Today, more than 80% of the world’s population lives under light-polluted skies. In Europe and the U.S., that number is closer to 99%. Entire generations are growing up without ever seeing the galaxy they live in. The universe has become invisible and in its place, we’ve made ourselves the centre of everything.

This post is about what happens when we lose the stars, not just environmentally, but psychologically and spiritually. I’m going to argue that the fading night sky has fed a quiet egocentrism, subtly shifting our mental architecture away from cosmic humility toward a hyper-individualistic obsession with our own (Instagram) stories.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LIGHT POLLUTION

Light pollution isn’t new, but its scale is. Ancient cities used torches and oil lamps, and even in imperial Rome, the night sky remained largely untouched. The first real shift began with gas lighting (actual lamps, not the emotional manipulation) in the 19th century. By the early 20th century, the widespread use of electric lights radically altered our nocturnal environment.

Thomas Edison’s incandescent bulb wasn’t just a symbol of progress, it marked the beginning of our collective disengagement from the night sky. Urban centres began to glow continuously . Then came highways, shopping malls, stadiums, and suburbs, all brightly lit in ways that served safety and commerce, but erased the stars.

By the mid-20th century, public policy and infrastructure were geared entirely toward illumination. Light was synonymous with modernity and prosperity. Bright cities became aspirational. Countries competing on global development indexes lit up their skylines as symbolic assertions of advancement. The darker a place was, the more likely it was deemed underdeveloped. And with this symbolic glow came a literal blindness to the stars. Even as humans launched satellites and walked on the moon, our everyday connection to the cosmos was vanishing behind sodium vapour haze.

As of today, truly dark skies are becoming rare. In urban areas, fewer than one in ten children have seen the Milky Way with their own eyes. The average child in London or Los Angeles may grow up believing that the stars are a poetic metaphor, not an actual part of their sky.

THE SHRINKING SKY AND THE INFLATED SELF

As the cosmos disappeared, something else quietly expanded: the self. Ancient and early modern cultures, whether Aboriginal Australians mapping the Dreamtime onto the stars or Islamic scholars charting celestial movements, saw the night sky as a constant reminder of something bigger. It imposed perspective. The grandeur of the stars framed humanity as a small part in a vast, complex system.

Fast forward to the 20th century, especially post WWII. Urbanisation accelerated. So did consumerism and a media landscape that increasingly focussed on personal success, identity performance, and individual ambition. The “Me Decade” of the 1970s symbolised this shift. It wasn’t just about politics or fashion but an ontological realignment. While it clearly wasn’t the only factor, I’m sure that no longer having the cosmos as the mirror in which we saw our smallness has had a significant impact. Instead of this nightly reflection we have curated digital selves and curated city lights.

We cannot stand a meaningless life and in the absence of the stars, we filled the void with ourselves. TikTok, Instagram, hustle culture, productivity cults, and billionaire worship, the modern forms of significance-making that might seem less compelling under the full majesty of the night sky.

COSMIC PERSPECTIVE AND SCIENTIFIC SPIRITUALITY

“There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world,” wrote Carl Sagan in Pale Blue Dot. “To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot - the only home we've ever known.”

This is the essence of cosmic perspective, a cognitive shift that places us in context, reducing narcissism and increasing empathy. And it's not just poetic intuition: research backs it up. Studies show that experiencing awe (often triggered by nature or the night sky) is associated with decreased focus on the self and increased generosity.

The night sky once offered a kind of spiritual infrastructure. It didn’t require belief in a deity, but it invited reverence. Thinkers have written eloquently about a scientific spirituality, a sense of the sacred grounded not in mythology, but in scale and beauty. Against the dark canvas of the night sky, we are given the gift of perspective - not the kind that belittles our lives, but the kind that enlarges our understanding of what life is, and what it might be.

In this worldview, we don’t need to fill the gaps in knowledge with gods. We can stand in awe of what we do know: that every atom in our bodies was forged in the heart of a dying star. That we are not above nature, we are its ongoing (misbehaving) experiment. In other words, we are star stuff contemplating star stuff.

This perspective counters many of the anxieties of modern life. It trivialises status games, softens identity obsessions, and reorients meaning away from the self and toward participation in a grander whole.

RESTORING THE NIGHT

It’s not all lost. Around the world, people are working to bring back the stars. The International Dark-Sky Association has designated dozens of reserves and parks where lighting is strictly controlled. Cities like Flagstaff, Arizona have implemented smart lighting regulations that protect the night sky while maintaining public safety. Astro-tourism is on the rise - places like La Palma, the Atacama Desert, and the Scottish Isles now draw visitors not for their beaches but for their celestial spectacle.

Design solutions exist too: shielded light fixtures, motion-activated lights, and warm-spectrum LEDs. It’s a cultural question, not just a technical one: do we value the stars enough to design for darkness?

On an individual level, it’s worth seeking out darkness. Let’s go camping. Let’s visit a dark-sky reserve. Let’s turn off our outdoor lights. Let’s Look up. Let’s allow the cosmos remind us of our place - not to make us feel small, but to help us belong to something vast and real.

CONCLUSION

The loss of the night sky is not just an ecological or aesthetic issue, it’s a spiritual one. It’s about what we forget when we lose touch with the cosmos, and what kind of selves we become in the absence of that perspective.

We traded the infinite for the illuminated, and in doing so, we made ourselves the main character in a much smaller story. But the stars are still there, shining with indifference and beauty. They are waiting to be noticed. Let’s look up.

“The Lessons of History” is their sweeping digest of everything they learned while writing the 11-volume “Story of Civilization”. While I haven’t read all 11 volumes comprehensively, I can say that it is some of my favourite writing about history overall. If you don’t want to buy 11 volumes but get a taster “The Lessons of History” is a good starting point. It reads less like a textbook and more like a philosophical field guide to human nature, where biology meets war, religion meets economics, and progress moves in fits and starts.

Here are the takeaways that stuck with me.

WE ARE BRIEF GUESTS ON AN IMPARTIAL PLANET

Human history, in the grand arc of time, is just a flicker. "Man is a moment in astronomic time," they write. The first lesson? Modesty.

Nature is indifferent. The universe isn’t rooting for us. As Pascal put it: “Man knows that he is dying; and of its victory the universe knows nothing.”

And yet, this awareness gives us our nobility.

HISTORY IS BIOLOGY IN MOTION

History, they argue, is ultimately an extension of biology.

Life is competition. It’s also selection. And above all, it’s reproduction. Civilisation may soften us, but it does not fundamentally change us. We’re animals with bigger toys and better stories.

Even cooperation, often romanticised, is frequently just a tool in service of group survival.

INEQUALITY IS NATURAL, UTOPIA IS NOT

The Durants are blunt:

“Freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies.”

Every advance in freedom, economic or political, creates new concentrations of power and wealth. History follows a rhythm: accumulation, then redistribution - either by policy or revolution.

Idealists promise utopia. History replies: Nice idea. Hold my beer.

CIVILISATION IS NOT A RACE THING - IT’S A CONTEXT THING

Civilisations rise not because of racial superiority but because of favourable geography, political structures, and economic opportunity.

The South invents; the North conquers. Over time, climate and culture reshape even the most "inherent" traits. Civilisational greatness is circumstantial, not genetic.

No one has a monopoly on genius or barbarism.

HUMAN NATURE CHANGES SLOWLY, IF AT ALL

Plato’s Greeks, the Durants suggest, were not so different from modern Londoners or New Yorkers.

Technology evolves. So do economies. But the inner human? Same old story: fear, hunger, sex, status. The rebel becomes the tyrant. The reformer inherits the tactics of the oppressor.

Real change happens socially, not biologically and even that, only sometimes.

MORALS EVOLVE WITH ECONOMICS

Morality, in their view, isn’t timeless. It’s adaptive.

Agricultural societies needed strong family codes. Industrial cities made anonymity and rebellion possible. Old norms fade when the economic basis that upheld them collapses.

If morals feel adrift today, it may be because the ground beneath them has shifted faster than we can replace them.

RELIGION AND RATIONALISM KEEP TAKING TURNS

Religion has long been a civilising force. It restrained violence, organised morals, comforted the poor. But it rises and falls in cycles.

Rationalism emerges when myth no longer satisfies. But without a replacement ethic, reason alone can curdle into cynicism or nihilism.

The lesson?

“As long as there is poverty, there will be gods.”

PROGRESS NEEDS ITS OPPOSITE

This might be the most mature insight in the book:

“Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it - perhaps as much more valuable as roots are more vital than grafts.”

Preservation and innovation aren’t enemies. They’re partners. One guards the memory, the other pushes the frontier. The future is shaped by the tension between the two.

Progress is real but only when it survives pressure-testing from tradition.

ECONOMICS IS THE SUBSTRATE OF POLITICS

Marx wasn’t entirely wrong: history often follows the money. James Carville agreed: “It’s the economy stupid.”

Political systems, religious reforms, revolutions - they usually trace back to economic shifts. The rich rule until the poor revolt. Then the cycle starts again.

Democracy, in this view, is a noble experiment but a fragile and easily manipulated one.

WAR IS THE ULTIMATE SELECTOR

Eventually, all competition scales into war.

History is shaped by the clash of minorities, the few with vision, weapons, or power. Peace is not the norm but the exception. It’s what happens when supremacy is clear or power is balanced.

But in the nuclear age, that old game is now fatal.

PROGRESS IS CULTURAL NOT BIOLOGICAL

We’re not better than our ancestors. We’re just born into a richer inheritance: language, fire, medicine, Shakespeare, democracy.

Civilisation is a relay race of knowledge. Our job isn’t to be perfect. It’s to keep the torch alive and pass it on.

If education is the transmission of civilisation, then progress is fragile but real.

CONCLUSION

The Durants end not in despair, but with something quiet and powerful.

Yes, the universe is indifferent. Yes, nature has no concern for good or evil, only survival. Yes, civilisation is fragile, and history is full of collapse.

But the story isn’t written by the universe.

It’s written by us.

“The historian will not mourn because he can see no meaning in human existence except that which man puts into it.”

Meaning isn’t given. It’s made. That is our inheritance, and our burden. To live deliberately. To learn from the past. To preserve what matters. To try again. To pass something on.

If we’re lucky, before we die, we gather as much of our civilisational inheritance as we can and transmit it forward. Books, values, art, memories. A better framework. A sharper question. A little more light.

That’s the work. And it’s never finished.

BUBBLE LIVING

What is the best model for a city, if we had to design it from the ground up? It would be a place where we’d step outside the door and have most amenities within walking distance - the doctor, school, grocery store, gym, retail & restaurants. We’d have green spaces where kids could play and strangers could meet. A place that encourages play and makes room for art, both of which are underrated but powerful tools for connecting with others. Not through forced conversation, but through shared curiosity. We’d build places we want to seek out to feel part of a community. Places that make us feel connected to the people around us.

What we have instead is this: wake up, elevator to parking, drive car to work, parking at work, elevator to office, finish work, elevator to parking, drive home, parking at home, elevator to apartment. Throw in a few more - elevator to parking, drive to X, parking at X, elevator to X - for the mall, gym, restaurant etc and you have the life of the inhabitants of most suburbs and badly designed cities. At no point in our day do we walk through a town square, bump into a stranger, or pass through a space we don’t control.

Friction that is created by the chaos of a city where people have to compromise, share, and connect is crucial for a coherent society. It is important for us to not live in constructed bubbles, whether they are online or offline. To be grounded to the “average” human experience is important for us to develop empathy. If we are “well off” then this can create a sense of gratitude for our situation, rather than distractedly chasing nonsense games our out of touch peer group is pursuing. Connectivity can create civic responsibility for fixing problems in our shared neighbourhood. When we eliminate public space, we lose that civic muscle. Chaos can create cross-pollination of ideas between people with very different backgrounds. It can teach tolerance for other people’s view points.

We often talk about climate change, housing shortages, mental health, or polarisation as separate problems. But many of them share a common root: the way we design our cities. If you design for cars, you get traffic. If you design for people, you get life.

WHERE MODERNISM WENT WRONG

In the early 20th century, the world was enchanted by machines. Assembly lines, electricity, and engines promised a new era of efficiency and control. That mechanistic and industrial mindset didn’t just transform factories. It also transformed cities. Architects like Le Corbusier envisioned a total break from the past. The messy, organic, street-level chaos of pre-industrial cities was seen as backwards. Instead, cities were to be designed from above, like blueprints, with rigid grids, and highways slicing through the old fabric. But what looks great from above isn’t necessarily practical for human living. The “Radiant City” was Le Corbusier’s dream: high-rise apartments spaced apart like silos, surrounded by highways and green lawns, where the mess of street life was eliminated in favour of function and clarity. Function, it turns out, is not the same as life.

This vision had enormous influence. In cities from Brasilia to Boston, from Paris to Lagos, the modernist ethos took root. Roads were widened, neighbourhoods flattened, pedestrians pushed to the margins. City planning became a top-down, abstract exercise. Robert Moses (he’s the “evil” guy in “Who framed Roger Rabbit”), perhaps the most famous American urban planner, wielded this power in New York like a general laying out a battlefield. In his world, traffic efficiency reigned supreme - even if it meant demolishing entire communities to make way for expressways. But the cost wasn’t just aesthetic, it was human.

Modernist design, in its obsession with order, stripped cities of their most vital elements: proximity, unpredictability, and intimacy. Neighbourhood shops disappeared into malls. Street corners turned into intersections. Parks were isolated rather than integrated. Buildings were designed as objects, not experiences. As Jan Gehl put it, “If you wanted to kill urban life, you couldn’t have done it better.”

What’s crucial to understand is that modernism didn’t just build differently - it thought differently. It treated people like components to be managed. It saw chaos as a flaw, not a feature. It imagined that if you could just separate uses (living here, working there, shopping somewhere else) everything would work better. Yes, the chaotic city comes with having to sometimes smell the sweat of another human on the subway. But it also comes with a grounding in reality and a sense of belonging that is healthy. Cities don’t function like machines they are ecosystems.

When we separate everything into zones and connect them by car, we destroy the small, serendipitous encounters that make a place feel alive. We also create deep social consequences. The suburbs become islands of sameness, while the inner city becomes a zone of disinvestment. Children stop playing in the street. Elderly people become isolated. Teenagers drift between parking lots. Public space disappears and with it, public life.

We see this legacy in countless cities today. In The Human Scale documentary, Chinese planners reflect on how they eagerly mimicked the West, stacking skylines higher and pushing people further apart. Only now do they realise the cost: the loss of “hutongs” (narrow alleys), street vendors, neighbourhood life. In Dhaka, banning rickshaws was framed as modernisation but it mainly punished the poor, increased congestion, and erased one of the most human-scaled transport systems in the world.

Modernism assumed that efficiency was enough - that if everyone had a place to sleep, a road to drive, and a place to work, the city had done its job. But a city isn’t a spreadsheet. It’s a social contract and a public performance. When you build only for efficiency, you forget to build for experience. The irony? Many of these car-first, zone-based cities now spend billions trying to fix the very problems they created. They build pedestrian plazas, reintroduce mixed-use zoning, and retrofit bike lanes into streets that were once designed to move cars as fast as possible. These are not cosmetic changes, they are corrections. Because now we understand what Le Corbusier didn’t: humans don’t thrive in cities designed like filing cabinets. We need friction, surprise, and scale. We need to see each other and that doesn’t happen at 60 kilometres an hour.

One of my many favourite spots in London is the digital experience right outside of Tottenham Court Station. People of all walks of life take a break and observe an artistic visual experience. It’s just as fun to look at the people there as it see the visuals.

5KM Per Hour

Human beings evolved to move at a walking pace - about 5 kilometres per hour. When a city is built at that pace, it gives us what we’re wired for: faces to read, gestures to interpret, smells and sounds to process. A human-scale city engages our senses and demands our presence. But most cities today aren’t built for humans. They’re built for cars.

In car-scale environments, the world blurs. Distances stretch, sidewalks vanish, and public life withers. We become a unit of traffic. We pass others in steel boxes. We don’t make eye contact because we can’t. The city no longer asks us to adapt, wait, notice, or yield. It becomes frictionless - and in doing so, becomes emotionally flat. We may prefer not dealing with all those tourists blocking our way in Times Square or Piccadilly Circus but it’s to our detriment long-term. These spaces where we can’t fully control our environment; where we have to navigate around a stroller; where we overhear snippets of conversation; where we share space with people we didn’t choose; this mild inconvenience and friction isn’t a flaw, it’s a feature. Because it teaches us something no app or algorithm can: how to live with other people.

Sociologist Richard Sennett calls public space the “civic gym” - a place where you practice tolerance, empathy, negotiation. You get used to difference. You’re reminded that the world isn’t built just for you. Philosopher Hannah Arendt saw the public square as the foundation of political life itself - the space where we appear before one another not as consumers or commuters, but as citizens. When a city invites us to walk, to sit, to gather, it’s inviting us to participate in society. This is why public space matters so much. It’s not just about leisure. It’s about identity and reality. If our daily life takes us only through private spheres (our car, our apartment, our office) we lose the calibration of being around strangers. We lose the habits of civility. We become a bubble in a city of bubbles. Public space pops those bubbles.

As The Human Scale documentary shows so clearly, when cities reclaim space from cars and give it back to people, something beautiful happens: life returns. People sit, flirt, read, perform. We build a shared atmosphere. We stop being data points in a planner’s spreadsheet and start being neighbours again. Urban scale shapes more than movement - it shapes morality. Every compromise we make on a sidewalk, every moment we yield to another’s presence, is a tiny act of civilisation. And every city that makes room for those acts is building something far more important than infrastructure. It’s building a culture.

REDESIGNING FOR HUMANS

The good news is that around the world, cities are quietly correcting course. Thankfully, city admins and planners have started to realise that reclaiming space from cars isn’t anti-progress but progress redefined.

Copenhagen was once just as car-centric as any modern capital. But over decades, Jan Gehl and others helped turn roads into walking streets. As cars disappeared, people came back. The city didn’t just become more pleasant but it’s become more “hyggelit”.

Melbourne revitalised its forgotten laneways. What were once boring alleys behind buildings are now full of life: cafés, murals, jazz trios, first dates, late-night debates. The change didn’t come from mega-projects, just a rethinking of how space could serve people instead of waste management.

New York shut down parts of Broadway and Times Square to traffic, initially with nothing more than paint and some cheap folding chairs. People immediately filled the space, because it turns out, they’d always wanted it.

Christchurch, after its devastating earthquake, didn’t simply rebuild the old skeleton. The people collectively reimagined their city: low-rise, walkable, communal. The tragedy became a catalyst for something better. More grounded and more liveable.

Dhaka has seen its citizens push back against the erasure of human-scale life. Rickshaws and pedestrians - villains in the eyes of car-centric planning - are being recognised as essential parts of the ecosystem, not relics of the past.

And now, London is finally reimagining Oxford Street - one of the busiest commercial streets in Europe - into a pedestrian-first zone. It's more than a traffic decision. It’s a cultural one. Do we build for speed and throughput, or do we build for conversation, pause, and community?

CONCLUSION

It’s tempting to believe the future will be sleek, seamless, and fully controlled. But life doesn’t happen in controlled environments - it happens in messy, surprising, shared ones - more Bladerunner rather than Jetsons. Stepping out of my apartment in West London I can walk for hours without feeling like the city isn’t created for me. I feel empowered by that freedom. I feel connected to my city. The serendipity I experience on the way grounds me in a reality that is not mediated by screens and algorithms but by the actual life in my locality.

We need friction. We need overheard arguments, impromptu performances, too many kids in a square chasing pigeons. We need a place to sit and look at people looking at things. If we want cities that feel alive - and people who feel connected - we have to stop designing them like transport hubs and start designing them like communities. I live in an area that has been redeveloped and can seem soulless from the outset. But by creating many green areas and seating arrangements throughout, life seeps into the concrete and connections are made between strangers.

We don’t need utopia. We need places that teach us how to live with others. And that starts with something as simple as a bench, a plaza, a walking path, or a moment where the city reminds us: you’re not alone.

LIFE IS EXTRAORDINARY

The topic of this post is purposefully on the surface a bummer so let’s start with an unequivocal celebration of life. We don’t understand most of the important “Why” questions relevant to our reality. We may never get to fully understand them but one thing is for certain: we are intimately connected to the universe around us.

One does not need to evoke a prime mover to recognise that cosmic evolution, which in the beginning started with subatomic particles that coalesced into simple elements like hydrogen, over billions of years through the continuous formation, fusion and explosion of stars has created the very complex elements all of life is made of. Every single atom in your body was created in stars that are long gone. We are literally children of stars that are part of a cosmic story that has over billions of years resulted in this blog post. Let that sink in.

Then let’s contemplate that for me to write this post about 30 trillion of cells are working hard in unison to give rise to this human being. Within these cells there are about a billion chemical reactions per second per cell. All this coordination! These 30 trillion cells started as 1 cell, which split umpteenth times with one instruction set (DNA) that somehow knows how to create kidneys, lungs, brains etc. That such complexity can be created with such a simple beginning is baffling.

Consider also that while we are genetically the same as a kid born 2000 years ago, it is the collective effort of the 100 billion people before us, who over centuries have pushed the world forward (some more, some less), that have resulted in a super-organism we call civilisation that today determines our nurture. This nurture with all the cultural and technological progress is the main difference why we are so different from that kid 2000 years ago.

This connectivity to the cosmos, to the unfathomable complexity within, and to the billions of people who came before (and those alive today) is extraordinary and provides me with a sense of awe on a daily basis. It is really very special to be alive and to be connected to time and space in this way. And yet, the very same universe that births us so miraculously is also indifferent to our survival.

THE UNIVERSE DOES NOT CARE

The title of this section contains all there is to say. It is also the best reason why all of anthropocentric religiosity feels misplaced. Living and conscious beings (yes, animals included) are dying every single day in undeserving circumstances not at the hands of other people but just to chance and the rules that have been set out by this universe.

Just as the dinosaurs were wiped off the map by an asteroid, we could face the same plight. In other words, the notion of controlling our own destiny is an illusion in the limit. As Eisenhower said, “Planning is everything but plans are nothing”. This world around us does not bend to our will and does not care for our wellbeing (only other conscious beings do), even though it may seem like it momentarily.

The cosmic symphony is majestic and we are part of it, but it is not about us and that is abundantly clear, if we lose our self-centredness for one moment to observe the world around us soberly. As such, at least for the time being, death is a reality that we need to contend with and while the notion makes many, me included, anxious, there is value in contemplating it.

THE STOICS & MEMENTO MORI

Stoicism was birthed in ancient Greece by Zeno of Citium. He began teaching in Athens around 300 BCE. His followers first met at the Stoa Poikile ("Painted Porch"), a colonnade in the Athenian agora - hence the name "Stoicism.” Here the core tenets:

1. Virtue is the only true good. Courage, wisdom, justice, and self-discipline are the foundations of a meaningful life.

2. Focus only on what you can control. Your thoughts, choices, and actions - not other people, outcomes, or external events.

3. Live in accordance with nature. This means living rationally, cooperatively, and with purpose, as part of the greater whole, while accepting mortality.

4. Train your perception. Things are not good or bad in themselves - it’s our judgments that make them so.

5. Practice daily reflection. Through journaling, meditation, or reviewing your actions to cultivate virtue.

The key people to continue to popularise this philosophy were the Romans Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. While the phrase cannot be attributed to any one person, it was through the Stoic tradition that the term “Memento Mori” - “Remember that you must die” was coined. In ancient Rome, when a general paraded through the streets after a victory, a servant or companion would whisper "Memento Mori" to remind him of his mortality, so he wouldn’t become too prideful. This tradition reinforced the ideal of humility and self-awareness.

Later the Christian church during the Middle Ages and artists during the Renaissance continued this notion through depictions of skulls, hourglasses, wilted flowers, and decaying corpses in art and jewellery as reminders of mortality.

CARPE DIEM, SECULAR MODERNITY & DEATH DENIAL

During the 17th to 19th century Memento Mori fell out of fashion and was replaced by “Carpe Diem”. As science, humanism, and individualism grew, the vibe shifted.

Thinkers and poets like Horace (who originally coined carpe diem), Montaigne, and later Romantics emphasised enjoying life, love, and beauty in the face of impermanence. Death was still acknowledged, but more as an impetus for experience, not for withdrawal or repentance.

Fast forward to the 21st century. In the modern secular world, death has been pushed to the margins of experience. Over the last century, what was once a deeply communal and visible event became clinical, distant, and sanitised. Most people no longer die at home surrounded by loved ones, but in hospitals, institutions, or care facilities. The dying process has been outsourced to professionals, and the rituals surrounding death, once public, have become increasingly private, if not entirely avoided. As a result, death has become abstract, something we rarely see, talk about, or even think about in daily life. In this shift, Memento Mori lost its central place in culture, replaced by a quiet unease we struggle to name.

This removal of death from public life coincided with the rise of mass consumerism and media, which actively encourage distraction, optimism, and the illusion of limitless time. In a society that prizes youth, productivity, and relentless self-improvement, to contemplate death is seen as unproductive at best, depressive at worst. The distraction seems by design: in the face of death our consumerist pursuits seem rather silly. If we were to not buy into those capitalist games, what would happen to existing power structures? But rather than face the finality of life, we buy wrinkle cream, stream endless entertainment, and promise ourselves there will always be time “later.”

FREUD, JUNG AND BECKER

This denial of death is to our peril. One of my favourite books that explores this, is written by Ernest Becker “The Denial of Death”. Becker was a contemporary (barely) of Freud and Jung, who both influenced his work.

While Freud and Jung didn’t frame death in the tradition of Memento Mori, both made mortality central to their theories of the psyche. Freud introduced the concept of the “death drive” - a subconscious force pulling us toward destruction, repetition, and ultimately non-being. He saw death not as something we rationally face, but as a terrifying void we repress. Jung, by contrast, viewed death as a spiritual transformation and an essential aspect of individuation - the process of becoming whole. He believed the second half of life should involve preparing the psyche for death, integrating its symbolic meaning rather than denying its reality.

Becker took these psychological insights and built them into a sweeping theory of human motivation in the aforementioned “The Denial of Death”. Deeply influenced by Freud’s ideas about repression and Jung’s interest in the symbolic, Becker argued that our fear of death is the root of much of human behaviour. Unlike Freud, who saw death repression as one defense mechanism among many, Becker believed it was the central mechanism - so primal and powerful that culture itself arises largely to protect us from it. Our need for self-esteem, identity, and meaning is, in his view, a way to construct the illusion of permanence in the face of certain annihilation.

For Becker, Memento Mori isn’t just a philosophical exercise - it’s a psychological reckoning. We build religions, pursue legacies, and chase status not simply out of ambition, but because we can’t bear the thought of being insignificant and forgotten. In this way, he reframes death contemplation: not as a gloomy exercise, but as a path to liberation from self-deception. By facing death squarely, Becker believed, we might finally begin to live authentically - not clinging to immortality projects, but grounded in reality. In other words, we can stop playing games that others have made up for us to be busy but actually play the games we truly want to play.

His work reminds us that to be human is to straddle two truths: we are finite animals, and yet we long for transcendence. This quote of Becker’s sums it up nicely: “Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back to the ground a few feet in order to rot and disappear forever. He is both god and worm.”

DEATH CONTEMPLATION TOOLKIT

I am aware that spending too much time considering death in one sitting can be triggering. This is why below I suggest different ways to be aware without becoming paralysed. To quote Irvin Yalom again, who’s writing on death is with Becker’s the best contemporary expression of these ideas: "Though the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us."

1. Crystallising Our Priorities: When we truly absorb that time is finite, the noise falls away. Is that urge to buy a Lambo or Birkin to impress others really worth the headache? Are the grudges we are nursing really necessary? Let’s stop kidding ourselves. Try this: Write your own eulogy - or even just three sentences you hope someone would say about you. Are you living toward that vision?

2. Stop Playing Games Made by Others: We often inherit scripts: status games, success metrics, approval-seeking. But death is a radical editor - it cuts the fake from the script. Try this: Ask yourself: If I had one year to live, what would I stop pretending to care about? Write down the answers. Start subtracting.

3. Recover the Present Moment: Yalom argued that death-awareness is the best antidote to the illusion of endless tomorrows. It can rescue us from the trance of postponement. Try this: Place a Memento Mori object - a coin, a ring, or even a calendar reminder - somewhere you’ll see it daily. Not to scare you, but to remind you: this is it.

4. Overcome Inertia: Fear of starting, fear of failure, fear of judgment - all shrink when compared to the bigger reality: you won’t always have the chance. Try this: When you feel stuck, ask yourself again: If I died a year from today, what project or conversation would I most regret not starting? Do the first tiny step now.

5. Increase Compassion - for Loved Ones and Strangers: Death is the great equalizer. Everyone we know is on the same path. This truth can dissolve resentment and deepen our love. Try this: Imagine this is the last time you’ll speak to someone you care about - not morbidly, just gently. What would you say or do differently?

