not very productive and potentially dangerous. Who knows, maybe some amount of VR could alleviate the issue, although I’m not the biggest advocate for living surrogate lives.

I don’t see an easy solution, but it would be already a step forward to admit that civilized societies are a breeding ground for explosions of mass hysterias, and that we should start to acknowledge and deal with our instincts, instead of ignoring and repressing them with a veneer of culture or, even worse, with drugs.

I recently released another video presentation on algorithmic trading where I state that in order for that to be practical, it’s necessary to have the ability to simulate activity on a market.

In the presentation, I also mentioned how pervasive the concept of computer simulation already is, using a few well-known examples, but the concept of simulation is a lot more fundamental and it has a lot more potential than what it’s being used in engineering, weather forecast or architecture.

Having a computer model of anything is going to be more and more necessary to be competitive at the global scale. This is both for big business and nations (not that there’s much difference anymore).

In the early 80s, the movie “WarGames” introduced me to the availability of personal computers, and also to the concept of simulation. At the center of the movie, there is a NORAD computer capable of simulating thermonuclear war scenarios, something that is probably the most believable and realistic feature of that fictional computer.

One can only imagine how truly advanced are high-end government-funded simulations today, which can be built to deal with just about anything, including in some ways our own lives. Nowadays there is so much personal data that is being collected and used by more than one entity, that it would be plausible to think that somewhere there is a simulation that can have a good guess on when I’ll be stepping out of the house to go to the convenience store next. If not today, it’s only matter of decades.

I should pause for a minute here and clarify the fundamental difference that I see between the concept of statistical models and a simulation (disclaimer: I’m not academically trained on any of this).

A statistical model gives a snapshot of a data set. Correlations can be drawn to reach conclusions, and simple extrapolations can also be made, as some form of prediction.

A simulation is more like an animation. Models for each actor are built, then they are iterated in a simulated timeline. A simulation system is inherently more powerful because it implicitly requires that elements at play are coded in a programming language.

In my specific case, that simulation wouldn’t be able to guess what I’ll be buying, because of my refusal to use point cards and because I still use cash whenever I can, but more and more people use some form of point cards and digital payments.

It’s safe to say that these simulations will only increase in detail and accuracy with time. The reason why this is tolerated is, firstly, because there are some practical benefits to everyday life. The more a system knows you, the more it will be ready to cater to your needs.

The second major reason why this is possible is that we’re all fairly narcissistic. We want to be noticed, be that through some work that we do, some opinions that we express, or even to be tracked by some kind of Big Brother software. This is because from an existential point of view, it’s better to be spied on than to be ignored. I’m guessing that this is something that is ingrained at the biological level (animal species do this instinctively), and something that modern means of communication have exacerbated to an extreme.

There is a downside to all of this. The convenience and perhaps, warm feeling, of existing also as a lump of data in some digital cloud, can also turn into a massive inconvenience. Here comes the typical privacy issue, where any “good citizens” that has nothing to hide, sooner or later can find himself or herself on the wrong side of those with the keys to data and simulation of any individual that has been deemed as a threat. This will always be true, unless we now believe that any kind of progress is possible without some form of opposition, and unless we believe that those in power somehow like to play fair, because they are just a bunch of sensitive and altruistic souls.

That turned into a little bit of a rant, but that’s just an example of the power and potential repercussions that can come from the application of computer simulation when applied to a field that is perhaps less obvious, but potentially much more consequential to the human race.

There’s a useful term in the Japanese language. One of those terms that one adopts because it really fits nicely the concept. The term is “kibun tenkan” [気分転換] which loosely translates as “change of pace/mood”, but it’s used more when there’s a breakthrough moment that leads to some change. At least that’s how I use it.

Breakthrough moments are often more about a recognition of something that had been brewing for a while, and this is definitely the case here. I’ve felt for a long time that entertainment was a time waster that took me from doing things. Then a few years ago I was listening to a Q&A after a John Carmack presentation about his work at Oculus. In the presentation he talked about optimizing rendering for mobile, with a special focus on the Netflix VR theatre app.

This app places the user in a beautiful and cozy living room with a fantastic view of snowy mountains outside and a megascreen where to watch the Netflix content.

