Storia invece di multiverso

esci dalla facoltà di economia con l’idea che l’uomo economoco è razionale e su questa razionalità l’economia non riesce a spiegare la cooperazione: l’uomo economico pensa solo a massimizzare la propria utilità e lo fa pensando a se stesso

poi, 30 anni dopo, scopri che questo è così per come la teoria dell’utilità è stata formalizzata a partire dal1 8esimo secolo. Ogni decisione che l’attore razionale prende è autonoma da ogni altra, un attore razionale che fa molte scelte -per la teoria della utilità- lo sta facendo nei diversi universi di un multiverso. E’ la conseguenza di aver ipotizzato l’ergodicità, cioè l’omogeneità nel tempo per cui si può ipotizzare l’indipendenza degli eventi. Toglindo la storia dalla teoria ‘economia dell’utilità.

Invece se la storia la si rimette dentro, quello che decido oggi si “compund” su quello che ho deciso ieri e sarà la base del compound della decisione di domani, allora si ha una cosa come The Farmer Fable, dove il comportamento razionale, cioè quello che massimizza l’utilità, è la cooperazione e il pooling delle risorsa. Potere del compounding dell’utilità, della storia invece del Multiverso

https://www.farmersfable.org/

Questo nuovo approccio -in maniera poco chiara IMO- viene chiamato Ergodicity Economics, in realtà the economics che elimina l’assunto di ergodicità per arrivare a una descrizione piùrealistica dell’essere umano che investe e nel farlo elimina anche un po di paradossi che si sono presentati nella teoria tradizionale.

Tyler Cowen got me down the rabbit hole…

saying that he finds Peter Thiel one of the most interesting thinkers of late “For instance, Ross Douthat and Peter Thiel are two of the most interesting thinkers as of late and they are both religious and Christian.  I am also struck by the enduring influence of Rene Girard” https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/02/why-will-the-important-thinkers-of-the-future-be-religious-ones.html

Well, I have sort of followed Thiel because of startup, I have been reading “from zero to one” for a couple of years, I like it though I do not progress much in reading it. I try to understand what’s Thiel’s role in coaching Zuck and steering Facebook evolution in recent years, since his endorsement of Trump with the tech world.

So I looked up google for Thiel’s writings and I got here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23975518

I found this “The education of a libertarian” https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian maybe bad luck but it is a speech about: we were libertarian at uni, could not change much so most of us got into alcohol. The world out there is difficult for us libertarian because of the interests of people on welfare (the poor) and women. So we have 3 alternatives: cyberspace, emigrating to space, living on a ship.” and in an addendum he said “I do not understand, I thought you would have discussed the 3 options, but all of you discussed the thing that women rights are bad for libertarians”

Elesewhere Thiel is always quoted for dissing Michelle Obama for saying she would not want to send her daughters to ivy league unis, but Malia eventually got into yale or something similar. But you can fault Michelle only if you thinks kids don’t get to choose university, mothers do, how liberatarian is that ?

And Thiel followers like that thing he said about Europe, it could go that way, or that other way, but the third way is Sharia law. Well, Tyler, thank you, it was 2009 but still, what a provocative thinker.

Much better going sideways, in hacker news comments they quote a podcast on “the Portal” with Eric Weinstein who happens to be CEO at Thiel fund and also a mathematician who has a unifying theory of particles “The unpublished theory includes a 14-dimensional “observerse” and predictions of more than 150 new subatomic particles, some of which Weinstein believes could account for dark matter.” this is from wikipedia.

well, rabbit hole. I will anyway listen to tyler cowen interviewing him https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_yJTCDU4uE

Global Arctic

wk 1 at some point in the future, given current trends, maybe 50 or 100 years out, seaice mmight disappear from the Arctic while the ice cover would stay in Groenland, it’s up to 2 kms thick. Proportions of ice.

Retreating ice poses a problem to animals like the walrus, it may no longer insist over the continental shelf, 200 mt deep sea rich of marine life. Instead it may insist over the deep ocean where the walrus can’t fish, the walrsu loses the chance to be on ice

Melting permafrost creates holes, sort of craters called thermokarsts. Also methane explosions

melted permafrost might green, but might not green for example becasue warming brings witer rain which creates ice covers

the Arctic continent

there’s actually no physical continent in the arctic but definitely a human one defined by its vast expanse of ice, season the come sand go like day and night, an hunters civilization that has learned to survive making most of it.