6. Live More Mindfully: The awareness of death isn’t about hurrying - it’s about being here fully. Each moment becomes sacred when you realise it could be the last. Try this: Do one thing today - drinking tea, walking outside, hugging someone - as if it were the last time. Feel the richness in that slowness.

All these exercises are meant to create a real sense of appreciation for the gift of life and a clarity for the value of your time. Henry David Thoreau put it best when he said, "The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it."

CONCLUSION

Contemplating death isn’t about pessimism. It’s about lucidity. It’s a refusal to live in denial or distraction. When we remember that our time is limited, we stop outsourcing our values to culture, to status games, or to the inertia of routine. We start living on our own terms - with more urgency, more compassion, and more presence.

The Stoics, the psychologists, and the mystics all converged on this truth in different ways: to face death is to reclaim life. It’s not always comfortable, but it is clarifying. As Irvin Yalom reminds us, it is precisely the idea of death - not the event itself - that can save us. It slices through the noise. It teaches us to hold each moment like it matters - because it does.

So let’s not look away. Let’s look carefully, calmly, and curiously. Not to dwell in fear, but to walk more freely through the brief, astonishing experience of being alive.

ADDENDUM

In recent decades, even Silicon Valley has joined the quest to outwit death. The new techno-utopian promise is not just to delay death, but to defeat it entirely - through cryonics, life extension, and digital immortality.

Let me disappoint you by saying that I support this pursuit. However, we will never entirely escape death even if we were to prolong life by a thousand years. Accidents can happen, an asteroid can still hit Earth, a novel virus can still wipe us out...and eventually the heat death of the universe will get us all. Even in a world where we can live much longer, the exercise of contemplating death is not in vain. As a matter of fact, it may become more important than ever.

Note that this post is mainly focused on the “Western” perspective on this issue. The dynamics of Asia, LATAM and Africa are less known to yours truly.

LITTLE BIG PLANET

The late 20th century brought us unprecedented global connectivity. Supply chains became more intertwined. Air travel became democratised. Technology removed the friction in our communication. This interconnectivity has made the world seem much smaller than before. People are more likely to leave their village, a smaller and more limited dating pool, to move to big anonymous cities. At the same time cities grew so much so that most people on the planet now live in urban centres.

The constrained mind is a more decisive mind and so the bigger pool of potential partners has created a sense of “there could be someone better around the corner”. Not only in our own city but now we can also fly to New York cheaply and find them there. The world is our oyster. There are so many potential un-lived lives within our grasp. Why would we chose one if we can dream about 100s?

Contrast that with a life of people growing up in a village of thirty thousand souls with barely anyone ever leaving or joining the dating pool. There we want to lock down the eligible bachelor/ettes as soon as possible. And that is indeed what happened for the most part. Between 1970-1990 as cities grew there was a drastic decline in urban marriage rates compared to rural areas (marriage rates are highly correlated with relationship rates). This difference is still prevalent but has become less pronounced over time. One of the key contributor to this change is female empowerment.

MORE RIGHTS, LESS COERCION

Another key shift during the late 20th century has been the embarrassingly late attempt of addressing the historic wrong of giving women less rights than men. Like most quests for justice, this is never a finished project and we are no where close to the finishing line.

The consequence of the increase in female self-determination and access to job opportunities has been a decrease in overall coupling rates. The gap that existed between rural and urban areas in 1970-1990 has shrunk to 5-10% in the 2000s. Women are rightfully no longer seeing getting married to a man and popping out babies as the only thing that matters in life. They want to pursue careers and are not dependent on men to be the provider.

When only one side of the dating pool is allowed to be gainfully employed and has rights to do as they wish, it’s obvious that couplings were more prevalent. Even an “average” dude could snag a “worldie” if there is not much local competition. This changes when the “worldie” now isn’t dependent on the “average” dude anymore. She can pack up and go to an area with more choice to find a market with more competition.

To make things even more complicated, we’re now seeing a growing education and ambition gap between men and women. In most developed countries, women are outpacing men in higher education and entering more professional spaces in greater numbers. This is great news for equality, but it creates a subtle tension in the dating market. If women still tend to look for partners who are at least as successful, ambitious, or educated as they are, the math starts to get tricky. The pool of men who clear that bar is shrinking. What was once called “marrying up” now feels like searching for a unicorn, and “dating down” still carries a social and emotional tax. So even with more autonomy, mobility, and choice, many women are stuck in a paradox: their standards aren’t unrealistic - they’re just increasingly hard to meet.

I know this is a very economic and bleak view of interpersonal relations but even if you don’t believe that this matters for the majority of relationships, it obviously does for a significant percentage.

IT’S ALL ABOUT BUTTERFLIES

In the meantime American cultural exports became the envy of the world. Hollywood’s preeminence in setting the tone in most of the Western World during the late 20th century is undeniable.

During the 1920s-1950s the image of glamour, idealised romance and clear gender roles was depicted. Couples were aspirational, even if stylised. The “happily ever after” trope was born. The 1960s-1980s featured cultural revolutions and sexual liberation. Divorce and infidelity became themes for the first time and romantic ideals began to shift. In the 1990s-2000s we experienced the explosion of romantic comedies. This genre reinforces romantic longing but often centres around the pursuit more than partnership. Happy endings do mean couplings but barely anything after “I love you” is shown (which is when the actual work starts). In the 2000s media turns increasingly towards individualism, self-actualisation and complexity.

Sex in the City embodies this undermining of traditional coupling quite well. I know I’m going to invite the ire of die hard fans but so be it. The show is a master class in the constant search for the one without any resolution. Characters pair off but it’s always complicated, never clean or permanent. The idea that we should always keep looking is normalised. It is also a masterclass in urban individualism. All of the characters are living for their own goals, career, apartment, identity - this includes the men. Relationships are viewed through the lens of self-fulfilment not sacrifice and stability. And then the “Mr. Big” problem! Carrie’s on-again, off-again relationship with Mr. Big is glamorised and becomes emblematic of the modern romantic dilemma: emotionally unavailable, commitment-phobic, and exciting enough to keep chasing.

Of course, media is a mirror of society but if you create more chickens there will be more eggs. In other words, media can normalise fringe or extreme behaviour found on the edges of society. Note that there are shows like Entourage, Californication and even How I met Your Mother that are more targeted at men, which have had the same effect.

The cultural norms exported from Hollywood before the Internet largely disintermediated its stranglehold, helped globalise a set of expectations - high standards, soulmate myths, perpetual sexual possibility, relationships as liberation not limitation. So we expect epic love stories and get mundane realities leading to dissatisfaction in the first inning. Comparing my lame dating life to Justin Timberlake and Mila Cunis’ on screen romance leaves a lot to be desired. So we couple less and keep searching for someone that gives us the impossible.

THE WORLD IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND

The march of technology progresses until we hit June 29th 2007. It is not hyperbole to suggest that a lot of the awesomeness and issues of the ensuing years can be traced to the creation of the iPhone and the App Store. Of course, someone else would have created the mobile computing paradigm if it weren’t for Steve Job’s Apple but they saw the future and forced it upon the world.

You know the fallout of all this, so I’ll keep it short. Mobile computing has provided the platform for everyone to completely disrupt our attention as they see fit. We have also created more 24/7 inboxes and feeds than any of us can ever stay on top of. The present mediated by mobile computing is overabundant and provides a permanent exhausting chase that has lead to many mental health issues. New platforms allow for culture to travel and splinter in more ways and higher velocities than previously possible. Nobody has given us an instruction manual with the tech that explains how to use it sustainably. Everyone is just messing about to figure this out. Most consume indiscriminately and have become automatons. I have a blogpost on how to fight back.

How does this relate to dating? In more ways than one. If urbanisation provided us with choice, digitisation provides it to us without ever having to leave our homes. Not only did the dating pool become several orders of magnitude bigger but now we can “date” 24/7 from our couch. Some apps like Raya even show us eligible bachelor/ettes from all over the world just so we can keep expanding the “never settle” fantasy.

Moreover, the general trends towards more individualism paired with technologically mediated overabundance of the present have created a generation of people who are alone and exhausted. This impacts how people interact. Furthermore, digital platforms disable empathy loops, which more reliably kick in while interacting in the physical world. This enables us all to be more mean online. While the debate will continue to rage about how much of this meanness has seeped back into the physical world of human interaction, my experience would suggest that it is undeniable. Individualism, exhaustion, and lowered barriers to being mean have made compromising in the real world harder.

Note: A lot of what I ascribe to mobile computing can be said about the internet prior. However, mobile computing hooked everyone up to the internet, not only the people who could afford laptops. It therefore really set off The Great Wave Of Kanagawa.

DEHUMANISING AS A BUSINESS MODEL

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room - dating apps! Humans are superficial. Even in a bar, we scan for potential mates with our eyes. So a bit of superficiality is built into the universe of primates. Dating apps take this to the next level. I don’t think we change what matters to us on dating apps but we do have a gazillion potential matches to assess. This means we have to adopt a process with even more superficiality to “get through” the task.

The abundance comes with the usual issues of choice. Why should we spend time with the matches we currently have if the illusion of the more perfect specimen is just a few swipes away. This means matches are merely to provide a bit of cheap validation and a romantic daydream of a life un-lived before we move on to chase the next match we won’t respond to.

Once conversations get going the dating app inbox competes with all the other inboxes we have to tend to. Good luck with that! If we don’t stand out with ever more interesting banter the novelty of the match wears off…crickets. While matches provide small hits of dopamine, this sort of “ghosting” is the flip side and can be interpreted as micro-aggression or rejection by those who take all these things to heart.

It doesn’t help that the Match Group, which owns most dating apps, and Bumble are for profit organisations that make more money by keeping you on the platform. Charlie Munger used to say “show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome”. Don’t get me wrong there are many people who have found and continue to find the love of their life through dating apps but by and large the dynamics they create are not in the interest of their users. If that were the case, they would do a better job allowing us to search based on criteria that matters, rather than gamifying our need for partnership.

I could go further into the lopsided nature of the stats but we’ve covered this at length in our “On Dating with Tugce Bulut” Where Shall We Meet podcast episode. It is clear that users are not happy with the state of affairs:

A CULTURE OF FRAGILITY

This section is going to get me in trouble but is important. We're living in a time when hyper-individualism has merged with a trauma-aware, label-heavy culture, which is meant to protect - but often ends up limiting - interpersonal connection. Dating, by nature, requires friction, and compromise. But we’ve created a world where even mild discomfort is seen as a red flag, and compromise is seen as self-betrayal.

People now come into dating with a list of non-negotiables and dealbreakers: “if you don’t have a therapist, you’re not for me”, “if you’ve got the covid vaccine, don’t match”, “if you can’t tell me about your trauma, swipe left”. Inherently the focus is primarily on “what do you bring to me?” instead of “what can we build together?”

The modern mandate seems to be “protect your peace at all costs” but if both parties are protecting their peace, who's left to build the bridge? Relationships are inherently destabilising at times. That’s how they deepen. But now, any instability can feel like a threat to one's identity or “healing journey”.

We've become hyper-attuned to micro-aggressions, triggers, and red flags. Words like “toxic,” “trauma,” “gaslighting,” “boundaries,” and “narcissist” are everywhere. This can protect people - but it can also turn intimacy into a minefield. People bounce at the first sign of discomfort.

Compounding this fragility is a growing instinct to interpret others’ actions in the worst possible light. Someone's late text becomes a sign of emotional unavailability. A moment of awkwardness is seen as possible disrespect. A poorly worded opinion? Must have been a deliberate assault. Rather than giving each other the benefit of the doubt, we apply forensic scrutiny, always alert to evidence of harm. It’s not just that we’re sensitive - it’s that we’re primed to pathologise each other. And in that climate, it’s almost impossible for two imperfect humans to grow anything together. Compassion requires slack. But dating now feels like a zero-tolerance zone. Dating has become a courtroom instead of a dance floor.

The result? We’re all waiting for someone who won’t ever make us uncomfortable - but growth, intimacy, and love all require exactly that.

THE COVID THAT BROKE THE CAMEL’S BACK

What a scene to thrust upon a global pandemic onto. While there is a lot to say about life and dating during lockdowns, I’ll stick to the aftermath.

If dating was already fragile due to our aversion to discomfort and compromise, the pandemic polarised society into opposing camps with entirely different realities. Suddenly, what you believed about masks, vaccines, and media trust wasn't just a health choice - it became a litmus test for your values, intelligence, even your moral worth. One side saw public health rules as common sense, and viewed anyone skeptical as a conspiracy-addled liability. The other side saw those same rules as performative nonsense, enforced by captured institutions and consumed only by the compliant.

With every flip-flop in official messaging, the cracks in institutional legitimacy deepened - and the idea of trusting a partner who thought differently became harder to swallow. Dating, once about chemistry and curiosity, began to feel more like picking a winning team. And when two teams compete in sports there is no room for nuance or compromise - one side has to win. So now you’re not looking for a partner - you’re looking for a teammate who already agrees with you on everything.

And not only that, every cultural disagreement since has morphed into a zero-sum game. There’s no longer space for “I see where you’re coming from” or “we can agree to disagree.” Every issue - masks, genders, race, immigration, climate, the Middle East, AI, you name it - gets filtered through a lens of tribal identity where one side must win and the other must be defeated. This isn't just political polarisation - it's a full-spectrum social fragmentation. And in the context of dating, it’s devastating.

We used to be able to fall in love across differences. Now, we can't even tolerate them. If someone doesn’t check all the right ideological boxes, they’re not just “not for me” - they’re part of the problem. In this environment, the emotional bandwidth for compromise, patience, or slow connection has all but vanished.

Friend groups, communities, and dating pools are less ideologically diverse than before because people are now on the lookout for tribal markers for who’s safe to even talk to. The result: dating, once messy and human, now feels like a high-stakes audition for ideological purity - with no callbacks for anyone who flinches.

ANOTHER COLLECTIVE ACTION PROBLEM

I know this essay is rather polemic and that reality is not quite as bad as I make it out to be. Such is the world now, pockets of complete insanity co-exist with sort of normality. But here's the thing: we can address coordination challenges like this, they just require collective action. We do manage to adhere to silence in libraries and movie theatres, so we haven’t completely lost the plot yet. Compromise is needed, so let’s lay out some dating etiquette:

1. Acknowledging our ego - Actions of others for the most part are reflections of what is going on in their life, they are not always immediately a reflection of what they think about us. If someone does act out of line, remember they are probably dealing with some sort of crap in their own life that they projected onto this interaction. It is best to not take everything personal. This is not easy but should be the goal of adult development.

2. Acknowledging our crazy expectations - The reality is that most dates we go on won’t be with the love of our life but this doesn’t mean the people we meet on the way are not worthy of becoming part of our life’s journey. Every date is a possible new friend, collaborator in a project, sidekick we can go to gigs with, etc. Let’s not go into these interactions with pre-set expectations of what has to happen. Most importantly let’s not go into them to seek validation.

3. Remembering the cold start problem - We are all dealing with overflowing inboxes and very little time. So if someone does match with us, let’s send them a message if we feel like the other side could be an interesting human. On the recipients side, we should cut the initiator some slack. They may have lacked creativity in the moment but they are saying between the lines that they are intrigued by us. This should at least warrant a recognition.

4. Adopting radical candour and cognitive safety - If we don’t take everything to heart, then communication could be a lot more honest. If we’ve gone on a date and thought “s/he was nice but I didn’t detect romantic chemistry”, let’s just say that. We can do this by suggesting that it was probably a mutual feeling to ensure it doesn’t feel like we are rejecting them. If we have too much going on to go on another date, let’s say that. We should make sure to consider the dimensions of the human on the other side of the message.

5. Using higher fidelity communication - If possible, we should immediately switch to voice notes. It is far easier to come across as human when we voice our thoughts rather than just type them. Communication is hard enough between friends on text, let alone between strangers. Voice allows for nuance and intonation, which helps avoid misunderstandings.

6. Gathering more in person - Let’s become people who organise in person gatherings. This does not require a big flat or a lot of money. Going on a walk in the park with 10 friends who are single - is free. Let’s be the instigators that get people together. We are much more empathetic and willing to compromise in person, even more so if we have close links to another person.

7. Setting our friends up - Let’s be proactive in setting our friends up, even if we’re bad at matching them. We should normalise friends setting up friends. That’s how it worked for centuries but we somehow now abdicated this responsibility to apps. We can do better than that. Everyone has friends of the opposing sex, who are single, let’s just connect them.

None of the above is easy, nor have I mastered any of the steps myself but it feels like a good direction to take steps in.

CONCLUSION

The forces that have shaped modern dating - tech platforms, media narratives, cultural shifts, economic structures - are bigger than any one person’s choices. This is a classic collective action problem: individually, we optimise for ourselves - protect our peace, chase the ideal, filter out friction - but the net result is mutual disconnection.

The only way out is together. It means choosing to give people a little more slack. It means tolerating ambiguity, accepting imperfection, and being brave enough to sit in discomfort without bolting. It means remembering that no algorithm can substitute for patience, presence, and a little bit of grace. We didn’t get here overnight, and we won’t fix it overnight - but if we start to act differently, the feedback loop can shift. Maybe we can make dating human again.

If nothing else, let’s agree that dating shouldn’t require a thesis-length blog post to make sense - but here we are.

The initial impact released energy equivalent to billions of atomic bombs which killed everything in the immediate vicinity but also caused firestorms and tsunamis that were far reaching. However, the more lasting effect was that it threw enormous amounts of debris, including dust, and soot, into the atmosphere. This debris blocked sunlight, significantly reducing temperatures globally, a phenomenon known as "impact winter." The reduction in sunlight disrupted photosynthesis, causing the collapse of food chains. Plants died off, followed by herbivorous dinosaurs that relied on them, and subsequently the carnivorous dinosaurs that preyed on the herbivores. This was the end for the dinosaurs who had reigned the planet for 165 million years (apes have been around for 25 million…so far). Poof and gone.

The dominant mammals at the time, rat like rodents, survived. Newly opened up ecological niches allowed them to thrive. These resilient creatures, capable of finding shelter and surviving in harsh conditions, began to diversify and evolve in the absence of dinosaurian predators. Primates eventually became one of the descendants of those rodents, setting the stage for the rise of hominids and, ultimately, Homo sapiens. So to a degree we have the Chicxulub impactor to thank for this blog post.

Had the Chicxulub impactor arrived a mere 10 minutes later it may have missed the planet all together. Why am I dwelling on this event (other than it being super cool)? It is a great example of how the deterministic world engine operates. The world of physics that governs the motions of meteors is something we accept as deterministic. Things hurtle through space for millions of years and eventually hit other things. Chemistry and biology are more complex disciplines that operate at a higher level of complexity but obey those same rules. So where is there room for free will?

This post will explore free will or the lack thereof. We’ll look at some of the potential foundations of free will. Then we’ll examine how narrow this notion of free will is, if it exists at all.

DETERMINISM VERSUS INDETERMINISM

A case for free will has to start with examining the foundations of the world in which it arose. So let us have a look at the cosmic engine that has given rise to life and what we know of it.

By and large the world we observe functions deterministically. This has allowed us to discover reliable rules of physics, chemistry and biology that help us navigate our daily lives. So now when we spot a meteor heading for earth in time, we will be able to find ways to deflect it using our scientific knowledge - not prayers, not cosmic energy conjuring circle jerks, not astrology based predictions, not spiritual manifestation nonsense - no we would use science to save humanity.

Given that non-living matter behaves deterministically and we are an outgrowth of said matter, what follows is that everything we do is also deterministic. Let me explain. If we had a supercomputer (let’s call it 42) that would know all the rules of the universe and would have enough capacity to simulate every particle from the Big Bang until now, then we could anticipate everything that has happened and will happen including the decisions of all people. Yet the other side, armed with dangerous half-knowledge, protests “…but quantum physics!!”.

Let’s talk about quantum physics then. There are many snake oil merchants using this term to explain all sorts of phenomena without having any clue what they are talking about (e.g. Joe Dispensa, Deepak Chopra, Rhonda Bryne, Gregg Braden, etc). We shall not spuriously speculate.

Quantum mechanics introduces indeterminacy through the probabilistic nature of wave function collapse and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. This means that our computer 42 could never simulate this universe fully because at the quantum level things happen at random. Let’s be clear, when we say random here we mean that the outcomes cannot be predicted with certainty. Some physicists (e.g. Roger Penrose) and philosophers argue that this inherent unpredictability at the quantum level could provide a foundation for free will, as it implies that not all events are strictly determined by prior states. If human brain processes involve quantum events, this indeterminacy could influence decision-making processes, potentially allowing for free will in a non-deterministic sense. This connection is speculative and remains a topic of ongoing research and debate.

The biggest issue with this argument is that if quantum processes govern our brain, quantum indeterminacy, while introducing randomness, does not equate to free will. Random events are not under the control of the individual and thus do not constitute true freedom of choice. True free will would require more than just indeterminacy; it would need a mechanism for agent causation where individuals can exert control over their actions. My brain, given my preferences evolved through past experience, which are captured in memories, combined with my bodily needs for calories, would need to find a way to influences the probabilities of random quantum events so that I could chose salted caramel over chocolate ice cream.

Another challenge is the relevance of quantum effects at the macroscopic level of brain function. Most neuroscientists believe that classical processes (i.e deterministic biology and chemistry) primarily govern brain activity, and the impact of quantum events, if any, is minimal. Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff refer to microtubules in the brain as a potential structure that would allow for quantum effects. This hypothesis is controversial and not widely accepted in the scientific community, as it lacks empirical evidence. “But we use quantum computing so maybe our brain does as well…” the ill informed blurt out. Yes, but quantum computing accepts the indeterminism of quantum events and works around them by using (coherence through superpositions and entanglement) engineering that I don’t pretend to fully understand, which only works at one degree above absolute zero (–273.15°C). There are significant challenges related to maintaining quantum coherence in the warm, noisy environment of the brain.

So we have a problem. A deterministic universe gives us no basis for free will. Our out could have been quantum physics but given all our current understanding this only produces indeterminism at quantum scales, which if our brains could tap into would mean random will, not free will. However, our experience every day is one to the contrary. I very convincingly feel in control over at least my decisions and actions. This conundrum is often referred to as the “hard problem”, which highlights the "explanatory gap" between objective physical processes and subjective experience. Once again introducing quantum mechanics does not bridge this gap unless it can specifically explain how subjective experience of free will arises from quantum processes. We currently can’t do this.

We know the extent of our ignorance is massive so it is possible that in the future we get to figure this out. However, let’s recap what we need to explain. We need to show that indeterministic (i.e. random) processes at the quantum scale, which at the macro scale lead to a deterministic universe, somehow allow for a very complex object like the brain to use those random processes at the quantum scale to override the determinism of the macro universe to create free will that is neither random nor determined.

Some in their attempts to explain this have resorted to consider that consciousness is fundamental. They (Donald Hoffman et al) suggest that consciousness is a building block of every elemental particle and so everything at a certain level of complexity is more or less conscious (e.g. has free will). This is called Panpsychism and while intellectually interesting has just as much going for it as astrology, reading tea leaves and tarot.

You may believe there are undiscovered laws of physics that eventually explain all this and refute all this established general/special theory of gravity and quantum physics nonsense, which has given us countless technologies we use on a daily. You might be right. I try to be a reasonable person who’s conviction scales with the availability of evidence (thanks David Hume). The best argument we have so far is that it ONLY FEELS like we have free will. But if one can’t come up with an argument to defend ones feeling, then good philosophical reasoning recommends that one rejects it, or at least withholds judgment until one can get the required evidence together.

EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE AGAINST FREE WILL

There are numerous experiments that show that the brain activity associated with decisions occurs before the conscious mind is aware of it. This suggests that consciousness and the associated free will are post-hoc rationalisations for a decision that was made by the subconscious.

Benjamin Libet’s 1983 experiment demonstrated that the brain initiates voluntary movements before a person becomes consciously aware of their decision to act. Using EEG, Libet found that a "readiness potential" (RP)—a neural signal indicating motor preparation—appeared about 550 milliseconds before participants reported feeling the conscious urge to move (good news for people who get shot in the head - the bullet will kill you before your brain catches up and becomes aware of it like Tony Soprano). This suggests that what we perceive as a deliberate choice is actually the result of unconscious brain processes, with conscious awareness arising only after the brain has already committed to an action. There is another angle to this. In experiments where a patient’s brain was stimulated to elicit forced laughter, the patient would find a post hoc rationalisation why this happened (“I thought of something funny…”).

In a 2008 study, neuroscientist John-Dylan Haynes and his team used fMRI scans to investigate decision-making and found that the brain predicts a person’s choices up to 7-10 seconds before they become consciously aware of making a decision. By analysing activity in the prefrontal and parietal cortex, researchers could determine whether a participant would press a button with their left or right hand long before they reported deciding. This extended the findings of Libet’s experiment, showing that decisions are not only initiated unconsciously but can also be predicted well in advance, suggesting that conscious choice may simply be an after-the-fact rationalisation rather than the true origin of volition.

Some of my favourite work regarding unmasking the free will illusion is by David Eagleman. In one of his key experiments on time perception, he used a "flash-lag" illusion setup, where a moving object and a flashed object appear simultaneously, but the moving object seems to be ahead. This demonstrated that the brain doesn’t register events in real-time but instead collects sensory information over a brief window before constructing a perception of reality.

Another time perception experiment involves rapid visual sequences and explored how the brain determines the timing of conscious decisions. Participants were shown a fast-moving sequence of images and asked to make a spontaneous decision—such as pressing a button—at a moment of their choosing. However, the timing of their perceived decision could be manipulated by subtly altering the sequence, leading participants to believe they had made their choice earlier or later than they actually had. This experiment demonstrated that the brain does not record decisions in real-time but instead reconstructs them after the fact, sometimes altering the perceived sequence of events to maintain a coherent narrative. Again the findings suggest that our sense of volition is not a direct cause of action but a post hoc interpretation.

Further studies showed that when choices were made under time pressure, participants often justified their decisions after the fact, even in cases where their choice was subtly influenced by external stimuli. This aligns with the idea that multiple neural circuits are constantly competing to produce an action, and the “winning” circuit ultimately dictates behaviour—while the conscious mind later rationalises the decision as if it were freely made. Eagleman also found that damage or alterations in specific brain regions can drastically change decision-making, such as in cases of frontal lobe injuries where individuals lose impulse control. These findings suggest that free will is not a singular conscious force but rather a product of hidden neural dynamics, challenging the traditional belief that we make decisions in a purely deliberate and autonomous way.

Detractors may want to argue that the subconscious decisions are made freely so it doesn’t matter if the conscious self realises this later. What all these experiments show is that what we experience as our justification for our actions is just like a PR agency pumping out stories for a shadowy figure in the background. This figure makes all the decisions and then drafts a memo that it sends afterwards to the PR agency. Yet the agency is fully convinced it’s actually writing all the memos and is the author of the stories. Eagelman & Co’s experiments show that the PR agency is lagging behind reality and will post hoc rationalise decision making as free.

MORE NAILS IN THE COFFIN

Human life starts humbly with a sperm cell and an egg cell. I hope we can all agree that there is no or free will involved at this level. The deterministic rules of chemistry and biology set the parameters for the merger of the two, which sets off a chain reaction that results in an embryo. At some point we believe this clump of cells to have an experience of the world that is worth protecting (arguably this threshold is a lot lower for human life than it is for any other species we consider food, but that’s a different post). Once born we will consider this baby conscious (i.e. is feels like something to be a baby) but do we really believe it possesses free will? If yes, when did it sneak in?

My experience of observing young children is that they are beautiful and fascinating beings who’s actions are driven by a maximum exploration imperative so that they can build a solid predictive model of the world around them. As they explore their perceptual apparatus and proprioception improves but their motivations seem simplistic - explore, eat, sleep, poop. As they grow older one can clearly detect their individualistic character traits, while also being able to reliably predict most of their actions and decisions. Is free will already part of the equation here or does it require a certain level of brain development for us to tap into the quantum physics level magic?

Later in life we can see how terrible ailments like Alzheimer and other neurodegenerative diseases decimate our abilities to live lives on our own terms. Do these illnesses affect the way our brains tap into quantum processes? Are they affecting our connection to a metaphysical level that allows us to circumvent the rules of the deterministic universe? Or are they just messing with the workings of the deterministic machine and thereby unravelling the notion of free will? How about psychological conditions like severe depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, addiction, eating disorders etc? It seems that issues with the machine have an outsized impact on our so called free will. This suggests that free will is an outgrowth of the machine and thereby just “deterministic will”.

I don’t want to belittle the amazing miracle of the human body. The fact that three dozen of trillion cells work in unison with billions of reactions per second per cell to give raise to the thoughts which make up this blog post is incomprehensible. However, this can be just as awe inspiring without having to assume more than what is. But let me not come across as close-minded and play along with the notion of free will. Let’s assume that somehow we humans are special enough to overwrite the rules that govern the universe when we freely chose our favourite ice cream flavour.