In the Q&A, an attendee perhaps naively, perhaps facetiously, asked to Carmack, what was the point of the app. Carmack paused a little and answered something along the lines of: “it’s for those that want to experience that setting, but that cannot have it in real life” (paraphrasing here).

That both sounded like a plausible alternative, but also like an act of pity. It’s one thing to want to experience something truly exceptional like recklessly flying a 100 million dollars jet fighter, climbing a mountain with no training, or exploring deep space, but it’s pretty sad when VR becomes a surrogate to something that almost anyone could obtain by working hard and becoming moderately wealthy. Granted, money can’t buy the kind of teleportation that VR offers, but who needs to jump around when you can spend a few real days in a real place ?

That to me was a “fuck this” moment. I don’t want my passion for technology to become also a limitation of my ambitions in life. Nothing that really matters is easy to obtain. I’m not buying into this.

More classical entertainment, such as movie and TV series, can also be a huge time waster, but with VR, things can really go to the next level, in a bad way. If we also add the push now to create a metaverse out of social media, then we’re talking of a potential to truly turn billions of people into atrophied zombies.

I’m all for innovation, but I can’t see an upside to this. In fact, I think that this can be considered a colossal scam. The elites will continue to accumulate actual wealth, buying land, estate and commodities, while the general population is sold the virtual equivalent of those.

Many will buy into this, because the world is chock full of NPCs, but you’ve been warned.

Last month I listened to an interesting interview titled “Why People WILLINGLY Give Up Their Freedoms” with Prof. Mattias Desmet on the Aubrey Marcus podcast. Here the focus was about “mass formation”, a term used to define mass events and mass hysterias like we’re experiencing these days.

The discussion can be seen on Aubrey Marcus’s YouTube channel. I’m not sure how the rest of the channel is, but this podcast episode was very interesting to me, if anything because it confirmed my impression of how society moves and because it gives a framework to better understand what is happening.

Here’s the full video:

Here’s a list of key points that I thought were worth highlighting:

• [@1139 s] — People are happy to follow the narrative of perpetual fears because the anxiety that derives from it allows for a new social bond. Bonding being something that humans crave for, but that lacks in modern large societies.
• [@1247 s] — Mass formations are a kind of hypnosis. Hypnosis is possible when someone is made focus on a narrow view of things (i.e. a virus), and away from a broader perspective (i.e. loss of freedoms). See for example anestesia via hypnosis, where the mind of the patient is being focused to the point that he/she can’t feel pain in a certain spot.
  Here Aubrey notices that ability to focus on something and ignore the broader picture is important for productivity and for mental sanity, so it’s a double-edged sword.
• [@2067 s] — Raw intelligence of the individual doesn’t matter. In a mass formation, the collective mind takes over and anyone can lose the ability to be a critical thinker.
• [@2170 s] — In a mass formation, only about 30% of the people are hypnotized in the beginning. Then there’s an additional 40% that goes along, even if they may not agree, because they don’t want to or are afraid to go against this vocal minority. The remaining 20-30% are those that do speak out one way or another.
• [@2645 s] — It’s essential to continue to speak out against the narrative at the root of a mass formation. The hypnosis may not disappear, but it can become less deep, which may be just enough to avoid extreme deterioration of the situation (see: dehumanization, labeling as “domestic terrorist”).
  Note: It’s also my conviction that one should never expect for a person to change his/her mind on a topic just from a new batch of information. It’s a slow process of detoxification that requires time to take shape.
• [@3664 s] — Sacrifice makes for an even stronger social bonding, and it’s glorified. Giving up on Christmas celebration with families, wearing masks and social distancing are all big and small sacrifices that make people feel closer to each other. It becomes a ritual, and people can go to great lengths and perform extreme sacrifices while under the spell of this mass hypnosis.
  Note: As an example, see the brotherhood that derives from combat during wars. Sharing danger makes for very strong bonding.
• [@4224 s] — In 1953, Hannah Arendt said that even though we’ve seen the decline and fall of Nazism and Stalinism, the trend towards totalitarianism hasn’t stopped, and very soon we’ll see a form of world-wide totalitarianism that is lead no longer by strong leader figures, but by technocrats and bureaucrats.
  Nevertheless, totalitarianism is always self-destructive and it’s likely that now we’ll just have to wait for this new form of totalitarianism to rise and fall. In the meantime, it may be a good idea to be on the sidelines while this happens.