I was lucky to stumble upon Barry Lopez “Arctic” the 1986 book which recounts this frozen non-continents with lively description of landscapes, people, animals and clash with the western civilization. I read on the internet that he is a novel Thoureau, can’t say I do not know thoureau, Barry’s approach to the arctic is romatic, lyric, with a pictorial eye that manages to comprehend the vast compleity of the place and all the human landscapes built on it, modern and still actual today. But I love also the chapters on the polar bear and the muskoxen

Also the book brought me to consult maps which are not Marcatore projections, this way I can comprehend the place of the arctic as a a bridge between 3 continents

The geopolitical place is reflected on Coursera, I was looking for a MOOC to see how the arctic has changed from the times of Lopez and I found 3:

This one in Lausanne, Switzerland https://www.coursera.org/learn/global-arctic

This one in Bould, Colorado https://www.coursera.org/learn/arctic-present-past-future

This one in the asian Russia Tomsk https://www.coursera.org/learn/changing-arctic

The occasion on which I got to know Barry Lopez is his death, last month, I feel the loss

the great divergence

on the same day, BTC close to 50k USD and reading this in my inbox:

“getting money into the market was pretty hard. You need USDCoins, a stablecoin related to Ethereum. Polymarket tries to let you buy them directly, but their app wanted me to give them a security code which never showed up, so I gave up on this. Instead I bought some USDC at Coinbase and tried to send them over. But along with the usual Ethereum gas fees, they have something called a relayer, which is supposed to collect my money and put it in my account. And it’s apparently heavily backed up, and after two days my money is nowhere to be seen (though I believe them when they say that they’re trying their hardest and it will probably percolate through the Ethereum network someday). ” (that ws metaculus day on Astral Code, prediction market seems a perfdect application for blockchain)

but still the blockchain gold keeps climbing but useful applications seems nowhere to be found, at least for me who I’d be eager to move onto decetralized web.

Also corporate application of the watered down blockchains are going nowhere https://www.coindesk.com/ibm-blockchain-revenue-misses-job-cuts-sources

But I would not quetion BTC value, and Dogecoin value. I had expected that this value would have unlocked a new web for us users but uktemately it unlocked new users in the traditional web.

The Coursera course in finance, the Nobel prize professor tells of Carnegie, the job of an investor is getting rich young and then devote to charity. This is a perfect sensible advise, a perfect acceptable career and it is probably what is going on the blockhains. BTC is the gold, hordes of hodlers pumped up on the same FOMO of social networks, The master of Twitter plays along.

so the value of an asset if the social construct of the beliefs held by the particpants to that market, blahblahblah but that’s the idea. If they had set to a finite number the banknotes in the mmonopoly game, the cardboard one, no digital and told you that if anough poeple bought it you could get rich and overturn the central banks. WoW could have done it. Well BTC is decentralized and better, though maybe Monopoly and Wow are more fun.

This is the great divergence, the price is there, is there some fun on the blockchain ?

Resilienza a spasso nei boschi

a spasso per i boschi, su una mulattiera della pendenza giusta per un uomo e unmulo da soma, salire senza fare un metro di sviluppo in più

Non so perchè pesno all’episodio dei muli e dei tedeschi nel “Sergente nella Neve” (visto il titolo di questo sito la citazione ci sta) La< resileinza dei muli nella ritirata di russia, il gasolio finisce, il mulo continua ad andare e poi purtroppo te lo puoi anche mangiare

ecco, si parla di resilienza anche nei programmi del governo, ridaranno i muli agli alpini per affrontare al meglio ogni rotta, rottura, urto ?

E se il governo ricerca la resilienza, non è venuto il momento permttere le subreti elettriche private ? Cioè permettere ai privati che hanno pannelli solari o pale eoliche di collegrasi con i proprio fili senza sottostare al monopolio della rete. Poi la rete serve sempre ma il giorno che va giù se tutti hanno pannelli o pale, auto elettriche e pompe di calore, si tirano cavi tra vicini, si creano piccole reti di villaggio, qualcosa si accrocchia. Oggi no

E poi Zoom ci mostra la resilienza della rete, continuare a lavorare e studiare da remoto, ma non è zoom a essere resiliente, è la rete,. Non è la piattaforma glibale che gira sulla rete, è il protocollo della rete che fa girare tutto il resto a essere resiliente.