HYPOTHETICAL FREE WILL MUSINGS

I had no freedom in choosing my parents, my genes, the country I was born in, the people who influenced me in my early childhood, the teachers who educated me, the students in my class. I also had no control over the traumas my grandparents inflicted upon my parents which certainly have or haven’t (depending on my genetic propensity) affected me in the right or wrong way. I didn’t choose the economic system of the country I grew up in, its laws, social norms, its culture, the companies’ products available for my consumption, and so on. If I’d argue the other side I’d say that this means less degrees of freedom but not absence of free will. Good point! We are not finished yet. Lets be clear that there are plenty of things outside our control, which will influence from the outset the menu of options we deem available to choose freely from.

What gamers call bad spawn RNG (after dying randomly respawning in a part of the game map that leads to disadvantages) severely limits the probabilistic variance of outcomes your life can have. It’s often the privileged folks, who can be free will maximalists. They would argue that everyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps given all degrees of freedom are granted to every human. It’s hard to run the counterfactual and see how they would fare by starting out as a street kid in Mogadishu.

Our free will if it does exist on a daily basis comes in contact with that of others. Every agent in this world creates causal cones, which others may end up in. Trump has a very large causal cone for instance. The other side may say but you are again just talking about reduced freedoms (like in Trump’s case barbarically not giving women a right over their body). Yes, but a change in societal norms and culture actually impacts people’s way of thinking and therefore also affects one’s free will. If trans people are being vilified and you want to be part of the in group then you’ll go along with without thinking deeply or empathetically about the topic (and realising there are crazy people who take everything too far but by and large most LGBTQ people are not that).

Causal cones are all around us. Other people’s decisions reverberate through the ages to still have consequences on our lives today. To be free you would have to be wholesale devoted to the project of creating your own system of beliefs and processes to live your life. This is impossible as we are domesticated into “the system” from the moment we are born. Very few people break away to live “truly free” lives and that’s because most of us are OK with not being free.

A good experiment to test the limits of your free will is to try to do the opposite of what you feel is right/proper/preferred for 2 weeks. I’ve tried this for a day and failed. A lower cost experiment is something most people who meditate know well. Try to focus on your breath for 2 minutes. What are those dozens of thoughts doing popping in your head while you are freely choosing to focus on your breath? Why those thoughts in particular? Who chose them? Doesn’t seem very free to me.

For completeness sake it is worth mentioning that you are of course a slave to your physical needs. We know that people make worse decisions when they are sleep deprived. Lack of sleep often leads to problems with risk assessment, impulse control, and emotional regulation. This has been proven over and over and over again. Free will seems very fragile indeed (especially if you really really have to pee)!

You get my point. If you want to argue for free will you have to acknowledge it is in a very narrow band of variance. We can of course count ourselves as special while “freely” choosing salted caramel, our future mate, the new job etc. but we are limited in our true freedom on so many dimensions. The other side would argue “but we’ve chosen to become this person in the narrow band of variance by all the past decisions we’ve made”. I call bullshit - most of those decisions were made for you before you were born.

USEFUL ILLUSION

Why does this illusion of free will exist to begin with? Let’s hypothesise. The universe seemingly has an inbuilt bias to create local complexity. After 13.7 billions of years it has given raise to the most complex structure (that we know of) in this universe - the human brain. A brain paired with our bodies is capable to manipulate the universe and explore the design space of the physics engine to create more complexity. For the humans to do this well, they need be able to model the world around them competently. This requires a model of themselves in this world as agents.

So here I am an agent with a brain and body. I need to navigate this world competently to survive and procreate to create more complexity. A signal traveling from my toes to my brain takes 20-50 milliseconds (longer for taller people). This means my awareness of reality is always in the past as my brain needs to stitch various different inputs together to have a cohesive perception of the world engine and my place within it (by that logic taller people live further in the past). As my brain does the stitching, believing that I make choices freely enables me to take responsibility for my actions, plan and simulate futures, and engage in creative problem-solving. It allows my neural network to model myself as an intentional agent in a world that is otherwise governed by cold, deterministic laws.

This self-model is vital not only for my survival but also for exploring possibilities without burning calories to try them (“cheaper” means of experimentation through simulation). Even if my choices are ultimately determined by factors beyond my control, the narrative of free will gives me the leverage to learn from my mistakes, set goals, and work toward self-improvement. My and your self-improvement and learning from our mistakes passed on through generations of knowledge sharing with the collective allows us to build a civilisation. In essence, the illusion serves as a psychological glue that holds together the fabric of our social and cognitive lives to create a collective body of knowledge, thereby creating a more interesting and complex universe. I know there is a lot of conjecture here, but it sounds good no?

CONCLUSION

You don’t need to be a “no free will exists maximalist” to hopefully conclude from this essay that the narrow band in which we have free will, if it exists, should make us much more humble and forgiving. What do the limits or non-existent free will mean for the nature of personal responsibility and moral judgment? If every/most thought and decision is the inevitable result of prior causes—some of which are completely beyond our control—then our pride in having "chosen" a particular path should be tempered by humility. Free will allows us to separate ourselves from all other beings around us. We believe to be special and different, which allows us to be unforgiving in our domination of this world.

Knowing that our choices are not as free as they seem can encourage us to be more compassionate toward ourselves and others. It reminds us that many of the behaviours we criticise or celebrate in others are not the product of some metaphysical freedom, but rather the outcome of a long chain of causes, from genetics and early environment to societal influences and random events. This understanding can lead us to forgive more readily, to be kinder when mistakes are made, and to foster a sense of empathy that acknowledges the true complexity of human behaviour. Embracing the illusion of free will as a useful, though not ultimate, tool can thus pave the way for a more forgiving and understanding society. Well or rather trying to embrace it because you don’t have a choice in the matter anyway!

RES EXTENSA

Res Extensa or the material world is the realm of stuff. Things that we can touch and bump into are part of this world. Equally important are the rules that govern it. While not fully understood, we have good models that describe this world and its rules with a lot of accuracy. So much so that we launched a probe in 2016 to meet a near-earth asteroid Bennu in 2018 which returned to Earth in September this year with samples from that Asteroid's surface (OSIRIS-REx mission). This very competent grasp on the rules of physics, chemistry and biology is really what has made modern civilisation possible. Given the understanding of these reliable models there are many things that we know to be possible but that we can't yet engineer.

What is significant about us humans in Res Extensa is that we know that we are not seeing the world as it really is. The real world does not have colours or sounds. There are indeed waves with frequencies but none of them have the properties that we ascribe to them as such. We perceive them because of the design and limitations of our perceptual apparatus. The part of the electromagnetic wave spectrum that was relevant to our survival is the visible light spectrum. Radio, micro, infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray and gamma-ray waves are not visible to us but we know they are there.

We also know that the base layer of reality as we currently understand it is weird. The rules that govern the microcosm seem hard to relate to our human scale environment. In simple terms, particles at the base layer of reality are in many states at once, a sort of undecided mess. They can influence each other even from very far distances. Their location and momentum can't both be pinned down at the same time at any given moment. Yet, the equations that reliably describe this incomprehensible (from a monkey perspective) quantum world, most prominently the Heisenberg and Schrödinger equations, are fundamental in the creation of transistors, semi-conductors, GPS, digital cameras, lasers, etc. technologies that are the foundation of our modern world.

What follows is that this messy undecided ever dynamic microcosm of too many parts to count that we approximate as solid geometries at our scale is governing the material world, despite its unintuitive machinations. At the cutting edge of current day cosmology and quantum physics most have given up on space and time being fundamental properties of the universe all together. For instance quantum entanglement suggests that the strength of entanglement between particles dictates their spatial relationship, leading to the fabric of space as we experience it. The same theory suggests that temporal relations – the 'before' and 'after' – might emerge from the complex entanglement of quantum states. In other words, foundations of the physics engine that we human scale entities experience may just be side effects of what the universe is actually up to.

The strong grasp that we have on the rules of this universe despite its weird implications, is both empowering and unnerving. While we may be playing on the seashore with a vast ocean of unchartered knowledge in front of us, as Newton famously said, there doesn't seem to be a lot of room for miracles. It is of course possible that we yet discover incredible insights but they are likely to build upon some of our knowledge and not completely invalidate it. Our classic Newtonian universe and that of Einstein’s Special Relativity don't allow for anything other than determinism. Quantum Physics, while introducing an indeterministic universe, doesn't open a door to free will either as indeterministic means random rather than directed. Tough spot to be in for us egocentric monkeys but let's just pretend we have free will for now (we have no choice anyway).

THE EMERGENCE OF RES COGITANS

Res Cogitans or the world of ideas is the realm of thinking, understanding, willing and imagining. In this world nation states exist, so do virtues and human rights. None of these ideas are implemented in the Res Extensa other than in the neural networks of those who have adopted them. What does implemented mean here? The way the concept of a nation state is implemented in my neural network is not universal, meaning the nation Germany is not encoded the same way in all brains on this planet. There is a physical representation of Germany in my brain, which is generated through a combination of complex biological, chemical, and electrical activities that result in a neural architecture but it differs from yours. I grew up in Germany so the taste of curry wurst, the smell of the alley near the Hauptbahnhof in Frankfurt and the tactile feeling of the pillar of the Brandenburg Gate are all bound up with the neural architecture that is Germany. The dictionary definition of Germany, which is a compressed and abstract idea, means the same for most of us but its physical representation in biological substrate can't be identified reliably. So the encoding of ideas in Res Cogitans seems not to be tied to the physical structure in Res Extensa.

How did this Res Cogitans emerge? Given that ideas like Germany require special encoding of information when did the ability to do such a thing arise? An atom contains information, which is represented by the physical configuration of its components (elementary particles). So its information content equals its structure. An atom, a rock, complex molecules and stars have an information content that is represented solely by their physical structure. This structure obeys the rules of Res Extensa in the most direct way - physics and chemistry do their thing.

Enter RNA, which formed in the prebiotic soup of the early earth about 4 billion years ago (unless you believe in panspermia, in which case it was brought here on an asteroid). RNA molecules, among other things, ensure genetic information is accurately and effectively used for protein synthesis and gene regulation. While all molecules have a physical structure determined by their atomic composition, RNA goes beyond this by using its structure to encode information. The sequence of nucleotides in RNA isn't just a chemical arrangement; it's a code or language that guides the synthesis of proteins. In the history of the universe, prior to the emergence of RNA (as far as we know), the complexity we observe was largely a direct result of physical and chemical laws acting on matter. RNA introduced a new level of complexity – a molecule not just formed by chemical laws but also storing information that governs biological processes. RNA uses its structure to store and transmit genetic information, which is an abstraction from its physical properties. This information determines how organisms are built and function, which is a leap in complexity. The emergence of RNA can be seen as a milestone in the history of the universe – a shift from patterns formed by physical laws to the storage and transmission of biological information. This represents a fundamental change in how information is stored in the universe and is the foundation of Res Cogitans.

Fast forward billions of years and the ability to encode and store information coupled with evolution by natural selection has resulted in multicellular life that has created complexity at many levels of emergence. I'm purposefully leaving out many steps that got us to someone saying "Cogito, ergo sum" because I don't want to get sidetracked (I know, I failed a bunch on this front already).

RES COGITANS

At this point some dualists among you may be unsettled by the fact that the world of ideas is a direct outgrowth of the deterministic physics engine of Res Extensa. I don't claim this to be iron clad truth but I don't see any evidence to the contrary. The mechanistic nature of our brains is obvious. For example neurodegenerative diseases and psychological disorders (Alzheimer, Schizophrenia, Manic Depression, etc) show us that a change in the material world of our brain has a clear and substantial impact on our experience of the world of ideas. So despite Descartes insistence that mind and matter are separate they clearly don't seem to be but that doesn't make Res Cogitans less remarkable.

The world of ideas is grounded in language, not only linguistics but logic, maths, programming, musical notation, chemical equations, and so on. However those languages are orders of magnitude more complex than the one RNA "invented" to encode instructions for protein synthesis. Biological evolution provided the "technology" to increase the level of complexity in encoding. It did so with the creation of some main breakthroughs like DNA, photosynthesis, the complex cell, sex, movement, sight, hot blood and eventually the brain (Nick Lane's "Life Ascending" is a good read on the subject). It's baffling how all this played out over the course of 4 billion years through evolution’s exploration of the design space available given the circumstances on this pale blue dot and the rules of Res Extensa.

The biological evolution that laid the groundwork for complex language began with crucial changes in the human brain and vocal apparatus. The enlargement of the brain, particularly the areas responsible for cognitive functions, provided the neurological substrate necessary for processing complex information and producing sophisticated communication. This increase in brain size and complexity was paralleled by the development of a more flexible vocal tract and auditory system capable of producing and distinguishing a wide range of sounds.

A pivotal moment in the development of human language was the emergence of symbolic thought – the ability to represent objects, actions, and concepts with arbitrary symbols, be they spoken words, written characters, or gestures. This leap allowed early humans not only to refer to the tangible, immediate aspects of their environment but also to abstract concepts, past events, and future possibilities. The development of syntax – rules governing the arrangement of words to convey different meanings – added another layer of complexity, enabling the expression of nuanced and sophisticated ideas. This was the beginning of infinity for humans. With this breakthrough we became capable of creating languages or encoding that is many orders of magnitude bigger than anything else in the animal kingdom. Crows are smart and also have language but they haven't changed significantly over the past millions of years. Humans have been around for 250,000 years and despite still being barbarians managed to walk on the moon.

Parallel to biological evolution, cultural evolution played a significant role in the advancement of language. As human societies became more complex, the need for more efficient and versatile forms of communication grew. This need drove the evolution of diverse languages, each suited to the specific social and environmental conditions of different human groups. The ability of humans to engage in collective learning – transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next and building upon it – meant that linguistic innovations were preserved, shared, and refined over time. This cumulative cultural evolution has surpassed the pace of biological evolution by natural selection. The evolution of the meme space has an independent existence that is implemented in abstract encodings in neural patterns. These ideas are self-replicating, and are subject to selective evolution based on social utility and mastery over reality. This has made Res Cogitans the driving force of the development of Res Extensa on this mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

DIVERSITY OF LANGUAGE

To create worlds of ideas we've developed different types of encodings. Let's look at two different examples at opposite ends of the spectrum. There are some low information but high accuracy and some high information but low accuracy languages.

The math statement 100,000,000,000 / 100,000,000 = 1,000 is low information but high accuracy. Compare this to the statement "a heartwarming glance by his father" that has roughly the same number of characters. We understand there is a son and a father and a glance that is causing positive emotions. It is likely that this father and son have a good relationship and that they are in a setting where the son is seeking approval or reassurance from the father who is providing it. We know the warming of the heart is metaphorical etc. But at the same time we have no clue about the exact circumstances. Compare that to the math statement. It is exact but it contains little information comparatively.

Math therefore becomes a very reliable language for us to approximate the inner workings of Res Extensa as accuracy is key to do so. Mathematical symbols and operations follow strict rules, and mathematical statements are typically either true or false, with little room for ambiguity. The precision of mathematics makes it an ideal encoding language for describing quantities, structures, and logical relationships. Its abstract nature allows it to model complex systems and phenomena that may not be easily articulated in natural language.

Words can have multiple meanings, which can change based on context, usage, and cultural factors. This flexibility makes language versatile and adaptable but less precise than mathematics. Language is therefore used for a broader range of purposes, including expressing emotions, conveying subjective experiences, persuading, and storytelling.

Most significantly natural language enables infinite recursion. Noam Chomsky's model of generative grammar describes how a set of rules can generate the structure of a sentence in a language, allowing for the creation of an infinite number of sentences, including very complex ones, from a limited set of rules and words:

• "Ali read a book."

• "Ali read a book that Natascha recommended."

• "Ali read a book that Natascha recommended after she enjoyed it."

• "Ali read a book that Natascha recommended after she enjoyed it because Lucia praised it."

• "Ali read a book that Natascha recommended after she enjoyed it because Lucia praised it for its unique perspective."

In this example, the initial simple sentence is expanded through recursion by embedding additional clauses that provide more detail. Each new clause adds depth and complexity to the original statement, illustrating how recursion in language allows for the expression of complex ideas in a structured and hierarchical manner. This gives us unbounded potential to create stories and ideas. As a matter of fact the combinatorial space of stories we can create with language theoretically surpasses Eddington's number (total number of atoms in the universe 10^80).

I know this took us a while but we finally arrived at the crescendo of this line of thought. Somehow this universe after 13.7 billion years of exploration of the design space in the Res Extensa physics engine gave birth to a species that has developed languages that allow for an infinite world of ideas in Res Cogitans.

THE POWER OF IDEAS

Ideas have an impact on Res Extensa. They enable our discovery of the fabric of physical reality. They allow for creating processes to coordinate an unwieldy civilisation. They empower us to explore the human condition. Res Cogitans and the world of ideas are the platform for the universe to become more complex faster than cosmic evolution alone.

Just like language, ideas are also recursive. The ideas of equality, freedom of speech and human rights have lead to many more people participating in the wider idea generation process. The idea that tools can help us to manipulate the world (the scene from 2001 Space Odyssey comes to mind) kicked off a process that resulted in agriculture, which in turn resulted in more people being born to participate in the idea space. The social contract, democracy and capitalism allowed for more complex societies and forms of collaboration to expand the idea space. The development of the idea framework we call the scientific method, which is rooted in empirical observation, experimentation, and the questioning of established beliefs, revolutionised our understanding of the natural world. It laid the foundation for modern science, technology and tools that have made the dissemination of ideas more efficient.

Where does this game of infinite possible ideas lead us? If we don't go extinct, then the long game seems to be Res Cogitans mastery over Res Extensa. Our current interface to manipulate reality uses intermediary steps to achieve our will. A thought is translated into words on a screen, which are translated into 1s and 0s to be transmitted. We design on computers so that people with tools build physical or digital products. But these intermediary steps create friction. The speed with which I am typing this is slower than the speed of my thought.

The problem here is that our thinking is in high content low accuracy language and our interface to most creation flows through programming languages and technical systems that use low content high accuracy languages. The recent advances in generative AI have given us a glimpse of the next era of mastery over Res Extensa. When we can use natural language to prompt an AI to create an image, we understand that the mastery over digital realms is getting closer. With neural interfaces which read my mind (rather than me having to type) ultimately a thought can create worlds. There are no limits in Res Extensa’s rules for this not to happen. It is just a matter of design and engineering.

Mastery over the world of atoms could follow suit. Building is a crude process. When we can instruct nano bots to assemble items atom by atom based on digital instructions, we reduce intermediary steps like drawing up plans that we explain to humans, who use comparably unwieldy inaccurate tools. Nano bots assembling from the ground up increases mastery over the world of matter. Our bodies are run by such bots, specialised molecules with narrow instructions that build proteins, enzymes and cells atom by atom. These were "invented" by evolution. We will be able to design nano bots that can do a lot more. There is no law of physics that suggests that in future these bots cannot eventually "grow" building sized objects just like they grow a human. Couple these nano bots to neural interfaces and a thought in Res Cogitans can be manifested as an object in Res Extensa.

One can question of course whether this pursuit of becoming gods of Res Extensa is a worthy cause. We opened Pandora's Box a long time ago and all ideas that express themselves in technologies that make us more powerful have been adopted hence. I acknowledge that the above scenarios sound like sci-fi, just as our world would sound like sci-fi to 19th century humans.

CONCLUSION

Our exploration through the realms of Res Extensa and Res Cogitans reveals the profound journey of the universe, particularly through its most curious and inventive product – humanity. From the fundamental particles that make up the physical world to the boundless landscapes of human thought and imagination, we've ventured far in understanding and reshaping our reality.

Looking forward, the convergence of Res Extensa and Res Cogitans hints at a future where the barriers between thought and physical reality blur. Advances in AI, neural interfaces, and nanotechnology suggest a future where the leap from idea to creation becomes instantaneous, a world where our deepest imaginations could be materialised as easily as they are conceived.

Yet, as uncle Ben would say, with great power comes great responsibility. The pursuit of becoming masters of Res Extensa should be tempered with wisdom and foresight. As we stand on the brink of unprecedented capabilities, it is crucial to reflect on the ethical, philosophical, and societal implications of our advancements. The lessons learned from our past, the understanding of our present, and the visions of our future should guide us in creating a world where the harmony between the material and the mental realms leads to the betterment of humanity and the world we inhabit.

In essence, the journey through Res Extensa and Res Cogitans is not just a tale of human achievement but a continuous dialogue between our quest to understand the universe and our endeavour to find meaning within it. As we navigate this ever-expanding landscape of knowledge and possibility, we continue to redefine what it means to be human and reshape the future of our existence in this vast, mysterious universe.

ADDENDUM

Some casual ranting at the bottom of this post as it feels fitting:

COINCIDENCES

The world of ideas is an outgrowth from the world of matter. As such Res Cogitans seems to underlie and be limited by the same rules of Res Extensa. This means that miracles are not real. If you experience something that feels really unlikely then well it's likelihood was taken into consideration by the universe. As long as it's not impossible it can happen. As David Hume said if a miracle happens in your favour you need far more evidence to believe it. We are not that special but that’s clearly hard for our egos to process.

TELEPATHY

You want to call your friend and just as you pick up your phone your friend calls you. Is there some level to Res Extensa we haven't discovered that allows complex objects like people to be entangled (usually only small particles up to molecules are capable of this). Yes, why not. There may be something we don't know yet that will explain such phenomena. But the explanation for such a thing will arise from the deterministic world engine and not open the door to some miraculous world where humans' thoughts can bend the rules of the cosmos.

MANIFESTATION

I hate this term and I don’t use the h-term lightly. Thinking that one can manifest something in this world is the epitome of self-involvement. No, this universe doesn't work on the basis of who wants things most will get them. There are millions of people living in abject poverty, it is very likely they want to exit their situation more than influencer X wants to get a ticket to some VIP event at Art Basel Miami. Manifestation, as it were, starts and ends within the confines of ones own body. One can indeed influence one's own framing of the world and "manifest" a positive filter. The amount of good or bad things that happen to a person will stay exactly the same, they will just notice different things. So please stop suggesting you are manifesting things into existence as it is a scathing judgement of those poor souls in unfortunate circumstances that are not of their own choosing. "Manifesters" implicitly suggest “losers” just don't want to escape their plight enough and only because they are somehow more evolved they can. This is extremely arrogant.

POWER OF MIND

However, as suggested above, framing is seemingly very powerful. People can be miserable, while having objectively everything, while people with very little can be happy. We don't know enough about this and it is worthy of more exploration. In the most powerful instance this mysterious power expresses itself as the Placebo effect. It has been widely documented that for the improvement of certain conditions (as opposed to completely curing) being administered a Placebo is as good as getting medication. This means that the idea in Res Cogitans actually somehow affect physical tissue and biological processes in Res Extensa. No miracles are implied here. Placebos are not a cure for diseases and should not replace effective medical treatments. Nevertheless, it is worth acknowledging the power psychological factors can have over mental and physical health.

DEMOCRATISATION & ACCELERATION

A number of things have happened over the last 50 years that have fundamentally changed the immediacy with which we communicate and receive content. One and a half generations ago landlines and snail mail were the way to connect. Now we have distributed mobile computing that empowered by 5G allows for instant video telephony from the street corner. This allows us to stay in (low) touch with a lot more people throughout our lives across cities, countries, time zones. The pace of communication is orders of magnitude faster than a few decades ago, while the costs are orders of magnitude less expensive.

Books, newspapers, radio and TV were the delivery mechanisms of content and they would run on a compared to today sporadic schedule. This was a world of pull not a world of push. Apart from billboards, direct mailing campaigns, sales calls and the occasional Jehovah's Witnesses on the doorstep, there was no content forced upon us. We sought out content by overcoming some friction via the dominant platforms. We waited for the newspaper delivery in the morning or the programmed evening news. We went to the library to read the book and arranged our schedules to catch our favourite show on TV. Compare this sort of friction laden content consumption with the world of slick mobile computing enabled 24/7 push notification distribution.

At the same time there has been a democratisation in the means of content creation and distribution. Professional music production required music studios with tens of thousands worth of equipment. Photography required expensive cameras that only worked with elaborate setup. Film recording required even more expensive bulky equipment. Even if you had the wherewithal to create any such content the distribution was controlled by kingmaker elites. Now of course you create your song, video, post with cheaply available consumer electronics and upload it to many platforms with billions of users in an instant. Post internet and personal computing revolution everyone can create anything and distribute it all from home.

Parallel to these technological shifts (and in part perpetuated by them) we have (at least in the west) become more individualistic societies. Consumer capitalism has emphasised personal choice and self-expression. Urbanisation has lead to traditional community ties being weakened. Traditional institutions such as organised religion and local communities have waned while individual choice and personal beliefs have become more important (I call this the God Gap and will dedicate another post to it). Cultural movements with the focus on equality have also emphasised personal freedom, self-expression, and individual rights. The move from manufacturing-based economies to service-based ones means that personal skills, talents, and branding have become more central to economic success. The result of this individualism paired with social media platforms that connect us all real-time requires us to update Descartes dictum to I think, therefore I post. This leads to the explosion of a new social content category that on top of all the commercial content (which thanks to democratisation is efficiently being created in higher volumes as well) is vying for our attention.

DISTRACTION & DISCONNECTION

None of the trends above are objectively a bad thing but in the limit and in combination they are causing havoc on our societies. The ease of communication leads to many overflowing inboxes 24/7 that allow for immediate and quasi free messaging with many more people than was ever possible (or manageable). We can spend all our lives on social media just following our first degree connections. Their amazing holidays, lunches, coffees and lives are on Instagram and their professional accolades and validation seeking posts (I've got a post on this) are on Linkedin for us to consume at any time. Recommender algorithms allow us to peer into the lives of others as well. Second degree connections and complete strangers with open profiles are happily sharing away. Many lifetimes of content to discover in endless feeds. We are wired for gossip and want to fit in, so devouring this content comes natural.

Everyone is a one person media company, competing in the ever more crowded content space. This ties people to the success metrics of shareholder capitalism. The sinister by product is a philosophy that views the present as an opportunity to farm future likes. It equally de-emphasises the present given that the Instagram subroutine running in our brain constantly distracts us (this sunset is beautiful and can be exchanged for social currency) and makes it the most important resource in our arsenal for attention supremacy. The quality of the moment is traded for the quantity of potential future dopaminergic payoffs. Participating in this game is the epitome of self-involvement.

The ability for commercial content to be created more easily is great, as it is allowing for more people to express their creativity and get paid for it. It has also spawned numerous sub-cultures that were unthinkable before. The downsides are plenty. We are overwhelmed with the breadth and depth of available content. When more content is uploaded to Youtube in a day than one human can consume in a lifetime, we will always have to play catch up with the present. There is no break in sight. Generative AI is going to make this problem infinitely worse in no time (I have a separate post on the matter). If there is an abundance of current content that is recommended to us continuously, it becomes hard to seek out anything beyond the present.

All this is perpetuated by distributed mobile computing that provides trojan horses for all these actors to inundate us with notifications. The shift from a pull to a push world and its impact on our mental health is not well understood. However, it is undeniable that attention spans have never been as short as today. The attention of humans is the most valuable resource in the known universe, so hijacking it becomes the economic imperative (to learn how to protect yourself against this read this post). The bombardment of notifications to the trusty pane of glass in my pocket that has become one of my most cherished and intimate possessions, results in a permanent partial attention culture. There are always more notifications and corresponding pieces of content than we could ever consume.

The result of the all encompassing abundance is a continuous race to chase the present. We are incapable to ever be up to date with a faster more interesting world. It is hard enough to stay in the know about the things we care about, let alone about the things that others want us to care about. So we connect, we observe, we chase, we consume, we get hijacked continuously until we are exhausted. The cycle repeats itself until we are running on empty. Who cares what happened in the past if I can't even stay on top of what's going on right now.

The above is somewhat extreme. Some of us may delve into the past or continue to enjoy the music we grew up with rather than chasing the new thing. Prior generations do like pointing out how they can't relate to the tastes of those following them. This is not disproving any of the above. It is not changing the fact that the present is denser, louder, more intense and more colourful than any present has been in the past. Resisting it is hard but what do we lose by not doing so?

LOSING OUR ANCHORS

The Relentless needs of the present are gradually unmooring us from the rich tapestry of history, traditions, and accumulated wisdom that have shaped human societies for millennia. In the race to stay updated, there's less time for reflection and critical thinking. We become passive consumers rather than active thinkers, leading to a susceptibility to misinformation and groupthink.

By not looking back, we miss out on understanding the patterns of human behaviour, successes, failures, and the lessons they offer. Every event in the present has historical antecedents. Without that context, our interpretations can become shallow. The more we understand the past, the more dimensions of context we uncover. Seeing the world with more dimensions allows for a richer assessment of reality. A current example being the historical context of the Middle East conflict.

