Starting April 2019 I have looked back at the previous month and made a public review on my opinion. What impact this have had in my life, my values, my thoughts, my habits etc. is difficult to distinguish from other influencing factors, due to the complexity of life – but I do believe I can see some pattern:
1. I have less doubt in that I’m doing the right thing.
I used to have second-doubts whether I should proceed on the difficult journey that I’m on, building a responsible tech-giant. I were often tempted by quick bucks. However, last year I haven’t had those thoughts much at all.
2. I have started seeing the world in a more networked way
We are all reliant on each-other. Whether that’s a food & medical supply-chain (we can’t survive very well on our own) or the social Internet. Back in the days (pre-industrial civilisation, pre-corona) accountability was an ingrained part of society (at the farm or the office). However now that we work from home, some of us on our own project, we’re an isolated unit. It’s good to take steps to become part of the network again.
3. I’ve seen that accountability-as-a-software is net-good
Sharing some of my life public, ex. how productive I’ve been, some of the stuff I been working on, hasn’t felt too intrusive, at least for me.
The benefit for the society is that it creates accountability. Ex. imagine if Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey, who is that the users who research why, and how, I built the products – can trust that it’s with the intent of Goodness, rather than fortune or fame.
Going further
I will continue to be publicly accountable. However I believe there are better ways than monthly reviews. As such, I will put on a higher priority to get a working system up and running that supports tiered-transparency reporting (myself, friends & family, public see different things) which is semi-automated in real-time with storage of historical logs to validate actions.
In essence, everything I do shouldn’t be shared public – that’d be intrusive. However, some things I do can be shared without harming the world or harming me. It also builds accountability of my actions, similar to how society have public records of their elected officials, so should we have of our current and future tech leaders, who these days shape society more than politicians.
I been doing this Monthly Reviews since April and although its hard to tell cause & effect, I do believe it has aligned me more clearly with the goals I set for the next month, to be accountable to the possible audience reading this blogs, whether in the present or in the future. Transparency creates accountability which creates a good life and impact. Hence, I’ll continue with them, and work on networked-content to create even more transparency & accountability in my life.
Work: Global Brain by Dumbledore
Got quite a few steps further this month in how to structure arguments. The idea is that metrics rated on 1-100% like “👍 Agree 👎 Disagree 💪 Certainty 👌 Exactness👋 Importance 🤝 Consensus 😲 Controversial” will connect different arguments. Ex. what is the relation between the 3 claims: “Wearing face masks protects from the coronavirus” and “Although high risk of major breakout Taiwan has considerably few coronavirus cases.” and “Everyone in Taiwan wears face mask”. Further, lots of new designs on how to embed arguments in a normal webpage (Ex. a social media post or news-article). This will soon be published.
An updated Dumbledore.com front-page has been released, although yet another re-make has already been started, now to look something like the beginning of a debate platform. Will be published sometime in April.
Taking a hike through the local jungle by the isolation-hideout
Personal
As isolating, I’ve gotten into a regular schedule which has helped with me desirable habits. Meditating 30 min every morning after waking up now. Going well thus far. Rarely using Waking Up meditation app – but I pick it up every now and then.
Month ahead
The rocket has starting to be built. Will it take off in April, or still a few months left? Likely it’s a while left – but very soon, a new debate platform – capable for the complexity of debates that the Internet desperately yearn for.
New content designs are soon to be released on Dumbledore.com. Been traveling, but will now stay in the same location for two months.
Meta: About this monthly reviews
I been doing this Monthly Reviews since April and although its hard to tell cause & effect, I do believe it has aligned me more clearly with the goals I set for the next month, to be accountable to the possible audience reading this blogs, whether in the present or in the future. Transparency creates accountability which creates a good life and impact. Hence, I’ll continue with them, and work on networked-content to create even more transparency & accountability in my life.
Work: Knowledge Web
The Dumbledore.com website is set to feature some innovative content-forms. Still lots of content-innovation to be done to start mapping arguments, but its on the right path. It’s motivating to spectate how the scene around claim-verification is getting traction in various communities. Even tho bike-touring and traveling have got quite a lot of design-work done throughout the month.
Biking 2 weeks from with rewarding views over Mordor
Personal: bike touring finished
Bike touring for the first half of the month was interesting and good time. Did some challenging mountain climbs. Also got on the surf board a couple times. Have had some good meditation sessions, yet not following a consistent schedule. March and April should be productive, as I won’t be traveling but stay in same location, and be able to get into a good routine.
Month ahead
Will continue working on innovative content-formats that can lead to Knowledge Web. A deliverable for the 15th March is to launch an updated version of Dumbledore.com showcasing some of the solutions. For the two months ahead will stay in the same location and should be able to be very productive and get in a good schedule for my desirable habits. As always – will stay transparent and accountable, to ensure that my contributions to the world are productive. Stay tuned!
Productively shaping the form of Dumbledore.com. Free-time filled with lots of road-biking. Desierable habits going decent.