La piattaforma poi lo può essere, ma non lo sei tu che la usi, ogni volta che usi una piattaforma invece di contare su te stesso e un protocollo di comunicazione, non sei resiliente. Al limite, ti de-piattaformano e sei fregato. Ma ci sono altri scenari, anche peggiori, la resilienza deve essere la tua di user, non della piattaforma e dei suoi proprietari

Se il proietario è un umanista la piattaforma da èpotere agli user, vedi wikipedia, se il proprietario è un darwinista o peggio un ubermenshista allora la resilienza definitiva è quella di comprare casa e cittandinanza in Nuova Zelanda, dove sotto la casa ci costruisci un bunker antitutto e allora sei resiliente anche in uno scenario estremo di milioni di eletti che sopravvivono invece dei 10 milairdi a cui tendiamo oggi

Ma sto divagando, i rfierimenti sono chiari ma a me interessa parlare di protocolli che mi rendo resiliente a moltoi shock che potrebbero colpire le pèiattaforme. Scrivo tanto su piattaforme e diciamo che una cosa mi tutelerebbe, un protocollo concordato implementato da tutte le piattaforme per fare backup di ogni cosa che scrivo su un mio nodo, e il mio nodo sarebbe una mia identità più resiliente di ogni home in giro per il web

Credo che questa cosa venga chiamata portabilità, non so se io la capisco così solo ora alla luce della richiesta di resilienza o se la mia sia una posizione più estrema, di ritorno ai protocolli. Però, ecco, un governo che parla di resilienza dovrebbe obbligare tutte le piattaforme che voglio avere i propri cittadini come user, a utilizzare questo protocollo che ricollega tutti i bits e i crumbs e i posts e le chat e le foto i video i meme e le gif insomma tutto al nodo personale, secondo le preferenze dello user

quindi, è vero che anche l’azione antitrust serve a rendere tutto resiliente, ma ritorniamo ai protocollo riaggreghiamo tutto istantaneamente nei nodi personali

Anarchism on Anarres

yes, I just read The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin and here i will collect ideas and links on anarchism

thanks Ursula you made anarchism real and now I got interested in it. Can Anarres be generalized?

first, complete isolation, there’s also the Berlin Wall in reverse, the incipit so metaphysical

second, Anarres is a tough planet, survival forsters solidarity, cooperation, respnsibility

but if you start with a language created from sscratch, no money, no private ownership and no family you can still create a mix that works

I love the idea of cooperatives, associtaion and similar which manage the economy and the needs of the people. L Guin hints at technology helping total decentralization and we should be there with our technology now, anarchists using slack and CRM software. Ah no, no money, no private property, non customers 🙂

so there is freedom, there is a tension keeping the society alive, there s the need to survive. Over time though the decentrilized associations ossify, become bureacratic, freedom is stifled. So, permnent revolution

links https://medium.com/curious/the-dispossessed-by-ursula-k-le-guin-an-embodiment-of-postmodern-anarchism-edf830c88ee9

Anarres is “Scarcity Anarchism”, a few year later Murray Bookchin introduces the idea of Post-scarcity Anarchism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Scarcity_Anarchism worth spending some time on it. In SF an oft quoted example opf post-scarcity anarchism is the Culture world of Ian M. Banks where humans have gone past the limits of need and things come easy, but also funnily-named spacewships are intelligent and a sort of mighty species by itself. BTW is Musk a post-scarcity anarchist because he give Culture-sounding names to his missiles ?

View at Medium.com

parallel reading

Arctic by Lopez read in parallel with Dispossed by Le Guin, both give me great pleasure, escapade from reality and utopia

I started How Fascism Works by Stanley first, then I started The Curse of Bigness by Wu which goes down faster, Two facets of the same problem, I like both

On Audible I am listening to the Odissey, irregular listening not doin much driving lately.As i progress I read some of La Mente Colorata by Citati, a pleasure to read, such rich language

Also, I stalled a bit in reading PhiKal by Shulgin and I also started and currently moving slowly on Pollan Come cambiare la tua Mente, in Italian, both book on psycheledics

What else? I am sure I have some other book in progress but I can’t recall right now which one, I should search in the app

Oh well yes,I started a book on venture capitalist, Sand Hill Road by Kupor and Algorithms to live by Christian, behaviourism, improve yourself, of suggestion by my son. Bit out of luck lately, these books