Deep-rooted traditions, art, literature, and philosophies give societies their unique character. Immersion in only contemporary content can dilute that richness, leading to a homogenised global culture lacking depth and nuance. I am a fan of Marvel movies too but they are not the best humanity can produce. Delving into past culture allows us to consider what values we've lost and which one's we've gained. We can be inspired by culturally divergent thinking that might allow us to question current norms.

Ancient texts, teachings, and philosophies contain time-tested wisdom. Relying solely on contemporary thought can deprive us of insights about the human condition that have withstood the test of time. Not having any knowledge of those makes it easier for Andrew Tate's to hijack brains. There is something to be said about understanding the current Zeitgeist and communicating in an appropriate way for our times. However, when the cheapest parlour tricks are perceived as wisdom then it's clear that the richness of past thought has not been considered.

By studying history, we understand the adversities faced by previous generations, which can provide perspective on our own challenges and foster resilience. Of course the goal of civilisation is to reduce unnecessary suffering but not being informed about the range of human emotions and responses that accompany life's ups and downs creates false expectations. Knowing that others have felt and navigated similar emotions helps us to normalise our experiences and develop coping strategies rather than expecting the world to coddle us.

All this somehow cumulates in an ignorance of the past that allows some people to suggest that today are the worst times. Being able to make that claim and get away with it allows for strongmen to raise. On many metrics today is the best time to be alive. It may be that we somehow perceive today to be more polarised than ever but this is easily debunked by just time traveling to the 70s. It's the luxury of a generation that hasn't explored or experienced the horrors of a world war that can claim today are the worst times. We can do better than that.

REGAINING BALANCE

To regain balance in our lives, amidst the cacophony of the ever-present now, we must consciously take action. We need analog time, silent spaces to be bored, thoughtful interaction with technology and media, new narratives of what matters, and more depth.

Our engagement with the digital world that permeates everything we do requires a shift towards a more thoughtful and intentional approach. This involves curating a healthy content diet that nourishes our minds with diverse perspectives and meaningful discourse, rather than empty calories of sensationalism and triviality of the present. It means using technology as a tool for enhancement, not escapism, and recognising when it begins to encroach upon our mental health. We must also craft and subscribe to new narratives about what truly matters in life. It's about prioritising depth over breadth, seeking connections that are genuine and conversations that are enriching. The benefit of conversations with the past and dead people is that they don't have any vested interests. This way we foster a culture that values wisdom over wit, reflection over reaction, and enduring truths over ephemeral trends.

I'm aware that you who are reading this are the proverbial choir. However, even as someone who feels reasonably informed about the downsides of the increased noise, I still feel its continuous draw and temptation. The newest headline, the newest show, the newest album, the newest AI tool, that meme everyone is talking about. I'm not suggesting the life of a hermit but finding a balanced interaction with the present to create space to explore the past. It is humbling to see oneself in this long chain of 100 billion people who have lived before us to build this civilisation.

By reestablishing these connections to our collective history, we can develop a more grounded sense of self, a better understanding of our place in the continuum of time, and a more informed vision for the future. It's not just about resisting the allure of the present; it's about weaving the threads of the past into the fabric of now, creating a tapestry that fully represents the human narrative. This is not a retreat into nostalgia but an advancement into a future informed by the richness of human experience.

CONCLUSION

Human history is not merely a reservoir of facts and dates, but a wellspring of experiences, emotions, and lessons that can profoundly shape our understanding of the world. To live solely in the now, to be dazzled only by the immediate, is to walk through a gallery of human achievement with our eyes half-closed. We risk becoming captives of the moment, our perspectives narrowed, our insights shallower. The past, with its stories of triumphs and tragedies, offers a depth of understanding that the fleeting present cannot.

Thus, as we navigate through this era of deafening digital noise and societal shifts, let us cultivate a balanced approach. Let us be curators of our own minds, carefully selecting not just the contemporary but also the historical, blending them to enrich our perspectives. In doing so, we can resist the shallowness that pervades much of modern discourse. By acknowledging the giants upon whose shoulders we stand, we can reach greater heights of wisdom and understanding. In the grand narrative of humanity, every chapter, old and new, is crucial. Let's read the entire book, not just the latest page.

There are many reasons to care about this topic. Not falling prey to our suboptimal biology seems like an important way to become a better human. In a world where we can't agree on anything, we can maybe unite around how we are all deficient. That may be a naive dream but at least gaining awareness of how we fail reliably may help create empathy for the other (even if it doesn't lead to the acceptance of one's own fallibility). On a group level, the pervasive nature of bias in human cognition, makes it essential for researchers, policymakers, and professionals across fields to be aware of its potential impact. By recognising and accounting for bias, more accurate, objective, and equitable outcomes can be achieved in areas ranging from scientific research to social policy.

WE'RE OLD SCHOOL

Let's be real, a lot of the current day suboptimal behaviour of humans is related to the fact that we just recently (in cosmic terms) left behind our old ways. Homo sapiens has been around for about 300-150k years. Some sort of settled civilisation has been around for 15-10k years. This means that 90-97% of our existence has been as tribal hunter gatherers. This life was one of nomadism, scarcity and focused on survival. Our physical and mental operating system has been trained in that environment for hundred thousands of years. Physiological, safety, belongingness and esteem needs were all geared towards the main goal: in a world of brutal adversity stick around for as long as you can to create healthy and fit offspring to guarantee the survival of the species. This is still by and large the foundation of human behaviour today. Our societies are very different now and our nurture in this new reality adapts some of those embedded behaviours to be more in line with our current circumstances. But our origins cannot be ignored.

Let's flesh out some specific reasons why we may be biased by our tenure in the ancestral environment:

• Efficient information processing: With predators abound, the ability to quickly process information and make rapid decisions could be the difference between life and death. Shortcuts to facilitate quicker, energetically cheaper, albeit not always accurate, decision-making were useful.

• Learning from experience: Confidence in one's decision-making abilities was important to react quickly in life and death situation. Over time, this could promote more assertive decision-making in future uncertain situations.

• Pattern recognition: The human tendency to see patterns, even where none exist may be adaptive. Recognising patterns quickly, like identifying a camouflaged predator, would have been crucial for our ancestors' survival.

• Enhanced social cohesion: Favouring one's group and seeking confirmatory information to strengthen group bonds would have been advantageous in a cooperative hunting and gathering environment.

• Self-preservation and reproductive success: Maintaining self-esteem and confidence can influence an individual's status within a group and attractiveness to potential mates, both of which have direct implications for reproductive success.

• Risk aversion: Being highly attuned to potential threats and negative events (like predators or rival groups) would have been vital for survival.

The analysis of potential biases that are outgrowths of a neural wiring optimised as described above, falls in the domain of evolutionary psychology. From this perspective, many biases we show today can be understood as adaptive mechanisms that provided our ancestors with survival and reproductive advantages in the ancestral environment. Applied to our present complex world the wiring which lead to those advantages is outdated and can cause some reliable problems which we call bias.

NEW SCHOOL HANGUPS

Broadly speaking biases fall into a few categories: decision-making bias, social bias, memory errors, belief bias, perceptual bias. The classification is not exact and many of these biases can interplay across different categories. There is also far too much bias for one post so I will focus on the one's that are both interesting and common.

Decision-Making Bias
Decision-making bias refers to systematic patterns of deviation from norm or rationality in making judgments. These biases can result from our cognitive processes, personal beliefs, emotions, and social influences, leading us to perceive reality through a skewed lens or make decisions that aren't in our best interest. As mentioned, brains want to be efficient at predicting the world. Integrating information that creates cognitive dissonance and requires rewiring is energetically more expensive than using existing wiring, so we'd rather not do it.

Having to predict a world in which we lose a thing that's already wired into the neural pattern is problematic. Enter Loss Aversion. In the ancestral environment, the cost of missing out on a potential gain (not finding food one day) was often less consequential than the cost of a comparable loss (losing all one's food supplies). The latter could lead to immediate threats to survival. Therefore, being more sensitive to potential losses would have increased our chances of survival and subsequent reproductive success. Numerous experiments, most notably those conducted by Kahneman and Tversky (in their development of prospect theory), have shown that we often make decisions that are inconsistent with expected utility theory. These decisions can be better explained when considering the asymmetrical value individuals place on gains versus losses. In other words winning 100 bucks is not as great as losing 100 bucks is painful. This leads to decision making that reduces innovation (cost is up front), neglects long-term benefits (rather have less money now, than more later), leads to bad health (paying for the scan costs money), stalls negotiations (both parties focus on what they give up, than on upside) and general downside focused thinking.

A resistance to change results in another well known bias called the Sunk Cost Fallacy. This is the escalation of a commitment to a sub-optimal or losing strategy. Essentially, decisions are overly influenced by past investments (time, money, or effort) rather than being based solely on the expected future outcomes. A rational actor would consider incremental costs and benefits to assess a strategy not past, irrecoverable costs. The reasons for this are similar to the above. Loss aversion doesn't allow us to accept our losses and move on. A resistance to change makes us prefer the status quo strategy. A lazy brain doesn't want to deal with cognitive dissonance.

The Anchoring Effect is a cognitive bias where individuals overly rely on an initial piece of information, known as the "anchor," when making subsequent judgments or decisions. Also introduced by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in their seminal research on heuristics and biases, anchoring occurs even when the anchor is irrelevant to the decision at hand or is blatantly arbitrary. Let me give you an actual experiment they ran, as it is eye opening. Participants were asked to spin a wheel of fortune that was rigged to stop either on 10 or 65. After spinning the wheel, they were asked to estimate the percentage of African nations in the UN. Those who spun a 10 estimated, on average, that the percentage was 25%. In contrast, those who spun a 65 estimated it to be 45%. Even though the wheel of fortune's number was entirely random and unrelated to the question at hand, their brain went - I just saw a high/low number so let me guess high/low. Looking at this from an evolutionary biology lens we understand that the behaviour here is rooted in needing to take quick survival optimising actions, reduce cognitive dissonance, fit into the group, follow the leader, etc. When cost benefit analysis is limited to simple trade offs this makes sense but it is clearly not ideal when we make complex decisions.

The same thing happens with the so called Framing Effect. The framing effect refers to the phenomenon wherein the way information is presented or "framed" can influence decision-making outcomes, even if the underlying substantive details remain unchanged. A choice that is framed in terms of potential gains is often perceived differently than when framed in terms of potential losses, even if mathematically the two presentations are equivalent ("you will get 85% on the dollar" versus "it will cost you 15%").

Social Biases
Social bias refers to the systematic and non-random patterns of deviation in judgment or behaviour towards members of particular social groups. These biases play a significant role in shaping interpersonal interactions, group dynamics, and broader societal structures.

One of the most obvious candidates for this is the In-group Bias. It's at the heart of many social phenomena, from sports team rivalries to nationalistic fervour. Our ancestors lived in a dangerous world and had to band together. Forming tight-knit groups and coalitions provided essential benefits, such as shared resources, collective defense, and increased reproductive success. In this context, favouring one's in-group makes a lot of sense. Of course, it is natural to make group delineations given our meat space reality (I need take care of my own first) but reliable misfiring of in-group thinking leads to stereotyping (or Out-group Homogeneity Bias), prejudice and discrimination. Even worse politicians of all colours use this cheap trick to galvanise their base and draw up simplistic borders between people who given this ancient circuitry become unnecessarily suspicious of one another (rather than of said politicians).

The related Affinity Bias (sometimes referred to as "similarity bias") is the unconscious tendency for individuals to gravitate towards those who share similar characteristics, backgrounds, or experiences as themselves. Whether it's based on shared hobbies, educational backgrounds, cultural references, or even physical appearance, this bias drives individuals to feel a deeper connection or trust with those perceived as like them. On the surface this doesn't seem too problematic until you think about workplace dynamics: hiring similar people, only listening to the extroverts, "old boy's club", etc. When this affinity is taken to an extreme racism becomes an outgrowth of it. Another extreme outcome of this are social bubbles, which result in reduced exposure to diverse experiences, cultures, and ideas.

The Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) refers to the tendency for individuals to overemphasise dispositional or personality-based explanations for the observed behaviours of others, while underemphasising situational explanations. In other words, we have a propensity to believe that a person's actions are indicative of their innate character traits, rather than considering external situational factors that might have influenced their behaviour. Say we see a coworker snap at someone, our immediate reaction might be to label them as short-tempered. However, we might overlook situational factors—like that they have a tyrannical 6 month old baby at home that's kept them up all night. Simply put, we are quick to judge someone wholesale based on one action. Again the lazy brain is looking for simplification and reduced cognitive load. When observing others, the individual is often the primary focus of attention, because understanding complex surrounding context is work. This uneven allocation of our attention can make dispositional factors seem more causally potent.

The flip side of the FAE is the Halo Effect. The term was originally coined by psychologist Edward Thorndike and refers to the cognitive bias where the perception of a single positive trait in a person influences our judgment of their other unrelated characteristics. In essence, when someone excels in one area, there's a tendency to assume they are competent in other areas as well. So if an individual is perceived as physically attractive, they might also be assumed to be more intelligent, kind, or trustworthy, even in the absence of evidence supporting these assumptions. This is why people who can talk well often get the job. This is also why brands employ celebs to sell you something (Tom Brady telling us to use FTX as crypto exchange).

Researchers Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson studied a cognitive phenomenon called the Stereotype Threat. This refers to a situational predicament in which individuals feel at risk of confirming negative stereotypes about their social group. This pressure, whether perceived or real, can impede performance and alter behaviour, often aligning with the very stereotype the individual seeks to disprove. An example would be, a woman, aware of the stereotype suggesting women are weaker in mathematical abilities, might underperform in a math test due to the anxiety and pressure stemming from this stereotype. This anxiety is due to the cognitive load generated by a mind that wants to fit in, even with an unhelpful group stereotype. Overcoming the stereotype which means abandoning the group, consumes cognitive resources, reducing the capacity available for the task at hand.

Memory Biases
While memory often feels like a faithful recorder of past events, in reality, it is more akin to a reconstructive process susceptible to various distortions. Memory biases, which fall under this domain, are systematic patterns of deviation from norm or rationality in remembering. These biases can significantly shape our perceptions, beliefs, and decisions, often without our conscious awareness. The insertion of the bias can creep in while encoding the memory, during "storage" or while retrieving it (Retroactive Interference). Emotional states, and prior/new knowledge or beliefs, external cues can all potentially lead to selective or distorted encoding, storage or retrieval.

A prominent example is the Hindsight Bias. In essence, it's a cognitive distortion that leads us to rewrite our own memories, making us believe that we were more accurate in our predictions than we actually were. This is the typical "I-knew-it-all-along" trap: longing the market and after the market crashes we say “I knew it all along that stocks were overvalued”; convinced that Biden will win and not bothering to vote and after Trump's victory we say “I knew all along Trump would win, which is why I didn't bother voting”; cheering for our football team feverishly until it loses we say “I knew all along they would lose”. The reason our brain does this is to promote a sense of predictability and control in an unpredictable world, fostering a perception of one's environment as more manageable. We also don't like dealing with the discomfort or cognitive dissonance of being wrong. Believing we had "known it all along" can alleviate this discomfort.

Another curious misfiring is called the Misinformation Effect where a person's account of an event can be altered if they are exposed to an incorrect recounting of that event by someone else. This is related to Suggestibility Effect which is the inclination to incorporate misleading information from any external sources into personal recollections. Some more distortions are caused by the Recency and Primacy Effects which describe the tendency to best remember the most recent information (Recency Effect) and the first pieces of information presented (Primacy Effect) in a series. All of these can have implications in various settings but the most severe are as you can imagine in legal proceedings. All these effects are as per usual down to a lazy brain that doesn't want to have too much cognitive load and wants to fit in with the group.

This leads us to the Self-Serving Bias. This bias is a pervasive cognitive tendency in which we attribute positive events and outcomes to our own intrinsic qualities, such as skill or effort, while negative events and outcomes are attributed to external factors, such as luck or bias from others. This phenomenon can be seen as a protective mechanism that upholds our self-esteem and positive self-view. This in turn increased the perception of us as more desirable mates (still does). Feelings of inadequacy or guilt require energy to overcome so best not waste any calories on them. The outcome of such a bias is also a misattribution of success to ourselves and failures to others, which works to blame out groups and create prejudice.

Belief Biases
Belief bias refers to the tendency of individuals to judge the validity of a given argument based on the plausibility of its conclusion rather than how logically sound the argument is. In essence, when we face logical reasoning tasks, we tend to be influenced more by our pre-existing beliefs about the world than by the logical structure of the arguments presented (the Sun God is angry, which is why it has been raining all summer).

Let's start with one of my favourites - Confirmation Bias. This is the tendency to search for, interpret and  favour information that confirms one's preexisting beliefs. It is mentally more efficient to seek out, remember and interpret things so that they fit into our current frameworks (of course this was the Illuminati at work again). Without self-doubt we can make faster and more confident decisions. This helped with survival (I heard a tiger) but also with attractiveness towards the opposite sex (I know my stuff and am therefore competent). This is also why there is something called an Overconfidence Bias.

Another version of this is the Status Quo Bias. We exhibit this bias because we prefer to maintain our current choices and are resistant to change, even when objectively superior alternatives might be available. This preference for the current situation can manifest even when there are clear advantages to changing or when the costs of change are negligible. This is very much tied up with the Endowment Effect in which we ascribe more value to things simply because we possess them. This can lead to an overvaluation of the current state (or current possessions) and a consequent resistance to change. Change brings unknown risk, which is worse than predictable subsistence.

The Gambler's Fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo Fallacy, refers to the mistaken belief that if a particular event occurs more frequently than normal during a given period, it will happen less frequently in the future (or vice versa). Essentially, it's the belief that past independent events can influence the outcome of a future independent event. It's not less likely for heads to come up even if it came up 5 times in a row while flipping a coin. Our brain, which likes to find patterns in this world, doesn't do so well with probabilities. It expects that a sequence of independent random events will "even out" in the short run, not understanding that the "law of averages" applies to large numbers and not short sequences. For instance, if a series of rulings has been in favour of the defendant, a judge might subconsciously feel the next should be for the plaintiff. Or Investors might believe that after a series of financial downturns, the market is "due" for an upturn (or vice versa).

The Availability Heuristic is a mental shortcut, or heuristic, that we utilise when estimating the probability or frequency of an event based on the ease with which occurrences can be brought to our mind. In simpler terms, if something can be recalled quickly or is immediately familiar, we are more likely to believe it's common or likely. Pair this with the fact that we have a loss aversion and you'll remember that shark attack you read about two months ago when you are stepping into the Atlantic Ocean (but also misestimations of risk in general). So whatever you consume daily in the news may unknowingly be a dominant factor in your beliefs (which is why you should really take care of your Digital Hygiene). This misfiring is also a strong ally of stereotyping as it allows us to form judgments about entire groups based on a few salient or memorable examples.

Perceptual Biases
Perceptual bias refers to the systematic ways in which the context and nature of sensory inputs, as well as individual cognitive and psychological predispositions, influence one's perceptions. This phenomenon shapes and distorts our interpretation of sensory information, often deviating from objective reality. Most of us have come across visual and auditory illusions before. There are millions of examples but one I recently came across this one:

However, there are more complex perceptual phenomena worth highlighting. The perceptual equivalent of the confirmation bias is called Selective Perception. We naturally filter out information to avoid being overwhelmed by the vast amount of data our senses receive. This can lead to a bias where we only perceive things that align with our existing beliefs or expectations. When we are upset with our partner for instance we might ignore the nice things they do for us and just focus on the negative. When spiritual people talk about "putting the energy out there that you want to receive" this effect is really at work. We will see the things that we value and that are easy to integrate with our current prevailing story of the world.

The Contrast Effect refers to the fact that we evaluate stimuli based on contrast with another stimulus rather than an objective standard. For instance, after lifting a heavy box, a lighter one feels even lighter than it objectively is. Put your hand in ice cold water and after that into cold water. The cold water will seem warmer than it usually does. This bias is similar to the anchoring effect but is focused on physical experience.

Everyone has fallen victim to the Expectancy Bias. Our perceptions can be altered by our expectations (see below Green Needle versus Brainstorm). For example, we may be too optimistic about how entertaining a movie would be then rate it a lot worse than it actually is because it's below our expectation (this can also swing in the other direction). This can result in a lot more serious issues: reinforcing stereotypes - “I was expecting a Hollywood style date, men are all lazy”; medical misdiagnoses - we had too high expectations for a drug, therefore the decent results are ignored; bad business decisions - we wanted a lot more signups on day one but don’t realise we attracted the most loyal customers; reduced personal growth - “man I thought I could play like Mozart after one lesson”; etc.

Just found out you/your wife are/is pregnant and are seeing pregnant women everywhere. You heard the song for the first time and then it's everywhere! You've bought yourself a new thing and now everyone has it! This is the Frequency Illusion (or Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon). Once you notice something for the first time, you tend to notice it more often afterward, leading to the belief that its frequency of occurrence has suddenly increased. Perceiving that an idea is everywhere can lead to reinforcement of conspiracy theories (and trap you in an Overton Mirror). It can also lead to misreading trends and therefore bad business decisions or policy.

Our takeaway here is that our senses and cognition are not as reliable as we make them out to be. Our brain floats in a dark cranium. It only has access to suboptimal signals sent from perceptual organs that are making stuff up to predict and navigate the world. Colour and sound don't exist in the universe, our eyes and ears have no other way to interpret the reality given their anatomy. So our brain takes these signals and tries to make sense of them. In the process it layers a bunch of evolutionary psychology, which has evolved over hundred thousands of years on top of the interpretation. The outcome is a reliable misfiring of our narratives of why and how things are. Knowing all this is the first step to improving the collateral damage that is caused by it all.

OVERCOMING OR MITIGATING BIAS

In understanding our inherent biases, we take a significant step towards making wiser decisions. Recognising and understanding the biases above is the first step, but actively employing strategies to overcome or mitigate them is vital to ensuring more accurate, inclusive, and objective decisions in both personal and professional realms.

As the adage goes, "To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom." The first step in addressing bias is to recognise and accept that everyone has biases. Engage in self-reflection, and consider taking implicit bias tests (more below) to uncover subconscious beliefs. Next is education. Well done, you are reading this and are ahead! Education, both formal and informal, is a cornerstone in the fight against bias. Through structured learning and personal exploration (I have a book list in the addendum), we can uncover the roots of biases, recognise their manifestations, and learn strategies to mitigate their effects. Moreover, educational environments can be designed to promote critical thinking, cultural competence, and empathy, all of which are essential in the battle against bias. While people who study psychology might learn about the different types of bias, all high school students (well and adults) should be taught about the shortcoming of their neural wiring. The only reason not to teach them these is because one wants to take advantage of said wiring.

The main defense we have against making decision, belief, perceptual and memory biased mistakes is by fostering critical thinking. This demands that we actively challenge our preconceived notions and the information presented to us. Rather than accepting information at face value or allowing underlying biases to influence our judgment, critical thinkers employ logic and reasoning to evaluate situations or propositions. We love to elevate intuition to a magical level of reverence, which in some cases might be justified but very often a lot can be gained from a deep rational analysis of any situation or problem. By questioning assumptions, seeking out diverse sources of information, and analysing the roots of our beliefs, we can begin to separate objective facts from biased interpretations. I know this is time consuming and a lot to ask for, especially in a fast moving ever distracting world. Nobody expects perfection from a monkey. Stop yourself once a day when you are buying something, hiring someone, judging something, remembering something, making an important decision, etc and ask yourself, "how may I be biased here". You may not be biased at all but by stoping yourself you are training a "mental muscle". After enough reps it becomes second nature.

Another tool that helps is active listening. Engaging in conversations without making immediate judgments by listening to understand rather than to reply. This practice can help us counteract biases in real-time. This goes hand in hand with avoiding to jump to conclusions. While it is not easy, deliberately delaying our decision-making to ensure that we've had ample time to consider all perspectives can be a game changer. Taking the time to think things through can prevent immediate biases from determining outcomes. We know that initial reactions to situations or people are made by the lazy brain. Recognising that these can be rooted in bias, we should try to reassess first impressions after gaining more information. Finally, there is nothing wrong with asking our peers, colleagues, or friends to point out when we might be exhibiting biased behaviour. This external input can provide a different viewpoint on our actions and thoughts (I have an anonymous form at the bottom of my personal website that I make people aware of, so that they can give me feedback on my everyday behaviour).

The key to over come social bias is empathy. By genuinely trying to understand and feel the emotions, perspectives, and experiences of others, we can break down barriers erected by biases. An empathetic approach fosters a sense of shared humanity, making it less likely for biases to cloud our judgment or incite divisive actions. An important technique here is to counteract stereotypes. This means actively challenging stereotypical statements or beliefs, whether they come from others or ourselves. For example, if a stereotype pops into into my mind, I deliberately try to think of an example that contradicts it. What helps here of course is exposing oneself to diverse cultures, opinions, and experiences. This is one of the most effective ways to challenge and combat biases. Homogeneous environments tend to reinforce existing beliefs and biases, creating echo chambers where similar views are amplified. In contrast, diverse environments present an array of perspectives, requiring individuals to confront and re-evaluate their biases. Whether in workplaces, academic institutions, or social settings, fostering diversity ensures a richer tapestry of viewpoints, promoting understanding and reducing prejudiced thinking.

While all the approaches above apply to the individual, understanding of bias has spawned so called "nudge units" ("behavioural insights teams") in governments. Coined by behavioural economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein in their book "Nudge," the concept of 'nudging' involves subtly guiding individuals towards better decisions without restricting their freedom of choice. By understanding how biases can influence decisions, it's possible to design systems or present options in a way that "nudges" individuals towards more objective or beneficial choices. For instance, placing healthier food options at eye level in a store can "nudge" consumers towards better dietary choices. When implemented ethically, nudges can serve as a potent tool against biases, harnessing our understanding of human behaviour to design more effective and beneficial systems. Some argue that nudges can be paternalistic, infringing on individual autonomy. There's a fine line between guiding choices and manipulating them, and concerns arise about who gets to decide what's best for the public. That said, I think most product, marketing and PR departments in corporate or political organisations are already using these techniques to appeal to our ancestral wiring to get our time, money or vote. A bit of well-meant nudging in the other direction is probably not such a big deal as its opponents make it out to be.

CONCLUSION

Overcoming the misfiring of our decision making and belief systems is important on many levels. On the individual level it will allow us to think more critically to make smarter decisions. This can at the very least lead to objectively better economic outcomes for us and our families. It can also make us better voters and consumers, who are not easily manipulated by crafty corporations and politicians. On the group level, it can help us make better decisions at work and among friends, creating more value with less unnecessary friction. On an institutional level, we can ensure better resource allocation and a fairer world with a strengthened democratic process.

Understanding social bias is crucial, not just from a theoretical standpoint but also for addressing pressing societal issues. Whether we're examining ethnic conflicts, political polarisation, or even biases in workplaces, the shadow of bias looms large. Knowing of its existence increases the importance of creating environments and narratives that emphasise common humanity, shared goals, and mutual understanding. After all, while our evolutionary history might have predisposed us towards favouring our own group, our shared future depends on transcending these divisions and working together for the collective good. Embracing diversity, after all, is not just a moral imperative but a cornerstone for innovation and progress. In a world where differences abound, let us challenge ourselves to see beyond the familiar and embrace the richness of the full spectrum of perspectives.

ADDENDUM

There are numerous insightful books that delve into the topic of human bias, examining the ways it manifests in our everyday decisions and behaviour, and even suggesting how we can mitigate its impact. I've read and can highly recommend books 1-5. The summaries for 6-8 look great and I will get to them eventually. In other words, I recommend all these books if you want to dig deeper:

1. "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman: Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman presents his groundbreaking research on the two systems of thought that drive our judgments—System 1, which is fast and intuitive, and System 2, which is slow and deliberate. Kahneman demonstrates how various cognitive biases arise from the interplay between these two systems.

2. "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions" by Dan Ariely: Behavioural economist Dan Ariely explores why humans often make irrational decisions in both personal and professional contexts, challenging traditional economics' assumption of the rational actor.

3. "Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People" by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald: The authors use their experience in the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to discuss unconscious bias and its effects on behaviour.

4. "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness" by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein: Thaler and Sunstein propose a new perspective on preventing the countless mistakes we make—including ill-advised personal investments and consumption habits, neglect of our natural resources, and health choices—through nudging.

5. "The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology" by Lee Ross and Richard E. Nisbett: A foundational work in social psychology that explores how our situations influence our behaviour often more than our personalities or internal dispositions. It provides a comprehensive look at the fundamental attribution error, a pervasive bias in how we perceive others.

6. "Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men" by Caroline Criado Perez: This book discusses gender bias in design and decision-making processes, revealing how this impacts women's lives, and offering ways forward.

7. "Bias: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do" by Jennifer L. Eberhardt: A social psychologist offers a powerful exploration of racial bias, how it infects our society, our institutions, and our minds, and what we can do to combat it.

8. "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt: A moral psychologist uses his research to explain why we disagree so much—especially about religion and politics—and he offers some tips for how we can better understand one another.

