The Awesome Science of Chinonomics

Social Capital , simply put, is what makes civilization go . At the neighborhood level, it's what makes you feel at ease with crossing your street to ask your neighbor for that specific wrench you need to tighten that one hinge you're trying to fix. The trust you have in your neighbors --the comfort of knowing your car tires won't be slashed at night or that your house won't be broken into-- allows you to focus on things that are different from security and survival to (hopefully) be more productive. Sure, you can also spend all your time  doomscrolling  and brainrotting , but at least you have the optionality to do something good with that extra time. When it works in harmony, the social contract we tacitly (sometimes expressly) enter into allows us to develop our human capacities.  After all, what is art and the pursuit of knowledge if not just the leisurely, luxurious activity that's permitted only when those with the capacity, the interest, the means and intent ...

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...

As inhabitants of this universe, we have always evolved within a time continuum. Entropy is inexorable . Time inevitably advances in a single direction. As a consequence, our development as living beings in this planet has always been ruled by the perception of causality. One event happens, and it influences a subsequent event. A linkage between past and present can be drawn. And it can be drawn because this trial-and-error mechanism called evolution settled in our brains after thousands of iterations --in a masterfully choreographed case of survivorship bias -- this form of knowledge acquisition. The linkages have a mundane name: rules. Or what evolutionary psychologists like to fancily call  heuristics . And they have a simple reason to exist: so the brain processes information in the most energy-efficient manner . These have always been the rules of engagement --and we can't consciously process reality any other way. They shaped --nay,  created--  us E...

" Postmodernism " started it all. That "liberating" doctrine initiated the quest for the exaltation of the self. I'm entitled to my own opinion. I will not be a conformist. Look how passionate I am!  Doing things out of anger (er, I mean, out of "passion") started being more important than accepting objective reality, because no one wanted to be the dull robot who followed the rules. Individualism --uniqueness-- was cool . There used to be a time when we accepted that we couldn't assimilate all the information available around us (because, logically, we couldn't  experience it all  for ourselves), so we outsourced that knowledge to a credible source. We took it from them, at face value. We trusted. But oh, no. Postmodernist gave us agency. We now know better. Our guts tell us so. With time and the inflated prominence of one's (and most importantly, one's opinions)  worth came the disdain for the un witnessed fact, and the privile...

Of all the revolutions that we are currently living, technology is the most promising one. It has killed industries , obliterated professions , and elevated the standard of living for those consumers who have participated in the bonanza. Technology (or more specifically, the internet) has disrupted the taxi monopoly on urban transportation, broken the chokehold of the prescription eyeglasses industry, and more generally, commoditized information .  But, if the internet has destroyed the margins of information dispersion companies... Sad news for journalism majors :( ... and made many disappear... more sad news for journalism majors :( Why is it, then, that the internet, which fundamentally is a revolutionary way to distribute (and potentially instill) knowledge, has not contributed to the commoditization of the Educational function of the University (whose mission precisely is to distribute and instill knowledge)? The answer, as certain South Afr...

There seems to be hysteria these days around AI and algorithm-based consumption. The algorithmic economy  threatens to bring to the realm of the tangible that totem of economic dogma called the "invisible hand." Computers are finally linking --through big data-- individuals' behavior with algorithms that sort them, allowing machines to predict reactions: the "invisible hand" materializes(!). Nothing like predicting human conduct to be able to make money. That damned watch I dared to search for 3 weeks ago in a moment of stupid leisure has haunted me everywhere I go on the internet. Please, stop it Google. I'm not buying it. The idea that we are just soft machines  is a fascinating one. It feeds the collective dread of an algorithmically-dominated Armageddon, making people fret about a time in the not-so-distant future when we will decide nothing for ourselves, and when everything will be dictated by an algorithm --surreptitiously creating the illusion of  ...