The Awesome Science of Chinonomics

Another cycle around our star and we're still stuck in the same rut. Still talking about dealing with uncertainty; about counting your blessings; about stopping and smelling the roses because  life is short  and it's better to appreciate the small things when a virus can snatch your life away any second should you dare step outside. Is Omicron deadlier? More contagious? Resistant to Pfizer? To Moderna? How many mutations did you say it had? Does it evade natural immunity? But it doesn't affect your smell? Oh, the symptoms are the same as the common cold? But masks still work, right? Oh, but not cloth ones?  The noise is  maddening .  Our hyper-mediatized, over-stimulated minds can't think of nothing other than what's in our handheld screens. And at the same time, our hyper-cynical minds won't believe those very same incessant, flickering alerts, either. Somehow our collective mind has entered a sort of  Schrödinger -like, superposition state. We  ...

Reality is what you perceive it to be. That much is obvious. We were bred this way by nature, and it is thanks to this ability to react to our individually perceived reality  that we are where we are as a species, for better or worse. That we are social animals is no surprise, either. We pick teams , pledge allegiances to like-minded groups, mimic the behavior of other people, and fall for mental shortcuts  that inform our decisions ( many times to our own detriment ). That social networks exploit these bad habits of ours is also exceedingly clear by now. But what about Governments? They don't necessarily need armies of patriotic trolls hawking dissident Facebook users to shape the collective discourse. Forget for now about the fact that Facebook is literally teaching the authoritarian governments of institutionally weak countries how to harness the evil powers of the network to sharpen their manipulation skills and their grip on society.    All Governments ne...

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...

There used to be a time when the internet was not a winner-take-all mad dash for world dominance. Steven Johnson taught me that.   In the beginning, developers of the foundations of the interwebs created open protocols for the benefit of all, free of charge. Many times under the auspices of the government. That internet still lives on in the guts of what we all experience online nowadays. You just don't realize it, because you pay no licensing fee for the use of the HTTP protocol. No company profits from your use of email protocols POP, SMTP or IMAP, either. They're just there. Built for your benefit by someone who was not tying to hit the next unicorn and become a billionaire (or trillionaire ?). Johnson calls it "InternetOne": the layer of the internet created by distributing its benefits to everyone who cares to join. Cryptocurrencies are an example of it. They distribute the benefits among those participate (through mining) so the network grows. Capitalis...

The search for a new social and economic world order continues in the middle of all this madness. At least in my head. Growth and its power-law dynamics brought us to a place where the losers can't hold it together any longer. Rage engulfs  the developed world. Irrationality  reigns supreme . Capitalism (coupled with rule of law and property rights ) had provided the avenue to exercise our self-determination. The principle that material success is entirely (or at least mostly) dependent on our effort had proven a quasi-religious mantra for many. And it was alluring. More than that: self-vindicating . The idea that I'm the architect of my destiny and that nothing can hold me back can be an inebriating, hypnotizing force that arms us with untold amounts of discipline and resolve to over-perform. Forget for now about the fact that that over-performance can be easier to achieve in the fast lane   of that avenue. Or that a government has to build the actual ave...

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  ...

How important is it to feel like you belong? To many of us, very important. We are social animals that constantly feel the need to be accepted . Religion, sports teams fan clubs, political parties. All examples of groups of people that share something in common. Networks of people. The concept goes beyond human association based on interests or values. Networks are formed around the use of common instruments: languages, gadgets, credit cards. Why join a network? Because you benefit from the fact that other people belong to that very same club. As a non-native English speaker, you learn English because the world of international business speaks English, not Russian, Greek or Arabic. You get a Visa Card instead of a Discover or Diners Club because you want to have access to the biggest network of POS in the world (87% of merchants worldwide accept it). You buy a gasoline-powered vehicle instead of one using Natural Gas because you want access to the well-established network of gas...