Remember, the understanding of bias is a vast field and the list here represents only a small fraction of the excellent work out there.

IT IS 2035

Let me paint a picture.

Friday morning.
O - "Hal, can you create a playlist with Ye's ‘Late Registration’ type beats but Gangsta rap like lyrics a la Tupac's ‘Makaveli’ album with a Drake voice."
H - "Excellent choice! How long should the total run time for the playlist be? Do you have a preference for the average duration of the songs?"

It's lunch time:
O -"Hal, can you give me a 45min podcast short story about Marcus Aurelius conquests in Germania. I'd love it to feature some military tactics. Narrator should be Christopher Hitchens."
H - "Happy to do so! I'll base the story on 172 BC when the Romans crossed the Danube into Marcomannic territory. Do you want the young or late Hitchens to narrate it?"

It's the evening:
O - "Hal, I'm in the mood for an early 19th century period drama with supernatural elements. Loosely base it on Christopher Nolan's ‘Prestige’. I'd like it to star Daniel Day Lewis and a young Sophia Loren. Set it in France. Give me original language with subtitles."
H - "Do you want there to be outright magic or rather seem like advanced science? Shall I make Mr Lewis speak French throughout? How long do you want the film to be?"

Saturday morning.
O - "Hal, can you create a VR space that is based on the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in Philadelphia in 1789. Emulate a discussion they may have had about the founding of the USA. I want to experience heated arguments about how to govern fairly."
H - "Exciting! Shall I also include Founding Fathers that may have not been there for the actual ratification of the Constitution? Do you want a photorealistic or stylised VR space?”

It's of course possible that the above won't be possible by 2035 (I think it'll happen sooner) but fast forward the world to whenever you think it will be feasible and let's think about the implications. Before we go there, though, let's talk about creativity.

WHAT IS CREATIVITY

There is no definitive answer to what creativity is. However, the emergence of Generative AI makes exploring this question more urgent. The dictionary definition of creativity "is the ability to generate, develop, and express unique and original ideas or solutions. It involves the capacity to see connections and relationships where others do not, to take risks and challenge convention, and to make something new from what exists. It's a process that's often characterised by originality, expressiveness, and imagination."

In psychology, the creative process has been divided into several stages. One of the most common models is the four-stage model by Graham Wallas, which includes:

• Preparation: This is the initial stage where one starts the process of creating. It involves understanding the problem or topic and doing research.

• Incubation: This stage involves letting the problem or idea sit, often unconsciously. It's a stage of processing without direct and conscious effort.

• Illumination or Insight: This is the stage where the idea or solution comes to the mind. It's often experienced as a eureka or aha moment.

• Verification or Evaluation: This is the final stage where the idea or solution is tested, refined, and then finalised.

This multistep process which is required to create something new feels very antithetical to what our experience with Gen-AI is. It feels as if all the perspiration is done away with.

There are many theories about what fuels human creativity, but broadly speaking it involves divergent thinking (the generation of many unique ideas) and convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result). This distinction is an important one, which we will revisit later.

A 2018 study led by Roger Beaty found that creative people have increased connectivity between three brain networks: the Default Mode Network, the Salience Network, and the Executive Control Network.

• Default Mode Network (DMN): The DMN includes regions of the brain that are active when a person is not focused on the outside world, typically during introspection or mind-wandering. Research suggests that the DMN is involved in creative thinking, possibly during the idea generation or incubation phase. It's thought to help us make novel connections and associations (it's also the part of the brain that most psychedelics silence but that's for another post)

• Executive Network (or Control Network): This network, which includes regions like the prefrontal cortex, is involved in focusing attention and cognitive control. It may be active during the evaluation and implementation phase of the creative process when convergent thinking is required.

• Salience Network: This network, including regions like the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex, is believed to switch between the Default Mode and Executive Networks, depending on what's needed at the moment.

There are many different studies that explore the neurological basis of creativity. However, Beaty's is most referred to and has been validated by other experiments with fMRI scans. In other words, retreating into an inner world of ideas (rather than primarily paying attention to external stimuli), focusing on this internal stream of thoughts and evaluating the outputs of these thoughts, are crucial components of the creative process. Again, this is all together very different from what happens in Gen-AI models. There is no introspection, attention or agency in the human sense to speak of, as we will explore in the following.

CURRENT GEN-AI CREATIVITY

Let's apply our knowledge of human creativity to Gen-AI. Wallas' framework suggests 4 steps - preparation, incubation, illumination and verification.

Preparation for Gen-AI is the data set and training phase. Depending on what the particular Gen-AI is supposed to do it gets trained on a specific set of data (text, images, video, audio, etc). Most AI currently is not multimodal (it's trained on one type of input). Obviously AI can be trained on a larger data set than any human being could consume in their life time, which makes it a lot more comprehensive than humans could ever be. This makes its outputs so astounding to us.

Part of the preparation step for LLMs in particular (training visual models is different) is reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). In the RLHF process, humans review and rate possible model outputs for a range of example inputs (this is a costly process). The model then generalises from this reviewer feedback to respond to a wide array of user inputs. By learning from human reviewers in this way, the model becomes more controlled, understanding, and better aligned with human values. In other words, this is the stage where we introduce purposeful bias to ensure the model doesn't generate outputs that are unsafe, nonsensical, or otherwise undesirable. So not only do we feed the LLMs human data, we also feed it human values after it's trained.

The output of all this is a vast number of weights, which represent the pattern recognition of the LLM run on terabytes of data expressed as numbers that it uses to make predictions. When a user prompts the LLM it uses these weights to predict what the next word in a sentence following the prompt could be. It arrives at millions of possible answers instantly (sort of divergent thinking) and then picks the output which has the right probabilistic outcome to be a successful answer (convergent thinking).

While we could loosely compare the weights to a "database," it's important to note that they don't represent specific facts or pieces of information. Instead, they are parameters that the model uses to make predictions based on abstract patterns. The model doesn't have access to any specific documents or sources from its training data and cannot access or retrieve information beyond what it learned during its training. In other words, the model does need any of the original data it was trained on once it has abstracted the patterns out of it. It also doesn’t actually understand any of the underlying content. It doesn't understand that London is a city or that Elon Musk is a (sometimes annoying) person. It applies its existing weights to predict sentences that are related to the prompt string of text we input. So a massive multidimensional spreadsheet with weights that autocompletes based on prompts produces outputs that seem creative. The incubation (sitting with the problem), illumination (aha moment) and verification (evaluating, testing and finalising) steps of the creative process are therefore more or less skipped by Gen-AI.

(Side bar: Chat GPT does evaluate probabilities for its outputs, which are based on a variable that we call temperature. The temperature parameter influences how these weights are used to select the next word. If the temperature is set to a high value (e.g., close to 1), the output will be more diverse and random, as the model gives relatively more consideration to lower probability options. In contrast, if the temperature is set to a low value (e.g., close to 0), the model's output will be more deterministic, as it will tend to choose the highest probability option. By adjusting the temperature, we can control the trade-off between diversity and accuracy in the model's responses. Higher temperature leads to more varied outputs but can also lead to more mistakes or nonsensical phrases, while lower temperature makes the output more focused and predictable but might also make it less creative or diverse. Chat GPT's setting is somewhere in between but can be adjusted by prompt design ("talk to me as if you are a scientist").)

Note that there is no automatic feedback loop between the user and AI. So Chat GPT doesn't get better automatically every time you use it. The corpus of prompts the user creates is available to the LLM for this particular session. This is why these models are called Feed Forward. Any potential learning that is part of interactions with users must be extracted for instance by Open AI (whenever I use Open AI in this post, you can insert Google/Meta/Microsoft instead) and then fed back into the model in the next training cycle.

(Side bar: The curious case of Sydney, where Bing Chat (based on Chat GPT) tried to convince a NYT journalist to leave his wife, prompted the Open AI team to reduce the amount of memory the LLM has in any given chat session. In other words, if you chat with Chat GPT for 2 hours, it now only retains your first prompt of the session and the last 10 or so. If it retains all the prompts it starts hallucinating. These hallucinations still happen but are mostly now limited to factual errors rather than attempts at home wrecking.)

CONVERGENT VS DIVERGENT THINKING

Remember that we differentiated two different types of thinking that are related to the creative process - divergent and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking is required to create rare original thoughts but for the most part is the act of recombining different ideas to something new. Most of human ideas are standing on the shoulders of the proverbial giants. History, first hand experiences, and the thoughts of all who influence us (even from beyond the grave) are the human training data set. We use these inputs to create divergent recombined or original thoughts.

The difference between what we do and what AI does is important. We create categories for the objects/concepts in our "database" and we deliberately remix them by understanding relations between them. The relations we create between the objects/concepts are not statistical but they are based on their inherent qualities (as viewed by meat bag humans). This seems very different from running an autocomplete algorithm based on weights and probabilities in a database. AI does pattern recognition better than any human ever could, but it doesn't know what pattern it's actually uncovering (it is baffling that it still works so well). It may be true that the human creative process is not as mysterious as it currently seems, but it is definitively more valuable than what is happening in current Gen-AI models. In particular, original thought seems to be in a completely different category. Einstein coming up with general relativity and understanding that space-time is a continuum was a genuinely original thought. Newton creating differential calculus from the ground up was genuinely original thought. Our unknown ancestor creating the wheel was an original thought. These products of original thoughts transcended the prior human training data set. The current Gen-AI design doesn't seem to allow for this.

Once divergent thinking has created a host of options, convergent thinking hones in by evaluating them and fleshing out the most promising contender. Gen-AI emulates this process really well. It has run pattern recognition on the sum total of a lot of humanity's knowledge represented in weights, which allows it to generate millions of options to choose from (divergent "thinking") when presented a prompt. By evaluating probabilities it autocompletes (convergent "thinking") the text that is deemed amazingly creative by humans (once again without understanding the content in the same way a human would). It may be that the size of the data set and therefore the infinite possibilities for recombination of text make it so compelling.

The fact that we have invented something truly creative that operates in this way suggests several things about creativity:

• Pattern recognition: A significant part of creativity involves recognising and manipulating patterns, something that LLMs excel at. They can help us understand how much of what we perceive as "creativity" is based on rearranging existing ideas in new ways.

• Influence of diverse inputs: LLMs are trained on diverse data, which allows them to generate diverse outputs. This echoes the creative principle that exposure to a wide range of inputs, experiences, and perspectives can foster creativity.

• Value of convergent and divergent thinking: LLMs can generate many options (like divergent thinking) and then hone in on a single output based on their training (like convergent thinking), reflecting the balance of these two types of thinking in the creative process.

Remember, an LLM can't learn from new experiences, reflect on its thoughts, or change its thought processes based on feedback, which are all critical aspects of human divergent thinking. It can't generate ideas that are truly novel or that go beyond the patterns in its training data. While an LLM can generate diverse outputs that might resemble divergent thought, it's not capable of the originality, insight, or adaptability that characterise true divergent thinking in humans.

So let's revisit the definition of creativity. Gen-AI does "generate, develop and express unique ideas" but it doesn't do so by seeing "connections and relationships where others do not". It doesn't "take risks to challenge convention". It does create something "new from what exists". It likely does this so well because it holds orders of magnitude more connections between data than a human brain ever could. Despite it not understanding any of the data it does a great job at creating undeinably creative outputs.

COPYRIGHT?!

Now let's imagine Gen-AI gets better at generating all different media types - text, images, audio, video, 3d objects - feels very likely. Let's further assume it becomes multi-modal so that it can output all different types of media - i.e. audio plus video from text. This is actively being worked on and will happen. With enough progress cycles this gets us to my 2035 scenario - a world in which a prompt leads to "high quality" entertainment.

You may believe that the outputs by Gen-AI could never be good enough to compete with what humans are churning out. I would argue that most of the content, which is consumed by humans is quite generic. Many top 100 games, books, songs and blockbusters would support this thesis. I love Marvel movies for what they are but some of their scripts are so extremely weak that a random plot generator would mostly do a better job. We also have enough of a sense by looking at Chat GPT-4 outputs to realise it does a decent job already comparatively. So what happens when the majority of what we currently call "creative" output becomes commoditised by Gen-AI?

To answer that question let's address the elephant in the room - who owns the training data? Without the open nature of the internet there would be no Gen-AI. It is the terabytes of data which can conveniently be scraped off sites and databases that acts as the training data set. But when people and cooperations uploaded this data to the web, they didn't realise that they are de facto enabling Gen-AIs to eventually replace them. So what does the law say about this? I will focus on US law for now but the situation doesn't look clear anywhere. Training generative AI models on copyrighted data sets is complex and not universally defined. Here some of the considerations:

• Fair Use: One of the primary defense against copyright infringement is the concept of "fair use," which allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission for purposes such as criticism, parody, news reporting, research, and education (so it is OK for Chris Rock to make fun of Star Wars). Whether the use of copyrighted data for training an AI model constitutes "fair use" would depend on several factors, including the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used, and the effect of the use on the market for the original work. The latter seems to be the most important point - what if the effect of the use destroys the market for the original work?

• Transformative Use: A key aspect of "fair use" is whether the use is "transformative," meaning it adds something new to the original work or uses it for a different purpose. If an AI model is trained on copyrighted material and produces new, original output, some might argue that it's a transformative use. However, this area of law is still being developed and interpreted, and courts may not universally agree on this point. It will likely require a much better understanding of how these Gen-AI models work (which currently not even its creators possess) to figure out if what's happening is transformative technically.

• Contractual Agreements: If the data is obtained under a license or terms of service, those terms may explicitly allow or prohibit certain uses of the data, including for machine learning. This seems like a straight forward one to settle - if there is no ML clause in your content licensing agreement with iStockphoto, you shouldn't be training a model on their assets.

• Privacy Laws: Depending on the nature of the data, there could also be privacy laws or other regulations that apply, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe. This may be relevant when it comes to creating digital likeness that is based on humans without their explicit opt-in.

Of course, I don't know how this will play out. It’s impossible to comprehensively address all the implications for all different stakeholders here (what happens to journalists, news, bloggers, authors, musicians, script writers, etc). I'm sure there are plenty of lobbyists currently trying their darnest to wine and dine legislators to carve up the future.

Creators and rights owners are fighting back. Getty Images is suing Stable Diffusion (text-to-image Gen-AI) as they trained their model on Getty's copyrighted material. Stable Diffusion argues this is fine under fair use. In Hollywood writers and actors are striking to ensure their contracts don't contain AI clauses. Actors being replaced by their likeness and writers training Gen-AI that will replace them in the future are real threats to their livelihoods. Sarah Silvermann is suing OpenAI and Meta as she believes the companies used her copyrighted comedy writing to train their models. Apparently they acquired her works from “shadow library” websites like Bibliotik, Library Genesis, Z-Library, and others, noting the books are “available in bulk via torrent systems.” Your pictures could also be part of a training data set without you knowing. After searching for my name "Omid" on HaveIBeenTrained. I found images of me in training sets (you can request to be removed).

Irrespective of everything that is currently going on, how should the future of all this play out? If we revisit my opening examples there are a few questions that pop up. What happens when we use someone's likeness (check out this ad)? What if we prompt a piece of content that is explicitly based on something else (or its likeness)? What happens with out of copyright content or the likeness of deceased people? These are all complicated questions that depend on the legal, digital platform and process architecture we have created but what if we could disregard reality and create an imaginary model?

UTOPIA...

An ideal model would allow any creator to fingerprint content. AI training and models then would have to keep track of such fingerprints (they currently don't even know how content is aggregated into those ominous weights). Every time an AI then uses my fingerprinted content in any context, I accrue royalties (similar to how spins work in the music industry). If we were able to design such a system, creating useful content that in turn AI uses to produce content would reward me financially. This is much better than a future where I sign away “my likeness” whenever I publish anything (text, image, my face) and never get paid again. This way AI becomes a distribution channel for my remixed ideas on top the traffic my content would otherwise get. In many ways, this is how music already operates and ensures that people don't use popular copyrighted songs in Youtube videos without paying the piper.

There are of course issues with this. I may be creating content by remixing other people's stuff. How should we deal with that? In a recent court case Ed Sheeran was cleared from allegedly violating copyright of Marvin Gaye's song Let's Get it On. The likeness of the songs is undeniable but they are ultimately different enough for Sheeran to make money on content, which is clearly inspired by Marvin Gaye. It seems that we don't mind copying by other humans as long as it is leading to output that seems different enough. All of Zara's clothing is ultimately a rip off of runway designs. Inspiration is accepted in many industries.

What happens if I use AI to create content, which then makes it back into AI training sets? It becomes a slippery slope that's hard to account for. A just model would involve storing all the input contributions on a ledger and pay out a revenue share based on contribution no matter how many times things get remixed (songwriting works like this to an extent). This seems hard to do technically, but we will have to find some sort of solution, as otherwise the 2nd remix of Scarlett Johansen's likeness (which may look more attractive) might displace her all together (pfff who am I kidding). Of course, this system will have to deal with IP trolls who may end up creating many versions of stories inspired by the Iliad/Bible/Koran/Bhagavad Gita to get paid a royalty whenever this out of copyright popular content is used. Let alone solving the problem of verifying whether a piece of content is really yours to fingerprint.

I know at this point I've likely discredited my own proposition to an extent, but these are not simple issues and there don't seem to be any proactive suggestions other than luddite law suits. One rare and interesting proactive approach comes from Grimes. She has taken on this problem head on and published Elf tech. This tool allows anyone to use their own singing voice input to create a song with Grimes voice. If Grimes decides to publish the song, she will share revenue with the users. Should the user decide to publish the song, they will have to share (a bigger amount) of the proceeds with Grimes.

There are plenty of startups that are working on AI that is ultimately built on a private training set. These will allow for people to create their own (or company's) likeness, which can be prompted. For only 2 bucks you could prompt Omid LLM to create a blog posts for you! A fitting analogy here is that Open-AI (et al) has showed up to a knife fight with plasma weapons from the future, stolen everyone's content and trained an alien AI. These new startups are trying to level the playing field by handing out plasma weapons to the rest of us. If Getty Images and Omid can create their own models, we can monetise our content/likeness rather than Open-AI (et al). What that potentially means in the future are a lot of content silos behind paywalls. If there is no attribution or royalty sharing model allowing for some fair value exchange, the public internet becomes a place to be mugged at scale with plasma weapons by content devouring AI companies.

(Side bar: There are projects like https://site.spawning.ai/spawning-ai-txt which allow you to create a text file stored in your website's root directory to signal to AI scrapers that you don't want to be part of their shenanigans. This is inspired by robot.txt, which signalled to search engines to not index a specific site. While this seems like a good idea, it doesn't seem to be universally adopted or respected and comes after Open AI (et al) has already created a GPT 4 with 1.76 trillion parameters.)

(Side bar: Most of the architecture for startups to build their own LLMs and Gen-AI models is open. Google to their credit made a breakthrough with transformers, which form the basis for a lot of the LLM breakthroughs and open sourced this. Open-AI has since been against open sourcing (ironic given their name), as it believes this technology is too powerful to be given to the "average Joe". Meta has taken the opposite stance (maybe to stay relevant) and has just recently published its second model Llama 2 to the public (including training and weights info, which it didn't publish previously). It is fascinating to see these different philosophies clashing. There is a lot of debate going on as to what the right approach is to this technology but that is beyond the scope of this post. However, it is undeniable that AI startups are very happy about Meta's moves as it reduces their reliance on OpenAI.)

FUTURE GEN-AI CREATIVITY

There will be a few world changing breakthroughs even before we get Artificial General Intelligence. While the current approach to scaling Gen-AI is increasing parameters (i.e. the amount of data we feed them during training), the future might look drastically different.

Imagine a world where AI companies don't need Terabytes of data to to create a competent Gen-AI. This is already the case for narrow applications. As mentioned some startups allow companies and people to create their personal AI models. Illustrators can train a model that creates images that bear the likeness of the input material with only 10 images as input. There are examples for this for email writing, contract drafting, image creation, etc. Of course, these models are very narrow and won't be able to write a Shakespearean poem about Tinder competently. But what if Open-AI (et al) finds a way to train Chat-GPT 42 with 10,000 pieces of content? Royalties and attribution would be out of the window.

You may think it is impossible to capture the full complexity of the human language and creativity in 10,000 pieces of content (I wonder how much content is in my active memory that allows me to write this blog post right now). I think it could come worse actually. While the domain of Chess and Go are combinatorially simpler than the realm of language, Deepmind's AlphaGo and AlphaGo Zero provide us with a cautious tale. AlphaGo was trained by being fed a dataset of roughly 30 million moves played by humans. It reliably won against human opponents. Deepmind then decided to come up with a new approach. AlphaGo Zero was trained with no human input as data set. It was given the rules of the game and was told to play itself. In its first 9 hours of existence it played 44 million games against itself. After 2 hours it was good enough to win against every human all the time.

There is something really exciting and terrifying about this. AlphaGo Zero took an approach to playing Chess and Go that was not encumbered by past human bias, which was part of its predecessors training data, thereby creating moves that no human had ever played or considered to play. It has mastered truly divergent thinking capable of creating original thoughts. It would sacrifice its Queen, because it knew that 7 moves later this would allow it to check mate. Humans have trouble thinking like that. Exploring the possibility space without priors is probably required to solve a lot of the problems in science. However, not being able to feel the pain for the loss of a Queen might also lead to unacceptable sacrifices in the pursuit of unravelling the mysteries of this cosmos.

Another component that we should not ignore while we dream up future scenarios are potential illegitimate uses of copyright, which are already prevalent on the web. While law abiding websites may not misuse the likeness of someone to create content, the open source availability of AI tech spawns a cottage industry of pages that allow you to create whatever you want. Most recently an unknown user published a decent but fake Drake and The Weekend song. Platforms like Spotify and Youtube eventually took it down but only after millions of views had triggered the respective labels to trigger rights violations on the respective platforms.

It is possible that there will be a return to using torrents and pirate bay sites en masse to exchange Gen-AI created content, which isn't copyright cleared. If you think current deepfakes are impressive, you haven't seen anything yet. Sites like deepswap.ai allow users to generate faceswap videos, photos, and GIFs in a few clicks. While deepswap might want to be above board, there are plenty of sites that don't care. The nightmare scenario of ending up in a believably looking deepfake porn is already real. Once you tour the seedy side of the AI world, there is plenty to find. It starts with “relatively tame” Gen-AI prompted porn images and ends with feeding an AI Instagram pictures for it to automagically remove the clothes of whoever is in the picture (no I didn’t try it out).

Fast forward all this to 2035 and you will realise that any attempts to realise my Utopia suggestion above might be ill fated. All hope is not lost. We have somehow managed to give up our bad habits of downloading music and movies because the UX of streaming sites is just so damn convenient. Hopefully, the illegitimate side of the internet will stay small because it will be cumbersome. However, the world will undeniably become more unsettling for anyone who is happy to put their likeness on the web.

CONCLUSION

This is not meant to be a doomer post. Gen-AI will allow us to explore the possibility space of imagination and creativity in unprecedented ways. The conversation about AI has to have a healthy component that highlights the continued empowerment of humans through this technology. The question is what we will lose in the process. Right now AI is remixing existing content on the web. Should the original creators of said content get fair compensation? Yes. This seems like a problem we can fix. Original creations will still be the domain of humans (for now). The question is how much is originality really valued. Looking at top 100 of any content type, not very much. Do some people care for originality? Yes. Those same people will continue to care.

In the mean time, we need to figure out what to do with the not so original content creator's incomes. Maybe the way to make money in the future is to design great prompts. Maybe some of my prompts above will create content that less imaginative prompt designers or lazy users would like to consume. The previously creative class might be now empowered to create an explosion of content that is not bound by production budgets and times. But how can we make sure the prompt designers get paid? I won't bet on regulators. One can hope that the market will create a platform with revenue share for prompt designers, where the underlying content and likeness is fairly compensated. One can imagine that this site would attract the most valuable content and most creative prompt designers versus places that don’t compensate either.

I for one am excited for the richness of experience that these tools can bring us. As someone that considers themselves creative but not particularly talented, I am excited that AI will allow me to produce things that were previously out of my reach. I am concerned by the collateral damage that the adoption of such technologies always brings. "Legacy" businesses like Netflix might disappear in favour of a Gen-AI prompt content creation services. Many people may lose their jobs, however some might get new more fun jobs. Some very few companies may rip off all of humanity’s creativity to create dominant Gen-AIs that don't fairly compensate the original creators. We should try our hardest to avoid these negative outcomes. I naively hope that consumers and the market will reward the right behaviour, if we create the right narratives now. This is me attempting to do my part.

What happens to creativity in a world when AI can create original thoughts unbound by a human training data set? Nobody knows, but let's take this one post at a time.

I've been working on a post about the “Mental Arena”, or in other words how to align our remembering, experiencing and aspiring selves to achieve more harmony and satisfaction in life. Part of that post was digital hygiene but it makes more sense to break it out, so here we go.

USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN

In tech we talk a lot about user experience (UX) design. This discipline is primarily focused on making the experience of our product's users positive, meaningful, and satisfying, which can lead to increased engagement, user satisfaction, and loyalty. In TikTok's case the very pursuit of excellent UX can lead us to feel positive dopaminergically and to be satisfied to therefore waste hours of our life on the platform loyally. Even a seemingly positive or benign app like say Duolingo will prod you with notifications to create mindshare for its existence. All these companies understand that the most valuable resource in the the known universe is the attention of humans.

There is nothing wrong with apps using our attention, as long as it is in our best interest for them to do so, which leads us to the first important point of this post: we need to have a personal thoughtful opinion on what our best interest in regards to our digital tools is. Once this is established, we can start creating our own meta UX for all our digital tool interaction, instead of being remote controlled by a haphazard amalgam of some Beijing, Palo Alto, Cupertino, Seattle, London “frankendesign” that may not be aligned with our goals in life.

OUR BEST INTERESTS

What is really important in life? I know this is a seemingly out of place question in this post but it is at the core of all this. Let me venture to answer this in an all encompassing way: the quality and availability of our attention. Whatever it is you have chosen to be your value system or goal in life, if you can't pay attention to it, you are distracted from what is important to you. We sometimes like to distract ourselves purposefully, of course, but that also requires attention. We also sometimes distract ourselves because of the prevailing chatter in our minds, which I will address in my post about the aforementioned “Mental Arena”. But the real tragedy of our time is that many brains are hijacked as a means to create value for some person, brand or corporation. Why did we get here?

Firstly, because we are building and distributing tools faster than ever before without truly understanding the long-term effects of their continuous usage. There is (mostly) no evil masterplan at play here. Well meaning people are by and large designing the product UX of our digital consumer goods. However, they don't have all the answers and in the pursuit of maximising some product metric for their boss or shareholder the second order collateral damage is the long-term mental health of their users.

The second reason is that we are neural networks that are implemented on top of a monkey's motivational system (purposeful oversimplification for rhetorical effect). 95+% of the time this species of monkey has been around, has been spent hunting and gathering. There really has been no time for adaptation to this new reality in civilisation, let alone to a technology that was introduced in 2007 (the iPhone). These digital tools can interact in weird and unintended ways with our monkey motivational system, the same way abundance of calories do. Pathological pursuit of calories (which made sense in a calorie scarce environment) leads to all sorts of physical health problems; pathological pursuit of digital tool usage leads to all sorts of mental problems (with knock on physical effects).

The third reason is that our regulatory systems, which should save us from all this, are just not fit to tackle any of it. As humans we've been around the block and know that industry left to its own devices won't always act in the interest of wider society. That's why countries have historically introduced an alphabet soup of regulatory bodies (FDA, EPA, FTC, SEC, etc) to protect us from the narrow interests of companies. In the case of these new consumer technologies, our regulatory bodies have completely failed us (see the Addendum on regulation at the bottom). The second societal immune response, which usually should come from the media, also failed us by initially uncritically embracing all this new technology and celebrating its founders like celebrities. Now, what most of these margin starved publications do is either report without nuance or with obvious bias. Hence unchecked corporations pump out user experiences faster than anybody can understand their first and second order effects on the human mind.

Knowing all this, we need to take up the responsibility for our digital hygiene ourselves not only for our own sake but also for that of our family and friends. We have to avoid becoming permanently partial attention automatons. Our attention is too valuable to be lost to some intentional or unintentional hacking.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Before we come up with a good meta UX for our digital tool usage, let's spend some time considering the impact of unfettered digital interactions. We can split these out into two broad buckets - content and UX.

Your thoughts have immense power over your well-being. While in itself this may be a trivial statement, you should consider the overwhelming evidence for placebo effects. If power of thought can affect molecules and tissues in our body, thereby impacting our health, shouldn't we be just as concerned about our content diet as we are about our food diet? Yes, we should be and probably even more so, because it seems we can think ourselves out of some of the negative side effects of that late night McDonalds binge.

