The Awesome Science of Chinonomics

It finally ended. The year we all will never forget won't be with us any longer. Which means nothing, really, since 2020 didn't really bring us all the bad stuff we suffered through the last 12 months. In an effort to unload all of our frustrations about the things we would like to have happened differently this year, we are going to say " fuck you 2020 ", " good riddance ", " 2020, you will not be missed " etc. etc., but the reality is that calendars are nothing more than arbitrary cutoffs we agreed upon simply because we needed to keep track of time. This planet happens to circle our star once every 365 days, so we had to start counting one day out of those 365. That we started counting the terrestrial journey around the sun 6 days after winter solstice is as random as the reason why The Mona Lisa is the most admired work of art in human history --a guy made it famous (because he stole it), and then enough people agreed it was beautiful (why, I d

Tú y yo no somos mas que diminutas hormigas, peleando contra el desorden de nuestro alrededor, en medio de un universo que tiende al caos. Desde nuestro insignificante y unilateral punto de vista (el humano), siempre estamos tratando de minimizar sorpresas. Ese fue el cerebro que la evolución nos regaló.    Y cuando las sorpresas aparecen,   aprendemos , esperando aplicar lo aprendido en nuestra próxima interacción con nuestro entorno, con la esperanza de sobrevivir. Bueno, tal vez no seamos "nosotros" como tal, sino nuestros genes, porque nosotros en realidad solo somos el vehículo que nuestros genes usan para perpetuarse a la posteridad.  Si tan solo nuestra lucha contra el desorden fuera exenta de consecuencias. Cada vez que tratamos de reducir el desorden a nuestro alrededor (de reducir entropía), para reacomodar nuestro ambiente de tal manera que sea menos hostil para nosotros, en realidad estamos incrementando el desorden (la entropía) en el universo en general. Cuando

We are nothing more than little ants fighting disorder in our immediate environment living in a universe trending towards chaos. From our insignificant, unilateral (human) viewpoint, we are always striving to minimize surprises. That's the brain evolution gifted us . And when surprises appear, we learn , hoping to apply what's learned in our next interaction with our environment, so we hopefully survive. Ok, maybe not "we" , but our genes, because we're really just the vehicle genes use to perpetuate themselves into posterity.  If only us little ants' fight was costless. Every time we strive to reduce disorder locally (reduce entropy), and rearrange our environment so that it's less hostile to us, we actually increase disorder (entropy) in the overall universe. When we chop down forests to dedicate that land for human crops, and we reduce the threat of going hungry (reducing entropy from humans' perspective), we actually increase entropy at the planet

Once upon a time there was this Republic called Quirkistan. It was ruled by a hyper intelligent elite, possessors of the most shiny and reputed tokens. These tokens vested in them utmost respect and reverence, as only the most brilliant, capable, responsible, and deserving Quirkistanis were issued them. The tokens were granted with great pomp and circumstance by velour-robed Sages in solemn ceremonies, after listening to liturgy imparted by an elevated Sage in an annual ritual of initiation so full of symbolism and self-congratulation that for many, of the recipients the initiation represented the single most important day of their lives.  How could they think otherwise? That token granted them access to the upper echelons of Quirkistan. Attaining one was akin to the assurance of a life full of opulence, comfort, and the absence of suffering. The institutions that issued them prided themselves in hand-picking their future tokenholders from the most brilliant, meritocratic pools of youn

Paradigms are a funny thing. They are collective conventions people believe in --even rely upon for functioning. They're ideas everyone has agreed as truth, which few (or not a substantial number of people) question, until a revolutionary thinker, or a massively influential event (or a combination of both) occurs, and they are busted. The earth was flat and no one questioned it until a "brave revolutionary" called Copernicus dared to think outside convention and declared earth revolved around the sun. And boom: Ptolemaic cosmology was gone. Money and government, both social constructions that rely on people according them legitimacy , also rely on paradigms to function. A major one is that money is finite -- we  can  run out of it . Another one is that we can get it only if we do (work on) something of value for somebody else . Also, that we can't make our own money --unless we want to land in jail. Or be tragically killed . Therefore, the reputation of a currency, at