News is content and affects our brains irrespective of what medium it is consumed on. That said in the past news was not running on a 24 hour cycle. CNN first introduced this concept in 1980 (at least in the US). To fill 24 hours with news you sometimes have to elevate things that really aren't that newsworthy, like for instance police car chases (I won't argue with their entertainment value). All of a sudden you are not just watching or reading the news at set times when it's broadcasted (evening news) or delivered (morning newspaper) but there is a constant real-time barrage of it. It turns out that negative news is also much more engaging than positive news. This is clearly a quirk of the monkey motivational system. Our drive to pay attention to negative experiences is there to increase our chances of survival. But we don't only pay more attention to negative news, it also affects us long-term. There are countless studies that have explored this phenomenon. News organisations (knowing our monkey brain wants to hear the negative stuff) can now push infinite content to our connected devices that we check hundred times 24 hours a day. This is certainly a contributor to the erosion of trust for one's fellow citizens as well as the anxiety and depression prevalent in developed countries.

Social media is a special type of content. The tenor of the content is important of course but also the context surrounding it. A negative news article on social media for instance will be affected by comments, likes, its appearance next to your friend's content, its appearance in an endless feed, etc. That means news on social media comes with a whole host of extra baggage that we yet have to understand (I believe it can lead to Overton Mirrors as laid out in this post).

Social content (as in updates from your friends) has a completely different set of issues. There are plenty of studies that have explored this phenomenon as well. In short, being exposed to social content makes you on average more depressed and anxious. While true for adults, this doubly applies to adolescents. Many things can make you sad of course (love ballads?) but the prevalence of social media content and its UX make it much more potent.

The first UX hack responsible for messing with our attention is the notification. I sound like a broken record but there are countless studies that shine a light on how much inattention these cause and how badly they affect our impulse control overall. You may be good at ignoring the notifications as they arise but know that even the seemingly harmless number of unread emails/notifications badges floating on the app icons will create subconscious anxiety.

The next culprit is infinite scroll and auto-play, which create an inescapable abundance of distraction for you to have fun with. These are paired with infinite content and recommender algorithms that become the best at predicting what the monkey wants to see. Thus platforms dish us up the juicy triggering addictive engaging bits. You know how this culminates in a slick app wrapper that hijacks our dopamine system or triggers our amygdala to create longer user sessions to maximise ad revenue. And once we escape, the trusty notification pulls us back in. One two punch...KO.

The vanity metrics (followers, likes, shares, comments) UX introduces a popularity contest to human interaction that leads to inauthentic behaviour. It is true that those are increasingly deemphasised (by for instance Instagram) but the genie is out of the bottle already and people care about these metrics even if they are not in your face. This is well understood so I won't bore you too much with it, however, permit me to elaborate the subjective feelings of this particular monkey when engaging on social media. I frankly dislike some people on social but really like them in person. The incentive systems make them ugly. Furthermore, physical disintermediation (rather than looking someone in their eyes) and anonymity sometimes tempt me to embrace my inner asshole much more than I ever would dream to in meat space. Ancient empathy loops are deactivated on the digital medium and the resulting behaviour by some humans make me generally worried about the future of our civilisation. That's not a good feeling.

It would be remiss of me to not mention that the opposite is also true. The top Youtube comment on most videos will be entertaining or useful. Following some people on Twitter is a source of inspiration and hope. Therefore, it matters how we design our digital experience, so that we can minimise unintentional attention hacking and maximise the positive aspects of abundant content and reach.

CONTENT DIET

The starting point for aligning our best interests with our technology consumption is our content diet. Unfortunately, there is no official nutritional guidance for content that can give us a better sense of what we should be putting into our minds. It is not an easy task to assess content as we do with food, as many of the effects of content can be individual and dependent on our socio-cultural context.

It is worth mentioning, that a content diet is a much larger topic than just what we consume on digital devices. However, the reason I am emphasising digital content consumption is that it often happens to be impulsive. If some door to door salesman or phone sales agent tries to sell me something my guard is up. When I want to chose a movie on Amazon Prime or Netflix I put thought into the selection. I may end up with bad content either way but at least there was more deliberation. Phones are the ultimate Trojan Horse, attached to our brains, always on and connected, ready to provide infinite bad calories for our worst self monkey motivational system. That’s why our guard has to be doubly up for these platforms.

Bad content diets lead to issues with mental health. These can be serious as evidenced by the increase in teenage girl suicides. It isn’t easy for someone who is in a pathological state to step back and assess their content diet. It is outside of the scope of this post to address remedies for those mental states, however, I address those in my “Mental Arena” post.

With that out of the way, let us use a few frameworks to create an intuition for how we should assess content for a good diet.

Positive Versus Negative

A mind that is continuously drowned in negative information is one that will become paranoid and anxious, as we've seen with studies that have explored the effect of negative news on brains. Of course, we want to be informed about the world and bad things happen every day. So we need to strike the right balance between being inspired by the happenings around us and being informed. It is, therefore, advisable to avoid content that is continuously triggering our amygdala. My experience is that a lot of science news fills me with hope for the future and a lot of the current affairs news outlets that are subscription based do a better job at informing rather than just spreading doom and gloom. The latter is the domain of the ad-supported content models, because triggering us will lead to more engagement and time spent on their apps.

Moderate Versus Extreme

It's hard to assess subjectively if something is extreme or not but any content objectively lies on a spectrum from moderate to extreme. For instance, we can say that an opinion categorically in favour or against admitting refugees to a country is at the extremes of the spectrum. An opinion that suggests that context matters, when deciding if someone should be admitted to a country, feels more moderate comparatively. Extreme opinions often lead to militant arguments. In some cases, this is a positive force, for instance when Suffragettes were fighting for the equality of women. But often a nuanced approach to navigating reality and policy options is required, than simplified extreme statements. However, extreme opinions often feel good. They are simple and they allow us to paint the world with a broad brush. The problem is that civilisation will only progress when compromises are made. Therefore consuming extreme content and becoming an extreme person will make us less willing and able to compromise. The ideal content consumption is one across the whole spectrum of opinion on any given issue with a preference to land somewhere in the middle.

Known Versus Unknown

We tend to consume things that continue to strengthen our existing bias and world view. It is actually much harder for our brains to process things that clash with our existing models of reality. Our brains like predicting. For example we predict distances to navigate the world to not bump into things. It's important for our survival to predict right. Predicting wrong is costly and leads usually to learning something new that helps with future predictions (if the prediction error is not fatal). It's similar with our opinions - we form opinions and we'd like to see them validated. Therefore, seeking out content to validate them feels good. Finding content that invalidates them is like bumping against the table. If this happens, we have to learn something new, which is energetically costly and hard to do when mentally exhausted. But it’s the only way to grow. So a superior approach is to try to read things that go against our preconceived notions. This does not mean we have to continuously change our mind, but it means we test our predictions to ensure we navigate the world competently.

People Versus Events Versus Ideas

There is a famous quote by Eleanor Roosevelt: "Poor minds talk about people. Average minds talk about events. Great minds talk about ideas." That is a somewhat cheeky statement but it contains a lot of truth. Our tribal past predisposes us to gossip and news about people. It was very important for the survival and success in a tribe to know what is going on with the chieftain and his family. This is why celebrity news and gossip are such a prevalent content category for many. A general rule of thumb is that consuming content about people when it is negative usually triggers only the worst in us (vengeance, schadenfreude, etc). Good news about people can inspire us, if it doesn't create feelings of envy. Learning about events is better but what we said about news before applies. Spending time consuming ideas, especially when taking into consideration the points above, seems like the most constructive use of our time.

I do not want to arrogantly prescribe to you what content to consume. The previous paragraphs are not comprehensive nor scientific. However, I believe we should be spending a lot more time thinking and talking about the content spectrum in more sophisticated ways. We should have a lot more research dollars going into this given that distribution of content has wholly changed with the advent of ever connected personal computing devices. In the meantime, though, it is useful to run this exercise yourself and challenge your content consumption behaviour. Once you have determined what your best self requires, you can create the right user experience to safe guard your mind and attain a better quality of attention.

FRICTION UX

Safeguarding our brain and thereby our attention by consuming quality content is the goal. This means we need to design the UX of our digital devices to help with that. Absent minded humans pick up their phones impulsively dozens of times a day and tap on the comfort food equivalent of an app on their home screens (Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, etc). Even if one ends up consuming high-quality content on those, it can lead to a massive time-wasting exercise, which leads to stress or procrastination. A way to avoid these type of impulsive transgressions of ones better self agenda, is to introduce friction. 

Friction in UX is usually to be avoided at all costs, as product designers want users to get to do the thing they want to do most efficiently. In the cases we've described, however, the user’s worst self is driving decision making to get a quick fix with various knock on effects. Introducing friction allows for impulsive behaviour to be second guessed. Daniel Kahneman in his book "Thinking Fast and Slow" introduced the notion of System 1 and System 2 thinking. System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. You may have zoned out while reading this, as you're in System 1 mode but if I now ask you to divide 65 by 13 your pupils dilate, your heartbeat slightly increases and you shift into Systems 2 thinking. So friction allows for our System 2 to kick in and save us from bad app and content consumption!

App Selection

• Knowing what content is good for you and what content isn't, allows you to stack rank apps more broadly based on the prevalence of said content.

• Some apps allow you to customise your experience within (e.g. who you follow on Twitter) while others are as is (e.g. Daily Mail app). So the customisable apps depending on who you follow may rank differently based how you adjust your settings.

• Assessing the addictiveness of apps is subjective but if you tend to open it out of affect and regret the minutes spent on it, I'd place it in the addictive bucket. There can be addictive apps like say brain training games or Duolingo that may have good content.

• As a general rule, you should be suspicious of infinite scroll UX and recommender algorithms that do too good a job of hijacking your motivational system.

• So now that you have your app categories classification you can decide whether you should delete them from your phone all together or create friction. If you tend to be bad with impulse control it may be advisable to get rid of all addictive & bad content apps.

App Placement

• The home screen is prime real-estate. More specifically the easy to reach by your thumb bottom right corner (if you are right handed).

• Creating friction can be as easy as moving an app into the top left corner. The next step would be to put it into a folder on the home screen to introduce an extra tap. Ideally you don't want to have any time waster apps on your Home Screen to begin with. Consider moving an app to page two, then to page two into a folder, page three... and so on.

• A cool feature on the iPhone is also that you can hide a page all together. If you touch and hold your screen to go into edit mode, you'll see a pill shaped button popping up at the bottom of your home screen. If you tap it you can tick some of your pages to hide them away.

• But how do you get to the apps on page 2 then once it's hidden? Again on iPhone swipe down and use the search to type the app name to find and open it. These are all moments of friction that allow you to check whether this behaviour is really favourable.

• A pro tip on iOS to go into your settings "Siri & Search" and to turn off "Show Suggestions" and "Show Recents". This way if you swipe down to search you'll get a clean UX and no temptations to lead you astray.

States

• There are a few more advanced ways to customise your app setup. On iPhone for instance if you search for "focus" you can setup a state. It also allows you to have different notification settings. Spending some time to understand what focus settings your phone allows you to customise, is time well spent.

• I have a normal, work and wind down state. Work has no time wasters within reach. Wind down has good time wasters (Kindle, Audible, etc) available but no communication apps. Here is a video on how to do this on iPhone. One thing the video doesn't mention is that you can switch any page of your iPhone screens to your Home Screen for that focus and hide all other screens to create a completely different UX. Play around with this, so you can create a better UX for your different activity states.

Notifications

• As discussed notifications are a great way for our attention to be hijacked. You should seriously consider which apps you want to allow to do that. Notifications come in different "sizes". The most vicious is the push notification - inherently built to interrupt. The next level down is a lock screen notification, which can interrupt by drawing your attention while locked. Less intrusive yet is a notification centre notification. This means the notification will be in an inbox for you to review once you unlock your phone. This feels like a good compromise as it doesn’t interrupt. While the notification centre gives you a preview of the content of the notification, the final notification level, the app badge, is just a red number on the app to create awareness that some notification is waiting for you.

• A way to think about this is that it makes sense for practical apps like banking, Uber or food delivery apps to interrupt to notify you, because they mostly do so as you are using the service. Hence, a push notification here is actually essential.

• Most social, gaming and news apps are on a mission to distract you from what you are doing to monetise your attention. It's advisable to limit those at best to the notification centre. This way at least the notification won't compel you to pick up the phone.

• Communication apps are tricky as they are very dependent on who the person trying to reach you is, the context of their message and your state. I have different settings depending on which state I'm in, which are tied to the focuses above. In wind down, everything is turned off.

• I never have any email or work chat notifications turned on, as it's an activity that I like to do in regular but deliberate chunks rather than having permanent partial attention in the present due to emails or PMs being fired at me.

• App badges with red numbers all over my home screen trigger my brain, so they are turned off for everything but Whatsapp, my to-do list app, the App Store (to show me if I need to update any of my apps) and Systems settings (again for updates).

• I found the best way for me to figure out what I really need is to turn off everything and then slowly reintroduce things as I identify their practical need in my life. Believe me the world won’t end when you turn off all notifications. Try it!

Helper Apps

• There are a few apps that can help you with creating friction. The inbuilt screen time apps usually allow you to set daily caps for app usage. I've done this by default for all time waster apps. They allow you to extend the cap by notifying you that you have reached it and thereby make you aware that you have probably wasted enough time that day.

• Another great helper app category are the ones that stop you from opening time wasters. The app One Sec creates a 3 second animation you need to watch before you can open say Instagram. At the end of the animation it asks if you are sure if you want to really really open it, while also giving you stats about your last use. Your System 2 this way gets a chance to save you. This has been one of the most effective ways to stop me from opening Instagram & TikTok.

• There are many other apps in this category from blocking apps at certain times to creating more awareness about my usage through reports etc. Here is a list of a few useful ones.

Laptops

• All the advice above was very phone centric but by and large can be applied to laptops too. The main interface to time wasting on your laptop is the browser. The equivalent of app selection above is website selection.

• For app placement I suggest a bit of a hack. There are many good browsers out there. I run multiple on my laptop at the same time. On the main browser I'm not logged into social sites or any of my content subscriptions. Those are all on a different browser, which means I will have to open that to "waste time". This creates enough friction for System 2 to check me.

• Tab management is a big deal in your browser. Modern browsers have folder functions which allow you to throw all the tabs you don't need into a folder so they don't distract you (check out my fave browser SigmaOS). You can also copy paste tabs that would otherwise distract you into a "time waster browser". Add the tab there and close the browser. This way you have not lost the link but are also not distracted by it.

• The only notifications my browser pings me for are my calendar. I don't think any other notification is required. The same logic that applies to the phone is also valid for laptops (I've turned off Slack and Gmail notifications to batch process those during set times of the day).

• There are many apps to help with focus states or website tracking and blocking etc. on desktop as well.

• This may be a bit overkill but for writing I have a separate laptop. I've installed nothing but Evernote on it, not even a browser. This helps me with deep focus as it's literally just a modern day type writer (which by they way also exist if you want to take this to the next level).

CLOSING THOUGHTS

For me to prescribe what content and apps you should be consuming feels self-important. This is why I have solely shared my personal musings and frameworks for how one could approach the subject of designing a better UX to safeguard the quality and extent of attention available for your own pursuits. In itself even seemingly self-guided pursuits are the result of some meta-programming of external forces - memes, friends, parents, society. The way those forces work on us, however, seems somewhat more straightforward (unless the programming was made when we were children). If people want to waste my time or lead me astray with some scheme in the real world it feels a lot easier to spot it and resist it. The sinister aspect of the digital hijacking is that it is conducted through the ultimate Trojan Horse vehicles - my phone and laptop. I'm using these continuously and absentmindedly often with my guard down.

I would therefore respectfully advise you to, at the very least, use this post as a trigger to think about your own behaviour. I revisit my usage on a regular basis, because regressions are common. You won't regret thoughtfully spending some time questioning your digital tool interactions to see if introducing some UX friction and filtering some content will aid your quality and availability of attention. Life is so short, it would be a shame to let any of it pass us by unintentionally.

ADDENDUM

Some half-baked thoughts on regulation that I will expand on in a different post:

• Why don't we have PG ratings for apps in the stores?

• Cigarette packs have warning labels. Why is there no 2 second interstitial screen every time you open Instagram warning about its potential negative mental health effects that are well established especially for teenage girls?

• Why is any notification turned on by default when we buy our phone? They should all be turned off and only get enabled with triple opt-in.

• On AI - why don't we create a cross functional committee consisting of company, research and government representatives that review any model (in a reasonable time frame) before it is released to the wider public? Surely this makes more sense than a 6 month pause or individual lobbying efforts by the big players.

There are plenty more pragmatic suggestions out there. As you can tell these examples are not even that creative. They just reuse ideas regulators have used in other contexts. Why tech has somehow gotten away without any of the best practices used in other domains being applied to them is a mystery to me. It's either great lobbying or incompetence on the regulator side (probably both). It is fairly practical to introduce some of the above suggestions to create some more friction into the UX of our daily digital experience. An unintentional example of introducing friction is the somewhat stupid GDPR cookie opt-in policies (yes, they are maddening). Arguably that friction is unnecessary but it is a precedent for us to create better targeted and useful friction in the future.

Side note: I will focus a lot of this post on the USA, as most of you will have context on its history and present. Also, as the preeminent superpower of the 20th century, a lot of what happens in the USA influences the wider culture of the world. This makes it a worthwhile subject to study. 

MEMETICS > GENETICS

The world of memes has been the dominant force of our evolution as a species for at least the past 50.000 years. Ideas and their technological manifestations have become the primary driver for human progress rather than genetic adaptation. The memetic space dominant during an individuals life time, let's call this horizontal evolution, is more important than the vertical genetic changes from one generation to the next. Genetic variance still plays a role for the individuals of a generation but by and large has become an insignificant driver for the evolution of civilisation. It's the ideas and their manifestations that are driving progress - science, law, nation states, corporations, human rights, etc. To quote Alfred North Whitehead "Civilisation advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.”

It is fascinating to assume that you could take a baby human from tens of thousands of years ago and raise them in today's world with them growing up to being a normal participant in society. This is because our genetics haven't changed and because a lot of our brain wires up after we are born. A two week old human baby is less capable than most 2 week old mammals. But while we can't fend for ourselves until we are a few years old, we are malleable in the most important way: wiring up our brain mostly after birth, allows us to adapt to the era we live in. Alligators have been doing the same thing for 250 million years (they're old school like that). As a two year old I played with Legos, now kids at that age effortlessly play with iPads.

The rise of Homo Sapiens and its future is therefore driven by the world of ideas. Our generation's contributions to this meme space is our real legacy (well that and all the CO2). It hereby becomes clear that the contents of this horizontal meme space are a key determinant of the human condition for every generation. Real power over the fate of civilisation can be derived from controlling what ideas are perceived as acceptable.

THE OVERTON WINDOW

The range of policies acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time is referred to as the Overton Window. It's named after American policy analyst Joseph Overton, who stated that an idea's political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range. For the purpose of this post we expand the notion of the Overton Window from the realm of politics to all ideas that have an influence over the future of civilisation. As you can see in the illustration below, the Overton Window is depicted on a horizontal scale to express the political left-right. We could add a y-axis to measure some other dimension (i.e. freedom versus dictatorship) and make it a 4 quadrant system but I will keep this simple. The width of the purple rectangle can be increased to broaden the spectrum. (Spoiler alert - that’s what’s been happening post-Internet)

Let's make this less abstract. The notion of child sacrifice is still around but the majority of people consider it unthinkable. The notion of abortion, on the other hand, is seen by some as radical. Overall most western countries have pro-choice policies (within term limits). In other words, abortion is inside the Overton Window and pro-life isn't. In the US in particular, the battle over the legitimacy of this idea is very much alive and kicking.

There are different methods for shifting the Window:

-Crisis Mover - 9/11 happens and an all out assault on citizens' privacy via the Patriot Act becomes normalised. A more sinister version of this, is when crisis are wholesale engineered: the War on Drugs becoming priority number 1 during Reagan's administration;  the fabrication of evidence for Weapons of Mass Destruction (which were never found) by the W Bush administration to invade Iraq.

-Gradual Persuasion - gay rights (and most other civil rights progress) are a positive example for this.  A negative example has been the systematic dismantling of labour unions in the US.

-Charismatic Salesman - Hitler is the first example that comes to mind (of course post First World War Germany was fertile ground). A more benign example would be Steve Jobs convincing us that on-screen keyboards are better than physical ones far before that was the case (RIP BB Messenger).

In the 20th century the agents that have most effectively shifted the Overton Window have been the media and politicians but what about before then?

CENSORSHIP & THE PRINTING PRESS

Through human history the Overton Window has been determined by very few actors. Why? Firstly, for most of our existence we merely had to fight for survival. Such life circumstances don't leave much spare capacity to wax poetically. Whatever the tribe's leader said, was good enough until it wasn't and his successor's opinion determined our reality. Secondly, to distribute knowledge there needs to be a medium. For most of history that medium has been word of mouth. While this has proven somewhat effective, it can also be immediately punished and easily suppressed. Thirdly, the idea of free speech is a relatively recent one.

For a long time, religious organisations and monarchs have had a very strong grip on the acceptable idea space. They censored anything that would be counter to the world view that was useful to them. The exploits of the Catholic Inquisition are well documented. Followers of other religions, scientific discoveries and "unhelpful" people with "controversial ideas" were cancelled (quite similar to some of what happens today, minus literal torture and executions). Enter the printing press. Good old Gutenberg, who died penniless, invented the printing press in 1432 to pay off the debts relating to his gold smithing business. The impact of his invention (others claim to have come up with movable type but none of them were successful at scale) had a similar effect on his world as the Internet has had on our age. Before the printing press, censorship was easy. All it required was killing the “heretic” and burning his or her handful of notebooks. But after the printing press, it became nearly impossible to destroy all copies of a dangerous idea. And the more dangerous a book was claimed to be, the more the people wanted to read it. Every time the Church published a list of banned books, the booksellers knew exactly what they should print next.

The Renaissance had kicked off about 100 years before Gutenberg, but print supercharged it. The recovered works of Plato and Aristotle reached out from the past to impact the idea space of a world 2000 years after their deaths. For the first time, the word of God could be owned and interpreted without having the clergy as intermediaries. Martin Luther's German translation of the Bible became the first bestseller and kicked off the Protestant movement. Scientific theories could spread much more efficiently. Now, what was previously handwritten notes to inform people of current affairs could become proper newspapers. The modern press was born. The Overton Window was expanding, because the transmission of ideas had become more seamless. Books, pamphlets, and newspapers were now easy to produce and distribute in high volume. The virality of ideas gained a force multiplier.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

The next force multiplier was delivered by the freedom of speech. While the ancient Greeks already established the idea in the 5th century BC, it didn't formally emerge as a protected right until much later in history.  A limited form of protected speech was established in England's Bill of Rights 1689. This legally established the constitutional right of freedom of speech in Parliament. One of the world's first freedom of the press acts was introduced in Sweden in 1766 under the leadership of the Anders Chydenius. This act effectively stopped censorship of the press (apart from the fun topics of defamation of the King and the Swedish Church).

During the French Revolution in 1789, the Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen) was established. This specifically affirmed freedom of speech as an inalienable right (merci beaucoup). It was adopted in 1791 in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. The French Declaration states: "The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law." Of course this was just an ideal and reality often failed to live up to it but with this human right enshrined, ideas could flourish like never before.

With freedom of speech in the USA established, the golden era for newspapers began. Thousands of local, state and national newspapers were created throughout the course of the 19th century. They took many different shapes from prosaic to informative to gossipy. Ideas about markets, finance, business, politics, science, medicine, crime, romance, products, etc started spreading at accelerated pace supported by technologies like steam ships (news from Europe) and telegraphs (news across the country). Benjamin Franklin saw the printing press as a device to instruct colonial Americans in moral virtue. However, in reality the majority of newspapers ended up becoming mouthpieces of the Federalists or Republicans to assert their political opinions to shift the Overton Window in their favour. There were notable exceptions of publications run by legendary editors, who pursued the ideal of an objective press, but by and large the purpose of newspapers was influencing opinion for political or financial gain. 

Regardless of the subjectivity in reporting, the world of ideas had become more sophisticated and broad thanks to the diverse media landscape, which was birthed by the freedom of speech. While the control of distributing ideas at scale rested in the hands of few politicians and editors, it was a huge step forward for the evolution of the idea space. Unfortunately, the number of voices would contract in the 20th century due to media market consolidation.

MANIPULATING THE MEDIA

Around the turn of the century a battle was waged in pursuit of higher circulation between Pulitzer (yep, the prize dude) and Hearst. Both men hijacked the journalistic ideal to create Yellow Journalism. Yellow Journalism featured scandal-mongering, sensationalism, jingoism or other unethical or unprofessional practices by news media organisations or individual journalists to juice their distribution (the equivalent of social media recommendation algorithms' amygdala hacking).

Hearst, who's family made their money in mining, ended up becoming one of the most powerful men in media as the owner and founder of newspapers across the country. By the mid-1920s he had a nationwide string of 28 newspapers, among them the Los Angeles Examiner, the Boston American, the Chicago Examiner, the Detroit Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Washington Times, Washington Herald and his flagship the San Francisco Examiner. Hearst became one of the first true media barons. He championed the Spanish-American War and other affairs in order to protect his financial stakes in various companies. "War makes for great circulation," said Hearst. And so media manipulation became part of the playbook to shift the Overton Window.

To enter the First World War President Wilson used the media to manufacture consent. During the Second World War the media (now including radio and television) was tightly controlled to galvanise the population against the Axis forces. The McCarthy era under Truman was a dark chapter of drastic repression of free speech under the guise of protection against Communism. In reality its goal became suppressing civil rights, women's rights, labour unions and socialist ideas.

Throughout the rest of the 20th century the government either aligned with or discredited the press. The Overton Window was either tightly managed or expanded slightly. The concentration of media ownership made things worse despite the addition of radio and television networks. In 1983, 90% of US media was controlled by 50 companies. In 2011 this had changed to just 6 media companies. The political, business and media elites used their power over the Overton Window to manipulate the population more or less effectively to play along with their agendas.

FOX NEWS INTENSIFIES THE WAR

Fox Networks launched in 1996. Prior to its existence the networks ABC, NBC, and CBS were considered conservative and PBS was seen as liberal. After its existence everything seemed liberal. What Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes (the founding CEO) did, was bringing Yellow Journalism into the 21st Century. Ailes wanted Fox's female on air talent to be younger, attractive, dressed enticingly and to display everything teasingly. The stories take a sensationalist point of view. The commentators consistently position events to make viewers feel oppressed by "those people" (liberals, immigrants, minorities, etc). Tapping into the rage machine worked and lead to the biggest legacy media success story of recent times. Fox went from zero to top-rated network in the country within 20 years and broadened the Overton Window considerably (by for one, legitimising the Tea Party movement). 

Of course, Fox tapped into an existing sentiment. Globalisation had created discontent with its unequal distribution of the bounties of a newly interconnected world. Prior to Fox most national cable networks and Hollywood were perceived by Republicans as Democratic leaning and not representative of their values. Fox News originally used the slogan "Fair and Balanced", which was coined by Roger Ailes. The New York Times described the slogan as being a "blunt signal that Fox News planned to counteract what Mr. Ailes and many others viewed as a liberal bias ingrained in television coverage by establishment news networks". That said Fox News was conducting overtly biased reporting that created heat. Fox under Ailes was ruthlessly data driven. They understood more than any other network how to trigger viewers to maximise engagement metrics. The Fox effect became a real notion of how the Overton Window was shifting both in terms of acceptable ideas (immigration, crime, gun rights, global institutions, anti-establishment, etc) and in terms of discourse quality (amygdala triggered, max individualism, anti "oppression", "my truth", etc).

THE INTERNET & MEDIA FRAGMENTATION

Enter the Internet. Another force multiplier arrives and democratises the ability to distribute ideas instantly at scale. At the same time, the means of content production (text, audio, video) become affordable for pretty much everyone on the planet (the price of buying a phone). This has a profound impact on the Overton Window and on those who previously "managed" it.

To illustrate this shift, let's play through the perspective of someone with an extreme opinion. Donald lives in a small town. He believes that the Earth is flat. Every time he brings this up in the local bar, people make fun of him. He feels ashamed about this belief, but doesn't want to give it up. On Fox News he hears over and over how elected officials and institutions are wrong. He discovers the internet. Now he searches for flat Earth websites and finds many others with the same belief. He is no longer a lonesome loser and he's going to show those people in his bar for dismissing him all these year. He meets up with others in the flat Earth community at get togethers. He becomes more steadfast in his beliefs, because they provide him with more arguments in favour of their theory. Social media arrives! Donald opens Facebook 10 times a day and every time he does, he has some more juicy flat Earth content in his feed. How could those stupid people at Fox News and in his local bar not get it? His feed is full of flat Earth content. How are others missing this? It's everywhere and obvious. Now a genuine scandal happens. It becomes clear how establishment politicians mislead the media and voters (by manipulating the Overton Window). Donald feels vindicated. If they are manipulating the media then they are surely also suppressing the truth about a flat Earth.

This is somewhat hyperbolic, but you can imagine it not being too far from someone's real experience. The flip side of this is also happening, which is of course why the Internet is also a force for good. In other words, some people realise they are in bubbles that they break out of because of access to a wider world of ideas. But somehow it feels like there are more and more Donalds (left and right). Why?

INTRODUCING OVERTON MIRRORS

Looking at Donald's example, there are many factors at play. There is simmering discontent caused by increasing inequality. There is increasing awareness about unsubtle management of the Overton window by elites. There is technology that makes it easier to construct our own reality. But there is more. The reason people are getting radicalised more than before, is due to what I call Overton Mirrors. An Overton Mirror is the construction of ones information reality and social network to reaffirm ones own bias continuously. You may call this a filter bubble but I find the Overton Mirror concept more useful.

As we know by now, prior to the Internet most of the management of the Overton Window was centralised. There were moments when the Window was purposefully pushed left/right. Sometimes bottom up movements like the counter-culture of the 60s and 70s emerged to organically broaden the Window. But by and large the Overton Window wasn't very wide and most people were within it. Societal cohesion was easier, as most people were reading, watching and listening to mainstream media. Having the same ground truth allowed for less deviation from the centre and a sense that my neighbour, even though they may hold a different political opinion, still largely inhabits the same meme space as I do. There were some groups that were clearly outside the Overton Window and we would call them cults (i.e. Scientology). Radical people felt lonely and there was a lot of friction for them to find like-minded people, as per capita their ideas weren't well distributed geographically. Either, if practical, they joined in person communities, or tested the acceptability of their opinion through trial and error. The more cooky their opinion, the more often an immediate reputational and emotional cost was being paid by them for exercising their free speech. This feedback loop would sometimes lead to more radicalisation but more often to a correction to the mean, especially with younger people (I gave up my teenage belief in the Illuminati).

Enter the Internet. People can now stop reading and watching the mainstream stuff and can construct their reality on their home screen, thereby continuously surrounding themselves with content that feels good and doesn't require a lot of mental energy expenditure. Enter social media. People can now more effectively construct their social network. The friction to find other like-minded individuals disappears. Rather than faceless blogs information now comes from other people and the armies of others who are commenting. Those feeds serve up a lot of the content they love to see without having to do a lot of work searching for it anymore. The feeling of being vindicated after having to suffer defeat at the hands of "normies" is exhilarating. Creating content is so easy now everyone posts. To maximise their social relevance with their virtual network, people try to find the juiciest stuff out there. The more enraging the better, because that's the stuff that gets the most likes.

This is the life in an Overton Mirror. Self-reinforcing information reality construction that continuously draws from discontent and a sense of oppression by out of touch elites. The virtual and continuous connection with other like-minded individuals is energising and creates confidence in the belief that ones Overton Mirror is indeed within the Window. There is little trust in institutions and with the support of what feels like millions of supporters, it is hard to have self-doubt. Given the virtual support network, deriving affirmation from people in the proximate community becomes less important. Now when in the local bar, there is no need to back down anymore. And so our society becomes more splintered and extreme.

This is how Overton Mirrors are more sinister than a mere filter bubble. They create a remote enraged support network that is fuelled by its constant run ins with people in the real world, who are outside of the Mirror. It reinforces itself with continuous media streams to confirm its bias. And because of the perceived strength in numbers the Mirror seems like a real legitimate Window. Incompetent politicians and media make the problem worse.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

A lot of debate rages currently about freedom of speech and the faults of traditional media (I'm referring to the pre-Internet institutions). Yes, many of them were entitled. They often weren't experts but pretended to be. But the benefits of those organisations were that they had reputations to uphold and layers of approval to run through before content was published. Despite the fact that they were selling a self-serving version of the truth to us, they at least created guardrails against strong deviations from the Overton Window mean. A lot of that has been lost now. Trad media has been shifting further in the direction they were previously leaning. Fox is more sensationalist and racist than ever before. NYT is more elitist and woke than ever before. The Overton Window has become very wide as people have managed to construct Mirrors to get power in numbers. This allows them to get their "out there" ideas included in the Overton Window and some unthinkable ideas within the reach of the borders.

It is not fair to blame social media for all this. It is clear that the Overton Window managing elites played their part in our predicament. Increasing inequality, bad regulation of business, greedy politicians, lazy journalists, overreaching special interests, etc. created a potent feeling of injustice. Pair this with obsessive individualism, marketing created dissatisfaction to drive consumption, a loneliness epidemic, bad nutrition, rage inducing algorithms, and Overton Mirrors to get an explosive mix that leads to radicalisation.

The solution to this is not a return to a tightly managed Overton Window by elites. While there are plenty of countries running this model more or less successfully and competently (from North Korea to China to the Saudi Arabia), it feels like a step backwards. The Hegelian idea of a Dialectic that leads to a more perfect society when thesis meets antithesis to form a synthesis, is how humanity has made progress. For such progress, a wide open Overton Window is a good thing. However, three more ingredients are needed: a more prevalent propensity for critical thinking, acceptance for concessions in service of societal cohesion, the maturity to not identify with ideas.

Critical thinking and the scientific method have gotten us pretty far as a species. However, nowadays the notion of critical thinking has degraded to "in opposition to the mainstream opinion". This is the result of a continued assault on the legitimacy of previous Overton Window managers. Most of this is self-inflicted, given their brazen attempts at manipulating our thought for gain. But, a lot of it is also a concerted effort by new managers-in-waiting to grasp the reigns, all under the guise of "draining the swap" or freedom of speech. In today's fast-paced, media-saturated world, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. Overstimulation, mental fatigue and victimhood mentality make us susceptible to accepting simplistic, biased, or incomplete information without question. The new Overton Window managers manipulate us neuroscientifically by tapping into the "short attention span bitesized content nugget simple truth controversial statement virality hacking rage machine". In such a world, it is more important than ever to cultivate a critical mindset and to approach information with a healthy dose of skepticism and intellectual humility. Especially, (as Hume would say) if whatever is being served up makes us feel good.

It has become clear that obsessive individualism in the West has lead us to a place where most of us don't believe in the notion that service to society is virtuous. Oppression narratives, distrust in institutions as well as the incompetence and moral bankruptcy of elected leaders have added fuel to the fire. However hard, we need to find our way back to solidarity. It is only ignorance that dismisses the other as non-vital to the functioning of our complex societies. We need to compromise with everyone else just as we do with our friends and family. While Utilitarianism has its flaws, a return to Mills' notion that service to society is not only a moral duty, but also a source of personal fulfilment and happiness, would be a welcome antithesis to our current mentality. Being compassionate and empathetic is hard work, especially as we are exposed to rage amplification algorithms but nobody said that building an interplanetary civilisation was easy (otherwise Where is Everybody?).

Finally, we need to stop using ideas to prop up our identity. I discussed Kegan's adult development framework in my post Validation Seeking Traps. The core idea is that as long as we identify with ideas, we will not be able to argue about them without becoming emotional. When I believe in democratic values, rather than being a Democrat, then a critical discussion of said values won't trigger an identity crisis for me. The knee-jerk reaction to someone questioning ones identity, is a fight or flight response, which is never a great basis to discover a more perfect truth. It is baffling that this is not taught more widely in schools. Intellectual humility as well as respect for the diversity of thought without an emotional attachment to ideas is a more constructive approach to discourse.

We live in unprecedented times. Never has the world of ideas been so wide, diverse and sophisticated. This is an opportunity and not a problem. Humans are not the fastest or strongest of mammals. Our superpower has always been collaboration. If we zoom out, we realise that in the end we mostly want the same things. Somehow bickering about the details has become more important than reminding ourselves that we are in this all together. We need to reset our individualistic narratives and return to a collective vision for a better future of mankind. Let's break all the Mirrors. I promise it won't bring bad luck!

ADDENDUM - The New Manipulators

The real Donald had already lived in a Mirror prior to running for president. Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, Breitbart, etc were on Donald's home screen. He was fast to recognise that the Mirrors, which seemed outside of the Overton Window, were very big. He knew that by using the ideas in the most out-there Mirrors and by appealing to the pervasive sense of disenfranchisement, he could shift the Overton Window radically. And so he did. His run for the presidency started with "grab them by the pussy" and "Mexican rapists". After that, casually misogynous and racist remarks by every day folks we’re fair game. Days when he didn't try to pull the Overton Window even further to the absurd fringes and stayed within its shifted confines, made him look presidential.

Elon lives in a libertarian Mirror. He didn't like the left leaning mainstream media and identified (sometimes rightfully) a lot of their bias. He decides to buy Twitter to shift the Window back to what he perceives to be the centre. Some out there people are being re-platformed. Some Elon critical journalists get de-platformed (briefly). He keeps retweeting and commenting on things that reaffirm his world view and one tweet at a time shifts the perception of his hundred million of followers. Saying incendiary things on Twitter gets trad journalists writing about the platform daily and so more people sign up for Twitter. He gives access to journalists to show how biased the old Twitter was (Twitter Files) and how little trust people should have in institutions. This makes current Twitter, under him, seemingly more legitimate.

ADDENDUM - Lab Leak Theory

This theory suggests that the virus was accidentally released from the the Wuhan Institute of Virology, either through a lab leak or through an infected lab worker, who then spread the virus to others. The theory gained traction after reports emerged that several researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had fallen ill with COVID-like symptoms in late 2019.

When I first heard this theory, I immediately dismissed it. It came from the cooky Republican dominated corners of the Internet and was at some point embraced by Donald. The topic was immediately politicised and the "liberal" media came out in unified opposition against it. If you have been following more recent news, you will know that now the US Department of Energy and the FBI now endorse a Covid lab leak theory.

What's going on? When we look at some of the facts things start to become murky. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has actually been working on Corona Virus Gain of Function research funded by an organisation with the name Eco Health Alliance, which is financed among others by the CDC. Gain of Function research is an attempt to take existing viruses and insert DNA that makes them more dangerous to humans. By doing so, one can be ahead of nature and already develop a vaccine proactively for a potential future natural mutation. There are official papers that prove that Anthony Fauci and others were aware of this research conducted in Wuhan through the Eco Health Alliance and supported it.

There is no unequivocal proof that the virus escaped from the lab, however, what are the chances that a global pandemic starts in a city with a lab that is experimenting on creating more potent strains of Corona Viruses. With SARS scientists were quick to find the smoking gun: the virus likely originated from bats and was transmitted to humans through an intermediate host, most likely civet cats, that were sold at the wet market in Guangdong Province. Researchers used a technique called reverse genetics to recreate the SARS virus from its genetic sequence, which allowed them to study the virus in a laboratory setting. All attempts to do this with the SARS-CoV-2 strain have been in vain. In addition, some important features of the spike protein on SARS-COV-2 have also raised suspicions on whether the virus is man-made. This is because both S1 and S2 sites of the spike protein demonstrated optimal portions, which facilitates the penetration of the virus’ RNA into the living cell that could weaken the host defense against the virus.

I'm not a virologist so I need to refer to expert's opinions here. However, it becomes clear that an outright dismissal of this theory as stupid was clearly ignorant of me. I went along with the left leaning Overton Window manager's quick dismissal of the theory. While there is no clear evidence for the lab leak, there are definitively some good arguments in favour of it. Shame on me for blindly dismissing them initially.

The current state of society is strained. Too much polarisation has lead to the impression that people are no longer interested in constructive consensus but just in being right. Fragmented thought bubbles cannot conceive of the validity of the other sides’ arguments. Zero sum thinking has stopped us from developing better ideas and solutions to our problems.

Humanities biggest challenges are global coordination problems. Global warming, pandemic preparedness, nuclear proliferation, inequality etc. are all solvable with a fraction of the global GDP that is lavishly spent on arms. When societies are no longer able to communicate with shared purpose within, countries will also no longer be able to collaborate effectively.

New technologies, while righting many of civilisation’s wrongs, can now more than ever destroy all of life on this planet. Global consensus needs to be created to develop next generation genomics, AI, weapons, robots, etc in an ethical way. The good news is there are solutions to all these problems, we just need to collaborate to achieve them.

A SOLUTION

Postmodernism and the idea of a post-truth society is problematic. There are facts and those are not subjective. Truth is an ideal that can never be achieved, we only try to approximate it and as such are continuously triangulating. Civilisation was built through dialectic improvement of norms and thought.

Allowing this dialectic, the meeting of a thesis and an antithesis to allow the emergence of a synthesis, has been the process to improve the human condition. We will not always get the synthesis right but as long as we are open and respectful to the process we can improve.

To do this we need to accept that no idea is perfect. More importantly we have to divorce ideas from our identities. Disagreements should not be personal and mutual respect has to be persevered in discourse. When we don’t feel insulted due to disagreement with our ideas, critical conversations can flourish. This will get us closer to truth and a more just society. Good scientists suggest the weaknesses of their models and unemotionally encourage others to disprove their work. We need to adopt more of this attitude in our everyday discourse.

FULL SPECTRUM

Full Spectrum is a collection of projects to shift perspective and approach ideas that span a wide range of thought. The first goal of Full Spectrum is to expose our inherent bias in everything we do and say. Simply understanding that our perceived reality is not what it seems is a good starting point to reduce dogmatic thinking. This is why science will be prominently featured as part of my posts.

The second goal of Full Spectrum is to provide thought-provoking ideas across a variety of domains to stimulate intellectually. Cross-discipline thinking is great to show diverse solutions to a problem and thereby creating more acceptance to alternate approaches. I hope to do this both with posts and conversations with people from a broad set of backgrounds.

The third goal of Full Spectrum is to create a community of like minded individuals to help amplify awareness for the project of improving civility and discourse in our society. As such this community needs to develop a value system and approach collectively that can be adopted by a wide set of people.

I hope that Full Spectrum can expose the relativity of human ideas and opinions. This is mandatory to create more civility in an uncertain world that needs to expediently approximate the best current solutions to our problems from a myriad of options. It feels like a worthwhile goal to create more empathy for the ideas of others to improve the chances of civilisation succeeding. For the sake of the following generations let’s fight the regression in discourse and raise to the full height that is demanded by our dignity and intelligence as human beings.

DRAKE EQUATION

The Drake Equation was meant as a method to stimulate scientific conversation about the existence of alien life. It's variables represent the different factors that are important to consider, in oder to approximate the number of civilisations with which we could potentially communicate. Here it is in its full glory (don't freak out, it's pretty straightforward!):

Let's go though each variable:

N = number of civilisations out there for us to communicate with
R* = is the rate of star formation per year (no stars, no life)
fp = is the fraction of stars with planets
ne = is the number of Earth-like (or habitable) planets per system with planets
fl = is the fraction of such planets with life
fi = is the fraction with life that develop intelligence
fc = is the fraction of intelligent civilizations that are detectable/contactable
L = is the average longevity of such detectable civilizations in years

Drake never meant for his equation to be solved. It's a tool for contemplation, so let's contemplate briefly shall we? R* (star formation) is a variable that we have somewhat of a grasp on. Stars are "easy" to track and as such we have a good sense at which rate they spawn in our galaxy (rates differ widely based on circumstance). We have made massive strides in Drake's lifetime to get a better understanding of fp (planets per star) and ne (potential for life on a planet) through the immense progress in telescope technology (most notably the Hubble and recently the James Webb Telescope).

As one would expect when looking at the night sky, many of the stars up there actually have planets orbiting them. We have identified about 5000 so far. Planets are hard to observe as they are not a source of light. They reflect light but that's hard to spot, given the glare from their star. The most reliable way to "see" a planet is by observing the light of a star and registering a drop in the intensity of said light. That's a planet passing between us and its star and thereby obstructing the light from it (nearly 4000 planets have been discovered this way). Based on these transit observations we have some basis to extrapolate fp (NASA has a really cool site if you want to geek out on this).

When planets orbit between their star and us, the light emitted by the star passes through the planet's atmosphere (imagine holding a snow globe between you and a lamp). That light changes its frequency based on the molecules it interacts with as it's passing through. Scientists here on Earth can then deduce what the planet's atmosphere is made up of using spectroscopy (how freaking cool is that for a bunch of primates). So for instance if we detect light passing through an atmosphere that arrives with the wavelength of 15 microns, we know it bounced off a CO2 molecule. With these data points we have a basis to speculate about ne (habitability of a planet).

All variables that follow after are somewhat of a crapshoot. Guessing fl (how many develop life), fi (intelligent life), fc (civilisations with radio technology) and L (how long they will stick around) is a very imprecise affair. We have quite sophisticated models about how life could have formed (Nick Lane, The Vital Question is my favourite biochemistry read) but we have no clue of its likelihood. Obviously, the chances for intelligent life are even harder to guess, knowing how many times life on earth nearly went extinct before we developed general intelligence required for civilisations.

That hasn't stopped people from taking a punt. As a matter of fact, all of us have an intuition about this, however ill founded right? According to polls, a majority of people in the US and Europe believe that aliens exist (7% of Britons claim to have seen them?!). When you consider all those stars out there, how could it be possible for life not to exist on other planets? In other words, if you multiply really big numbers as part of the Drake Equation the result must be a really big value for N (number of alien civilisations we can booty call). "But where is everybody?"

FERMI PARADOX

This is the question that Enrico Fermi (an Italian scientist - Nobel Prize winner, father of the first nuclear reactor and co-inventor of the atom bomb under Oppenheimer) asked his colleagues while on a walk to grab lunch in 1950. There are many great resources on this topic so if I do a bad job at explaining, I suggest you check out these Youtube videos. The paradox is why haven't we found anyone if the likelihood for life to exist is seemingly so high?

Let me boggle your mind. Technically the universe had all the required elements present to form life when it was 1 billion years old (A). Our planet formed 4.5 billion years (B) ago. Since we're here now we can assume it takes that long for a civilisation to emerge. So say from age 5.5 billion (A+B) the universe could have had civilisations. The universe is currently 13.8 billion years old. So we've had 8.3 billion years for potential civilisations to emerge. Where is everyone? Consider for a moment humanity (if we don't blow ourselves up) in 50,000 years. Now imagine a civilisation that's millions or billion years older. Wouldn't they be gods? A simulation by NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab suggests you could colonise large swaths of the Milky Way galaxy in 90 million years. No biggie for billion year old alien gods! So where the HELL is everyone?

Robin Hanson (an economist and brilliant thought experimenter) proposed the idea of Great Filters to provide an answer. A Great Filter is a blind spot in our seemingly instinctive assumption about the high probability of life in the universe. Maybe it's really hard for single celled life to form? Or multicellular is really hard? Or intelligence is ultra rare? All these could be Great Filters. Thankfully, we have already overcome those and everyone else who's not here seems to have failed to pass through. But wait...what if the Great Filter is yet to come? Maybe all civilisations blow themselves up? Well that would mean Xenoarchaeology could be a great career, because the universe is littered with remnants of extinct alien civilisations. It would also mean that we're most likely doomed.

(I’ll deal with some alternative explanations of the Fermi Paradox in the Addendum at the end of the post)

OVERCONFIDENCE

To decide whether we have passed the Great Filter or are still facing a Great Filter, we need to revisit the Drake Equation. Remember what's at stake here. If we still have a Great Filter ahead of us and also can't spot anyone out there, then it seems very likely that civilisations just don't make it very far. If the Great Filter is behind us and we can't spot anyone out there, then we may be the first consciousness to emerge from this universe (what a waste of space and time!).

Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute to the rescue! A few years ago Anders Sandberg (Ph.D. in computational neuroscience), Eric Drexler (the inventor of molecular nanotechnology), and Toby Ord (philosopher and leading figure in the effective altruism movement) wrote a paper called Dissolving the Fermi Paradox. Their conclusion is that our intuition about a teeming universe is off. The paper is statistics heavy, so let me summarise some of its conclusions.

The main problem leading to the Fermi Paradox is that we don't account for uncertainties properly when using the Drake Equation. Using an overconfident estimate or average for any of the fractions can create a 100 orders of magnitude difference in N (number of civilisations) given the nature of big numbers we're dealing with. To account for uncertainties we need to plug in a variation of possible values for the Drake parameters. This is particularly true for fl, fi and fc given the lack of our current scientific knowledge about the likelihood for life to emerge. To determine this probability distribution they used the parameter ranges in the existing science literature as a proxy. In other words, if 20 scientists used 1/2 for fl and 1000 used 1/100000, they would adjust the range and weight of the input parameters in their simulations accordingly.

Let me quote their conclusions here directly:
"When we take account of realistic uncertainty, replacing point estimates by probability distributions that reflect current scientific understanding, we find no reason to be highly confident that the galaxy (or observable universe) contains other civilisations, and thus no longer find our observations in conflict with our prior probabilities. We found qualitatively similar results through two different methods: using the authors’ assessments of current scientific knowledge bearing on key parameters, and using the divergent estimates of these parameters in the astrobiology literature as a proxy for current scientific uncertainty.

When we update this prior in light of the Fermi observation, we find a substantial probability that we are alone in our galaxy, and perhaps even in our observable universe (53%–99.6% and 39%–85% respectively). ’Where are they?’ — probably extremely far away, and quite possibly beyond the cosmological horizon and forever unreachable."

To be clear, they are not saying that there is certainty about us being alone, just that it is very scientifically plausible and should not surprise us. It is a statement about our state of knowledge. Also given our uncertainty about life formation and current observations of an "empty" universe our assumption should be that the Great Filter is behind us, rather than thinking all civilisations fail.

BACK ON EARTH

Let's bring all this back to earth. The universe through billions of years of cosmic evolution of physics and chemistry has given rise to biology. Biology through billions of years of natural selection and many mishaps has given rise us. This seems to be a very rare event, given we can't find cosmic pen pals despite the billions of stars and billions of years that life could have formed elsewhere. Not that humanity isn't too full of itself already, but it's plausible that life in general and humans are VERY special.

Considering all this makes me look at life and people around me in awe. We are a work in progress attempt by this universe to create something ultra rare. We really have to make this civilisation thing work and should rise to the occasion to take on this ultimate responsibility. Otherwise, there may be nobody left to ask "where is everybody?".

ADDENDUM

There are some alternative explanations of the Fermi Paradox. Sorry for the brief responses to them but I frankly don’t even think you’re still around to read this:

-The aliens are hiding!
=If the universe would be teeming with life, then only one of them would have to be non-compliant and show themselves.

-We are looking for the wrong signals!
=Unlikely, it would be hard to miss an expanding alien civilisation.

-We haven't been looking for long enough!
=True, but life certainly isn't as abundant as it should be because we've done decent canvassing our galaxy.

-They are too far away!
=Possibly. The universe is expanding faster than the speed of light. Faster than light travel doesn’t seem possible, so we might never meet alien civilisations that are too far away.

-The aliens are expanding very fast!
=Pretty interesting idea posed by Robin Hanson and likely topic of another post. Say aliens would be expanding with close to the speed of light, then you wouldn’t see much happening until right before the moment they arrive.

-We live in a simulation! = Sure we do Elon!

EPICURUS AND LUCRETIUS ON DEATH

One of the most sanguine arguments against a fear of death comes from the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE): “while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist.” As far as rational arguments go this one is solid. Unfortunately it doesn't do much to get rid of that gut wrenching feeling I experience, when I try to imagine infinite non-existence. But let's play along. The fact that death doesn't touch us in the strictest of sense is true. The process of dying can still be feared but as dying means we are still existing, it's maybe not death we are fearing but dying? Most likely but there is more to it.

The reason death is problematic is not just dying but all the fun stuff that we miss out on. Moral philosophy compels us to create a world that provides conscious beings with a meaningful experience without suffering. So the fact that death can't touch us and therefore should not be feared is not the real problem. The problem is that being deprived of potentially good experiences is bad.

Lucretius (94- circa 55 BCE) a Roman philosopher comes to Epicurus rescue and argues: "Look back again to see how the past ages of everlasting time, before we were born, have been as naught to us. These then nature holds up to us as a mirror of the time that is to come, when we are dead and gone. Is there aught that looks terrible in this, aught that seems gloomy? Is it not a calmer rest than any sleep?" In other words, his argument is that we don't lament pre-natal non-existence so we should feel similarly ambivalent about post-mortem non-existence.

OK, there are a few reasons why we can object to this line of reasoning. The universe will (based on our current understanding) exist a lot longer than it has already been around. So strictly speaking I'm going to miss out on a lot more fun after death than the fun that I have missed out on before birth. Also, if "the arc of the moral universe" bends toward justice, then our past (as we know) has been considerable less fulfilling than our future. And who says I don't lament missing out on being there with the founding fathers? Obviously, these arguments are somewhat meant in jest and don't get to the heart of the matter.

FUTURE BIAS

Say you wake up in the morning and I creepily stand in front of you and ask you this question (inspired by the Keiran Setiya's book Life is Hard): Would you rather have had 4 hours of the most amazing party last night but sorry you can't remember it now because you had too much "fun" OR would you rather have 2 hours of the most amazing party later this afternoon even if you won't be able to remember it afterwards (yes, drugs)? In both cases, your future experiencing self won't know what it missed out on. However, at the point when you are asked you will chose the future party over the past party despite the fact that the past party was twice as long.

The scenario above exposes our clear preference for future events over past events (even if you feel the example is somewhat abstract). This is a deeply embedded feature of human beings and not a bug. It would make sense from an evolutionary perspective to care more about the future, because we want to maximise our survival chances for propagation. We have survived the past so we don't care that much about it anymore. We fear future death because we want to propagate. Lucretius understood this. His claim is that our preference is irrational. Both periods of non-existence are symmetrical, so we should have similar attitudes toward them.

As humans, striving to overcome the no longer relevant programming of our primate past, is a worthwhile pursuit. Transcending future bias, as hard as may be, is part of this enterprise. Our best attempts at this converge on ego dissolution exercises. These can take various shapes - meditation, psychedelic trips, peak experience, numinous moments, flow states, etc. They yet have to work for me but here's hoping for the future.

But why is authenticity so important? Most problems we face in our ever complex world are global coordination and collaboration problems. To coordinate effectively we need to be empathetic towards those who we are engaging with. Authenticity is the strongest panacea for a lack of empathy and connectedness. Hence things that keep us from being authentic are counter to human collaboration and civilisational problem solving (I know that if-this-then-that sequence can be probed thoroughly but just lean back and enjoy the ride for a bit). We'll focus in on validation seeking behaviour in this post, as I do believe it to be one of the core problems.

E-N-E-R-G-Y

There is a force that is not neatly described by the classic sciences of physics, biology and chemistry, which we commonly call ENERGY (not the kind measured in Joules). I don't believe it to be metaphysical but probably a compound phenomenon that lays in the Venn diagram overlap of the classic sciences and human sciences. It may be down to a blend of pheromones, non-verbal queues, hormonal fight or flight reactions, brain wave synchrony (or asynchrony), emotional balance, physical fitness, nutrition, sense of self and a whole host of other factors, but its existence is undeniable. We utter the phrase "I don't have the energy" often and mostly it's a shorthand to say "I'm tired, hungry, drained, etc." but I do believe there is more at play here.

ENERGY flows between humans (probably also across species) to govern our relations and the internal state of our minds. It is what determines how someone feels about themselves while alone or in the company of others. When we feel frozen, elated, at ease, drained etc. while interacting with someone else the presence of ENERGY is most obvious. Empathy is when ENERGY between two people flows in a the-sum-is-bigger-than-its-individual-parts fashion. Authenticity is when someone is not seeking ENERGY and is providing hers freely to others.

I grant that reducing inter- and intra-human affairs so drastically to one source is bold and most certainly not comprehensive. There are many components that would need to be addressed to explore the complexities of ENERGY "science" (mind, body, nature, culture, technology, memetics etc.) but those are out of scope for this post.

STATUS GAMES ARE UNSUSTAINABLE

As descendants of pro-social primates (all the egomaniac monkeys died out as they would be ostracised and couldn't survive on their own) a lot of our ENERGY historically has been dependent on our standing in the tribe. The relative-standing-optimisation-game was integral to every day life (who gets the biggest slice) in our not so distant evolutionary past, hence the dominance and obsession of status games in our present society. Just as gorging on sugars that we are hardwired to love given the caloric scarcity of our nomadic past, playing status games excessively in our ever complex unequal societies will give us some equivalent of ENERGETIC diabetes. Not all our ENERGY is tied up in these type of games but for many a majority is.

A human being needs to sustain herself not only with calories to survive but also with ENERGY. This ENERGY can be derived from hard to attain but sustainable sources or from cheap and addictive sources. Status games are an example of a cheap and addicting source that will not keep us full for long, like junk food. Versions of status games are: social media metric optimisation mania (likes, retweets, followers, humblebrags), consumerism brand expression (Gucci, Lambo, Patek), professional achievement title flaunting (Prof, founder, entrepreneur), beauty obsession sexualisation craze (boob jobs, gym bro, ONS), etc. You may rightfully want to object here and say that playing some of these games is required in society and in life to be successful and healthy. I agree. The question it comes down to is, are we playing these games mainly for validation or for ourselves.

Sustainable sources of ENERGY come from within. Yes, there are also external sources that are sustainable, for instance personal fulfilment through a creative pursuit, physical exercise, listening to a moving song, spending time in nature etc. But these are rather ephemeral. An unending source is available from within if we unlock it. Why is sustainability important though? Well if we have infinite ENERGY, then we have an infinite capacity for authenticity, which leads to empathy, which leads to collaboration. If we are constantly running on ENERGETIC fumes, we won't be our best selves and this civilisation is doomed (dramatic much?).

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE THROUGH DEVELOPMENT

The biggest defence against bad-calorie-junk-food status games, is using our critical faculties to reframe the evolutionary narrative. Our survival is not as dependent on status games anymore but our lizard brain hasn't caught up. Neocortex to the rescue!

Kegan’s Theory of Adult Development is a great model for us here to understand the required shift. According to Kegan, becoming an adult is about transformation — changing the way we know and understand the world. We have to enact a “personal Copernican shift” from an egocentric view (the earth is the centre of the universe) to an objective view (the earth revolves around the sun). So transitioning to higher stages of mental development requires a subject-object shift — moving what we ‘know’ from Subject (where it is controlling us) to Object (where we can control it).

If we are stuck at Subject (“I AM”) level, we are attached to concepts and cannot reflect upon them as they are tied up with our being. They include personality traits, assumptions about the way the world works, behaviors, emotions, etc. On the other hand, the Object (“I HAVE”) level allows us to detach ourselves from concepts. We can look at these, reflect upon, engage, control and connect them to something else. As we make this transition adults can go through 5 stages of development:

Stage 1 — Impulsive mind (early childhood)
Stage 2 — Imperial mind (adolescence, 6% of adult population)
Stage 3 — Socialized mind (58% of the adult population)
Stage 4 — Self-Authoring mind (35% of the adult population)
Stage 5 — Self-Transforming mind (1% of the adult population)

Stage 2
We can skip the Impulsive mind (as no adult gets stuck there) and go straight to the Imperial mind. At this stage the emphasis on one’s own needs, interests and agendas is primary. Relationships are transactional. Stage 2 individuals view people as a means to get their own needs met, as opposed to having a shared internal experience (how we feel about each other). They care about how others perceive them, but only because those perceptions may have concrete consequences for them. Conformity with rules, philosophies, movements or ideologies is down to external rewards or punishments, not because of true belief in them.

Stage 3
This is where the majority of adults are stuck. In Stage 3 the most important things are the ideas, norms and beliefs of the people and systems around us (i.e. family, society, ideology, culture, etc.). We begin to experience ourselves as a function of how others experience us (status games!). We take an external view of our ourselves (they’ll think I look stupid) and make it part of our internal experience (I am stupid). We get our thoughts, beliefs, morals from external sources. We look for external validation to derive our sense of self. We don’t have an independent, strong sense of self. When there is a conflict between important ideologies, institutions, or people, we have a hard time answering the question: what do I want? We’re too busy focused on others’ expectations or societal roles.

Stage 4
If we get to this level we can exit status games. In Stage 4, we are able to define who we are, and are not defined by other people, our relationships or the environment. We understand that we are a person, with thoughts, feelings and beliefs that are independent from the standards and expectations of our environment. We can now distinguish the opinions of others from our own opinions and formulate our own from an independent “seat of judgment” (reframing). We develop an internal sense of direction and the capacity to create and follow our own course.

Stage 5
In Stage 5 one’s sense of self is not tied to particular identities or roles. It is constantly created through the exploration of one’s identities and roles and further honed through interactions with others. We are both self-authoring and willing to work with the authority of others. We can not only question authority, but also question ourselves. We are no longer held prisoner by our own identity. We see the complexities of life, can expand who we are and be open to other possibilities — we constantly reinvent our identity. We can hold multiple thoughts and ideologies at once and can understand things from many different perspectives.

On a side note, this is the stage Richard Feynman had in mind when he famously said: "You are under no obligation to remain the same person you were a year ago, a month ago, or even a day ago. You are here to create yourself, continuously."

TRANSFORMATION NOW!?

It is one thing to be aware of the developmental framework that can lead us out of status games into a land of ENERGY independence but actually transforming is another matter. There are many tools that can help with this journey but (as with everything in this universe guided by randomness) it will be harder for some than others.

Being born into a conformist society with strong non-conformity punishments won't make the shift from Stage 3 to 4 as easy as in a free speech democracy. Certain genetic propensities may make us more selfish (the existence of sociopaths is proof here). Life events that traumatise us, may rob us of the potential to shift. This is why it is hard to judge anyone for what level they are stuck on. All we can try to do is provide the tools and hope for the plasticity of mind.

What are some of these tools? The scientific method, critical thinking, philosophy, science, meditation, mindfulness, psychedelics etc. All practices and mental models that allow us to gain distance from our subjective experience and observe ourselves as an object in this universe, contribute to this transformation. None of this is trivial and most of it is (shamefully) not taught in school, so we are stuck doing this foundational work on our own sometimes late in life when change is harder.

SUSTAINABLE ENERGY = AUTHENTICITY = CONNECTEDNESS

Let's tie all this back together. We put in the work to achieve Stage 4/5, which allows us to exit status games for the most part. This in turn allows us to replace our junk-food ENERGY source with a sustainable one that springs from within. Being energetically independent allows us to abandon validation seeking human interactions. We thereby become more authentic persons and can connect meaningfully with other beings (to collaborate and save the world - voila!).

I'm sure you can find ways to poke holes in that chain of arguments. One critique could be that if we become energetically independent but have a rotten moral compass, then we could use our not-giving-a-hootness to do bad things. True, I've met such people but by and large the likelihood of evil morality at Stage 4/5 is lower than at Stage 2/3. Going through the subject-object shift does for most people open their mind to the necessity of compromise for the greater good.

Another point of criticism is whether becoming a decentralised ENERGY creator doesn't rob us of our feeling of connectedness with others. Ultimately, I think it does the opposite. It allows us to approach people without any ENERGETIC needs and therefore see them as who they are, not as a means to an end or as repositories of validation. We can be our best selves and be generous with our ENERGY to lift others up. Having a sustainable ENERGY source doesn't mean that we can't vibe off of others ENERGY, it just means we are not dependent.

We come full circle. Civilisation is a collaborative endeavour. Doing the hard work is what is required of all of us to make this experiment succeed. If we lift ourselves out of the ENERGETIC slavery of status games, we can meet this world as our best authentic self and thereby create more connectedness.

I shall close with a particularly fitting quote by Ralph Emerson: “It is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

I don’t believe any of this is particularly revelatory but the book, while probably too long and repetitive, puts things into perspective nicely. I will summarise and quote some of its best bits below to either save you from reading it or entice you to pick it up.

LIFE IS SHORT

Life is short so time management is important to live a meaningful life.

We’ve been granted the mental capacities to make almost infinitely ambitious plans, yet practically no time at all to put them into action. ‘This space that has been granted to us rushes by so speedily and so swiftly that all save a very few find life at an end just when they are getting ready to live,’ lamented Seneca, the Roman philosopher, in a letter known today under the title On the Shortness of Life.

It follows from this that time management, broadly defined, should be everyone’s chief concern. Arguably, time management is all life is. Yet the modern discipline known as time management – like its hipper cousin, productivity – is a depressingly narrow-minded affair, focused on how to crank through as many work tasks as possible,

We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life,’ wrote Nietzsche, ‘because to us it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.’

TIME MANAGEMENT SUCKS

The current discipline of time management sucks because it creates the wrong impression that we can get everything on our to-do list done if we were better organised and more productive.

The more you try to manage your time with the goal of achieving a feeling of total control, and freedom from the inevitable constraints of being human, the more stressful, empty and frustrating life gets. But the more you confront the facts of finitude instead – and work with them, rather than against them – the more productive, meaningful and joyful life becomes.

Every decision to use a portion of time on anything represents the sacrifice of all the other ways in which you could have spent that time, but didn’t – and to willingly make that sacrifice is to take a stand, without reservation, on what matters most to you.

The reason for this effect is straightforward: the more firmly you believe it ought to be possible to find time for everything, the less pressure you’ll feel to ask whether any given activity is the best use for a portion of your time. Whenever you encounter some potential new item for your to-do list or your social calendar, you’ll be strongly biased in favour of accepting it, because you’ll assume you needn’t sacrifice any other tasks or opportunities in order to make space for it.

ACCEPT MORTALITY

Accepting the finitude of life and owning up to the fact that you cannot pursue endless possibilities, will allow you to live a more fulfilled and authentic life.

Once you truly understand that you’re guaranteed to miss out on almost every experience the world has to offer, the fact that there are so many you still haven’t experienced stops feeling like a problem.

Any finite life – even the best one you could possibly imagine – is therefore a matter of ceaselessly waving goodbye to possibility. The only real question about all this finitude is whether we’re willing to confront it or not. And this, for Heidegger, is the central challenge of human existence: since finitude defines our lives, he argues that living a truly authentic life – becoming fully human – means facing up to that fact.

We must live out our lives, to whatever extent we can, in clear-eyed acknowledgement of our limitations, in the undeluded mode of existence that Heidegger calls Being-towards-death’, aware that this is it, that life is not a dress rehearsal, that every choice requires myriad sacrifices, and that time is always already running out – indeed, that it may run out today, tomorrow, or next month.

It is by consciously confronting the certainty of death, and what follows from the certainty of death, that we finally become truly present for our lives.

The exhilaration that sometimes arises when you grasp this truth about finitude has been called the ‘joy of missing out’, by way of a deliberate contrast with the idea of the ‘fear of missing out’

STOP PROCRASTINATING

Avoiding this truth leads to wasted time and procrastination. Infinite possibilities are more appealing than making hard choices. Avoiding those choices will lead to a life full of regrets. Never settling is wrong advice, because you will have to settle at some point and better to do so while it’s not too late.

‘The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself,’ Bergson wrote, ‘and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.’

The received wisdom, articulated in a thousand magazine articles and inspirational Instagram memes, is that it’s always a crime to settle. But the received wisdom is wrong. You should definitely settle. Or to be more precise, you don’t have a choice. You will settle – and this fact ought to please you.

Your experience of being alive consists of nothing other than the sum of everything to which you pay attention. At the end of your life, looking back, whatever compelled your attention from moment to moment is simply what your life will have been. So when you pay attention to something you don’t especially value, it’s not an exaggeration to say that you’re paying with your life.

Our tech makes this conceit of infinite possibilities worse. When 1.000s of possible perfect matches are just a swipe away, then why settle? Numerous productivity apps allow us to organise the most unwieldy amounts of to-dos endlessly. Various reading lists pile up, while we never actually end up reading any of those 10.000 word Atlantic articles. Accepting finitude therefore leads to better prioritisation.

No wonder we seek out distractions online, where it feels as though no limits apply – where you can update yourself instantaneously on events taking place a continent away, present yourself however you like, and keep scrolling forever through infinite newsfeeds, drifting through ‘a realm in which space doesn’t matter and time spreads out into an endless present’, to quote the critic James Duesterberg.

The technologies we use to try to ‘get on top of everything’ always fail us, in the end, because they increase the size of the ‘everything’ of which we’re trying to get on top.

ALL YOU HAVE IS THE PRESENT

Another issue that follows from not accepting finitude is that you always live for the idea of a more perfect future in which you have time to do all the things you ought to do. Making plans for the future rather than acting in the now is a soothing comfort blanket of a perfect life around the corner. The problem is that it devalues the present and robs us of a real shot to realise our true potential in the here and now.

What we forget, or can’t bear to confront, is that, in the words of the American meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein, ‘a plan is just a thought’. We treat our plans as though they are a lasso, thrown from the present around the future, in order to bring it under our command. But all a plan is – all it could ever possibly be – is a present-moment statement of intent. It’s an expression of your current thoughts about how you’d ideally like to deploy your modest influence over the future. The future, of course, is under no obligation to comply.

We treat everything we’re doing – life itself, in other words – as valuable only insofar as it lays the groundwork for something else.

As long as you believe that the real meaning of life lies somewhere off in the future – that one day all your efforts will pay off in a golden era of happiness, free of all problems – you get to avoid facing the unpalatable reality that your life isn’t leading towards some moment of truth that hasn’t yet arrived. Our obsession with extracting the greatest future value out of our time blinds us to the reality that, in fact, the moment of truth is always now – that life is nothing but a succession of present moments, culminating in death, and that you’ll probably never get to a point where you feel you have things in perfect working order. And that therefore you had better stop postponing the ‘real meaning’ of your existence into the future, and throw yourself into life now.

DONT STRESS ABOUT LEGACY

We all have the desire to matter in some impactful way. We want to leave a legacy for future generations and be remembered. The truth is all of us will be forgotten, given the mind-boggling timescales with which this cosmos operates. Yes, I still quote Marcus Aurelius two thousand years later but will people do so in a million years - a timescale that is merely a blip in the history of our 13.7 billion year old universe? Accepting this futility shouldn’t be discouraging but should free us to strive for what we really want and what is truly possible rather than being crushed by an unattainable ideal set by someone else.

And we chase the ultimate fantasy of time mastery – the desire, by the time we die, to have truly mattered in the cosmic scheme of things, as opposed to being instantly trampled underfoot by the advancing aeons.

‘Entering space and time completely’ – or even partially, which may be as far as any of us ever get – means admitting defeat. It means letting your illusions die. You have to accept that there will always be too much to do; that you can’t avoid tough choices or make the world run at your preferred speed; that no experience, least of all close relationships with other human beings, can ever be guaranteed in advance to turn out painlessly and well – and that from a cosmic viewpoint, when it’s all over, it won’t have counted for very much anyway. And in exchange for accepting all that? You get to actually be here.

The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short. But that isn’t a reason for unremitting despair, or for living in an anxiety-fuelled panic about making the most of your limited time. It’s a cause for relief. You get to give up on something that was always impossible – the quest to become the optimised, infinitely capable, emotionally invincible, fully independent person you’re officially supposed to be. Then you get to roll up your sleeves and start work on what’s gloriously possible instead.

TOO SELF-INVOLVED

In a capitalist world order and the age of constant over-sharing enabled by mobile computing and social networks it is really easy to lose track of what is really important. Constant invitations to try and buy as well as unending feeds full of selfies, ostentatious material displays, and humble brags seem to bombard us from all sides. It's only natural that we cave in and drift off into the ignorant misapprehension that life revolves exclusively around our little world of superficiality and excess. This cycle of egocentricity and consumption forever continues through the constantly reaffirming nature of these platforms and the popular media.

Of course, we are meat bags after all - minds manifested in physical bodies with primal needs, so a certain level of self-involvement is built into the machine. I am not suggesting we should live a completely selfless and ascetic life but taking a few steps back would help us to be less egocentric or dare I say less anthropocentric. With this in mind here are a few truths that I remind myself of on a daily basis to help me gain some perspective.

TIME

This Universe is 13.7 Billion years old. Our planet is 4.5 Billion years old. Homo Sapiens has been around roughly 200.000 years. Civilization is roughly 50.000 years old. The average life expectancy in the developed world is around 80 years. We are but merely a fleeting blip in this cosmic symphony. 

SPACE

This Universe is pretty big. Our Sun belongs to the Milky Way. Astronomers estimate there are about 100 thousand million stars in the Milky Way alone. Outside that, there are millions upon millions of other galaxies. It's hard for primate brains to visualise such numbers so let’s leave it at: the universe is ridiculously big and the little speck of dust that we call home is pretty insignificant in light of this scale.

COSMIC EVOLUTION

Billions of years of random cosmic physics has given rise to stars and planets. On these planets the elements that have been created in baking ovens of stars start reacting, thus giving us chemistry. On even fewer of these planets this chemistry through a process yet unknown to us somehow becomes so complex that is gives rise to biology in form of single celled organisms, which eventually evolve to billions of so called conscious beings. The universe through a very long chain of cosmic and biological evolution gave rise to us. This is the greatest story of all and should make us feel special. 

RANDOMLY LUCKY

The fact that we are alive and exist is very very unlikely and we are extremely lucky to be here. This should by no means invoke the belief in a personal God but rather remind us that our existence is a cosmic accident. 99% of all species that have lived on mother earth have gone extinct and we have to be careful to not meet that same fate. 

BABY CIVILISATION

Following from all this is that the universe is not made for us. Homo Sapiens is not the goal of this cosmic experiment. With modern civilisation being around for 14.000 years we haven't really proven that we are going to stick around forever. So it’s quite absurd to assume there has to be meaning in any human sense for anything. 

MOTHER EARTH

We are living on a rocky crust that is floating on a molten core surrounded by a faint but life preserving atmosphere hurling through the dark vacuum of space at around 100.000 km/h. There isn't much around us that we can easily reach that looks very inviting, so for the time being we are stuck on this wonderful blue planet. While most of the climate change debate focuses on "saving the planet", we should be real and know that it’s actually about saving our civilisation. That is what is at stake here! As a matter of fact, if we disappeared tomorrow the planet would rebound in a couple of million years and be in better shape than ever - without us. So let's thank mother nature for our existence (figuratively speaking) and understand that we can only survive with a healthy eco system that can sustain our parasitic race.

CIRCLE OF EMPATHY

At this stage it's quite hard to debate the legitimacy of the theory of evolution without looking like a fundamentalist. Taking into consideration the remarkable journey of life and the fact that all life on this planet, yes all life, has descended from that first magical cell which lived 3.5 billion years ago, one has to question our treatment of other species. There are numerous studies that show empathy in mammals including chicken, pigs and cattle. Yes, animals that humans eat actually feel emotional equivalents of fear, aggression, pain and maybe even love. The reality is that our global industrial mass production of meat is not only environmentally prohibitive but also equates to cross species holocaust. We should instead celebrate our kinship with animals and expand our circle of empathy beyond cats and dogs.

WE ARE FAMILY

Every human being that we see in our every day life is related to us. Our most recent common female ancestor, the Mitochondrial Eve, lived just 200.000 years ago. What's even more remarkable is that every human being's DNA is 99.9% identical. A measly 0.1% of genetic difference creates the beautiful diversity of our primate race. Further, the concept of six degrees of separation suggests that we are connected to every other human being through six steps (according to a Facebook study the more accurate number is actually 4.7). That means we know both the street kid in Mogadishu and Barack Hussein Obama through 4.7 links. Given this level of connectedness no one is actually really a stranger and we should be a lot nicer to one another.

RESPONSIBILITY

You are reading this while sitting in a house with electricity and running water. Even though you might doubt the credibility of the political leaders in your country, you hopefully feel safe on the streets of your city and do not fear to be persecuted for reasons related to your sex, ethnicity, skin colour, denomination or sexual orientation. The sad reality is that you are among the privileged few: 2.4 Billion live on less than 2 USD a day. What's even more depressing is that 20.000 people die of hunger every day (that's about 6x the casualties of 9/11 a day), most of which are children. We are a lucky few, we should be aware of it and we should accept the responsibility that comes with it. 

LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE

While for a bunch of primates it might really seem as if we know a lot about the world and universe we live in, this could not be further from the truth. There are many important and essential things that we still don't understand. By the way, this is the amazing thing about the scientific method, we can be honest about lack of knowledge and try to create hypotheses and models that are based on experiments to prove those. So even though we might think we know anything about something remember it's the mark of an educated person to know the extent of one's own ignorance. That ultimately makes the pursuit of knowledge one of the most worthwhile things to dedicate ones life to.

CONCLUSION

Reminding ourselves of all this on a daily basis might be initially daunting. I assure you that after a while it becomes relieving. In a capitalist system that is based on creating dissatisfaction so that we buy the newest unnecessary thing to fill the empty void the rat race leaves us with, our view of reality is constantly distorted. There are some real problems that we are facing as a global tribe and we can only solve them with a lot more awareness and a lot less narcissism. 

Un-conditioning our mind by taking a few big steps back from the canvas every day to raise to the full height that is demanded by our dignity and intelligence will make us better human beings.

WHY GAMES?

Firstly, why is life a collection of games. This might initially sound nihilistic and there is some truth to that. Ultimately, an objective view of the human condition leads to the conclusion that everything humans care about is a construct in meme space. An asteroid that is on track to hit earth in 150 years doesn’t really care about causing an extinction level event and what humans think about that. Everything we ascribe value to is a figment of our anthropocentric view of the world. Things we try to achieve to call our lives meaningful, worthy or fulfilled, can therefore be seen as games or “an activity that one engages in for amusement or fun” (dictionary definition of game). In a so called objective reality nothing we do really matters to the fate of the universe, which will eventually end in an epic crunch, freeze, rip or decay. Of course, on most days I don’t think this way but today let’s entertain this notion. So what are singleplayer games versus multiplayer games then?

SINGLE VERSUS MULTIPLAYER

Winning singleplayer games requires very little input from others and most of the input from us. You are fully in control of learning the guitar. Multiplayer games are games where many externalities need to align for you to win. For instance becoming rich or becoming a celebrity are both games that require others to believe, support, buy, collaborate etc. for your victory. Of course, sometimes we play games not to win but for entertainment. However, there are some games in life you’d rather not lose. With that in mind what games should we focus on winning rather than losing?

The most important single player games seem to be the ones that are most engrained with the core of our being. We are social animals and our immediate tribe of people is core to our being, as such being a great son/daughter, father/mother, husband/wife, uncle/aunt, or friend seem to be the most important games to win. The results of the longest running study (80 years) in adult development says as much. Note that I didn’t say “being the best son/daughter...” as that would be a multiplayer game, where you have to beat everyone else. I am also aware that being a good son/daughter requires more than one person to play along. However, consider that if you would poll 100 people to judge your father/son relationship and they consider you a winner of the title “being a great son”, then strictly speaking you are a winner even if your father doesn’t think so. There are simply easier to judge behaviours and parameters that allow us to assess winning in singleplayer games. We, therefore, establish that there is a stronger correlation with your input in these core singleplayer games and their outcome versus multiplayer games.

Of course, multiplayer games are a lot of fun and to some they probably have more allure than singleplayer games. Who doesn’t want to be rich or famous…? Well I’m not saying to give up on trying to for instance become a great entrepreneur. Most multiplayer games are actually core to moving our civilisation forward in some “meaningful” (anthropocentric bias for sure here but we gotta live a little) way. The point I’m trying to convey is that the odds of winning are a lot lower and the fulfilment might be short-lived, as evidenced by celebs and rich people not giving up on winning singleplayer games. The point is winning multiplayer games at the detriment of singleplayer games doesn’t seem like a good strategy to win life. Most people seem to regret losing singleplayer games more than multiplayer games.

If you are one of the few (sociopaths) that doesn’t care about singleplayer games then I suggest you need a good amount of resilience and conviction. While resilience is self-explanatory, let me clarify the word conviction here. We are malleable and prone to be programmed by all sorts of influences constantly bombarding us. If you want to trade singleplayer losses for multiplayer wins, you should make sure that the game you are pursuing is really one you want to win, because it really fulfils you, rather than one that you have been programmed to win by media, capitalism, or your weird uncle.

CONCLUSION

In summary, I’m not suggesting to become less ambitious and give up on your dreams but to consider the tradeoffs you are making. Playing for safe important singleplayer wins, while having side objectives of winning some multiplayer games seems like a sustainable strategy.

ETHICS

Marcus Aurelius was a very highly regarded emperor (last of the Five Good Emperors of Rome) who waged successful campaigns against Armenia and Germanic tribes. So yes he has amassed a considerable death count, however, it’s hard to judge the man on that basis - those were the times. His regard for the common good and restraint to judge other people is commendable and something that we should urgently emulate.

“The man without one and the same aim in life cannot himself stay one and the same throughout his life.” The maxim is incomplete unless you add what sort of aim that should be. Judgements vary of the whole range of various things taken by the majority to be good in one way or another but only one category commands a universal judgement, and that is the good of the community. It follows that the aim we should set ourselves is a social aim, the benefit of our fellow citizens. A man directing all his own impulses to this end will be consistent in all his actions, and therefore the same man throughout.

Just as those who try to block your progress along the straight path of reason will not be able to divert you from principles action, so you must not let them knock you of your good will towards them. Rather you should watch yourself equally on both fronts, keeping not only a stability of judgement and action but also a mild response to those who try to stop you or are otherwise disaffected. To be angry with them is no less a weakness than to abandon your course of action and capitulate in panic. Both amount equally to desertation of duty - either being frightened into retreat, or setting yourself at odds with your natural kinsmen and friends.

Have I done something for the common good? Then I too have benefited. Have this thought always ready to hand: and no stopping.

Whenever you take offence at the wrong done by another, move on at once to consider what similar wrong you are committing - it could be setting value on money, or pleasure, or reputation, and so on through the categories. This reflection will quickly damp your anger, aided by the further thought that the man is acting under compulsion - what else can he do? Or, if you can, remove the cause of this compulsion.

MORTALITY

Most of meditations was written during the campaign against the Germanic tribes so death was an ever present fact for Marcus. No wonder that he would contemplate his own mortality. Nevertheless, his stoic approach to facing “extinction” feels noble and courageous.

That in a short while you will be nobody and nowhere; and the same of all that you now see and all who are now alive. It is the nature of all things to change, to perish and be transformed, so that in succession different things can come to be.

What a nobel thing is the soul ready for its release from the body, if now must be the time, and prepared for whatever follows - extinction, dispersal, or survival! But this readiness must come from a specific decision: not in mere revolt, like the Christians, but thoughtful, dignified, and - if others are to believe it - undramatic.

The time you have left is short. Live it as if you were on a mountain. Here or there makes no difference, if wherever you live you take the world as your city. Let men see, let them observe a true man living in accordance with nature. If they cannot bear him, let them kill him - a better fate than a life like theirs.

Keep constantly in your mind an impression of the whole of time and the whole of existence - and the thought that each individual thing is, on the scale of existence, a mere fig-seed; on the scale of time, one turn of a drill.

MORTALITY

Probably the most impressive thing about Marcus Aurelius is his level of self-awareness. He was born into a rich and powerful family - his maternal grandmother was a wealthy heiress and his paternal grandfather had reached the pinnacle of a senatorial career. Due to these connections his uncle the previous emperor Antonius adopted him for succession (emperors were chosen through adoption as there was no direct inheritance of power). Born into privilege granted him access to the best possible education, which undoubtedly contributed to his powers of introspection.

You should avoid flattery as much as anger in your dealings with them: both are against the common good and lead to harm. In your fits of anger have this thought ready to mind that there is nothing manly in being angry, but a gentle calm is both more human and therefore more virile. It is the gentle who have strength, sinew, and courage - not the indignant and complaining. The closer to control of emotion, the closer to power. Anger is as much a sign of weakness as is pain. Both have been wounded, and have surrendered.

The external things whose pursuit or avoidance troubles you do not force themselves on you, but in a way you yourself go out to them. However that may be, keep your judgement of them calm and they too will stay still - then you will not be seen either to pursue or to avoid.

What sort of people are they when eating, sleeping, coupling, shitting, etc.? Then what are they like when given power over men? Haughty, quick to anger, punishing to excess. And yet just now they were slaves to all those needs for all those reasons: and shortly they will be slaves again.

In any given material circumstance what can be done or said to soundest effect? Whatever that is, it is in your power to do it or say it - and make no pretence of “obstacles in the way”. You will never cease moaning until you experience the same pleasure in making an appropriately human response to any circumstance you meet or face as the hedonist does in his indulgence - a response, that is, in keeping with man’s constitution. Because you should regard as enjoyment any action you can take in accord with your own nature; and you can do that anywhere.

You will think little of the entertainment of song or dance or all - in wrestling if you deconstruct the melodic line of a song into its individual notes and ask yourself of each of them: “Is this something that overpowers me?” You will recoil from that admission. So too with a comparable analysis come to despise the thing itself. And the same method should be applied to the whole of life.

LAST GOOD EMPEROR

In Ridley Scott’s fictional movie Gladiator, Maximus, who is Russel Crowe’s character, serves Marcus Aurelius on his campaign against the German tribes. When Marcus dies his son Commodus becomes emperor (despite him not trusting his own son and rather wanting Maximus as successor). Commodus is depicted as an incestious and psychotic character (and well played by Joaquin Phoenix).

The truth is, the real Commodus was way worse than the heinous character in Gladiator. Marcus was the first emperor to elect his own (teenage) son to succeed him rather than adopting someone from another family. A foiled revolt by Avidius, governor of Egypt, had shaken up control of the Empire which lead to Marcus’ rash decision to make his son Imperator.

Commodus was a self-involved, privileged and unhinged character. His bad deeds drove his sister to plot with senators to assassinate him (they didn’t succeed). It goes to show that the apple can fall very far from the tree. While undoubtedly Marcus is one of the most beloved Roman emperors, his decision to let his son succeed him ended the golden age of Rome and Pax Romana.

We shall forgive him this lapse in judgement (or his bad parenting skills), for his wisdom has survived the test of time and continues to inspire us to become better humans to this day.