Meta: About this monthly reviews
I been doing this Monthly Reviews since April and although its hard to tell cause & effect, I do believe it has aligned me more clearly with the goals I set for the next month, to be accountable to the possible audience reading this blogs, whether in the present or in the future. Transparency creates accountability which creates a good life and impact. Hence, I’ll continue with them, and work on networked-content to create even more transparency & accountability in my life.
Work: Knowledge Web
The long-term plan of creating Knowledge WebKnowing the truthfulness of claims, sharing what you do online (making the entire web social), easier living a fulfilling life online and offline will be possible through Knowledge Web are taking shape. Next month will be the initial launch of Dumbledore.com, a first step towards building an impactful organization building the content operating systemA content operating system will connect all content-apps you have today (notes, news, social media, videos, messages) and give you an experience that suit your needs fit for next generation of the Internet.
Personal: bike-touring
Been traveling by bike through New Zealand. Me and a friend bring with our laptops on the bike bag to bike & work for a month. I’m fairly new to road biking so it hits my legs quite a bit as we do 100km rides. That creates good resting/work days tho. Very nice scenery and inspiration being here. Listening to lots of podcasts while biking. Been above expectations on the productivity that been possible on the resting days.
Month ahead
The main deliverable for February is to release Dumbledore.com before 17th February. The website will describe the organizational setup, the product roadmap and showcase some design solutions. In the free-time, I will continue bike-riding and be inspired by the beautiful nature.
Good productivity on networked contentNetworked content means relations between digital items, ex. text sections. An example you seen before is how you see a post on social media and how comments show below them. In the future you can dig into details of a claim you see online, and determine its truthfulness. Networked-content will likely soon be connecting all of Internet. whilst also extensively traveling. December is a month I look back at with contentment.
Meta: About this monthly reviews
I been doing this Monthly Reviews since April and although its hard to tell cause & effect, I do believe it has aligned me more clearly with the goals I set for the next month, to be accountable to the possible audience reading this blogs, whether in the present or in the future. Transparency creates accountability which creates a good life and impact. Hence, I’ll continue with them, and work on networked-content to create even more transparency & accountability in my life.
Networked-content will change Internet as we know it
From this month, some design of networked contentNetworked content means relations between digital items, ex. text sections. An example you seen before is how you see a post on social media and how comments show below them. In the future you can dig into details of a claim you see online, and determine its truthfulness. Networked-content will likely soon be connecting all of Internet. has been achieved (ex. reading a summary and deep-diving into any mentioned topic seamlessly (use case, ex. News / Wikipedia articles, Educational Videos etc.)).
Rather than focusing on more designs or early implementation, this month has been about solving tough problems, such as the roadmap of how to make products based of networked-content reach product-market-fit“Product-market fit is the degree to which a product satisfies a strong market demand. Product/market fit has been identified as a first step to building a successful venture in which the organization meets early adopters, gathers feedback and gauges interest in its product(s).”.
Publishing of networked-content (a.ka. expandable/interactive blogging) hasn’t been the highest priority this month and is yet to be released for the articles here on Informing.org. It’s not far from being developed, and might be done early this year.
Personal
Meditation has been on and off through the month, not daily, which I aim to get back to for January. Been lots of exercise this month, and travels been enjoyable. I am positive 2020 will be the last year that this time-consuming drains my energy.
A friend I been living with suggested we’d spend some time writing down detailed, achievable goals for 2020 and those feel like a good to have in the backpack for the new decade we are now entering.
Met Santa Claus in the Southern Hemisphere
Month ahead
Will be highly productive for the first 20 days. In the end of the month and for the first half of February I will do bike touring for ca 4 weeks. Although me and my friend will bring our laptops with us, and plan to do some resting days in co-working spaces, I don’t have too high expectations I’ll have energy enough to do deep work – but we’ll see – maybe the extensive biking will bring great creativity and clarity. For January, work focus will be on roadmap of products built of networked-content and organization structure.
WhyWhy.com, or Dumbledore.com? I’d love your opinion – but we are not fully there yet. This month I been working on argument maps, that can prove the earth is round, anywhere on the Internet, as well as discuss whether the platform should be called WhyWhy, Dumbledore or Informing. The argument maps can discuss anything, which solves lots of problems but also brings new ones – which is why I proceed this development with caution.
Rather than launching “Social blogging” I been working toward launching, the long-term goal of argument mapping, mainly on the creative part. Have a look at some demos:
Because Argument: Flat Earthers are wrong84% trueRate your beliefStronglyDisagreeUnsureAgreeStronglyHow certain are you of this belief?HighlyDoubtfulMediumCertainHighlyGive rating
if
and
then
1: flat Earthers believe earth is flat61% trueRate your beliefStronglyDisagreeUnsureAgreeStronglyHow certain are you of this belief?HighlyDoubtfulMediumCertainHighly 2: earth is not flat3: Flat Earthers are incorrect1.1: understandable from the namepeople should be informed of it.
Earth is not flat
if
and
then
1: flat Earthers believe earth is flat2: earth is not flat3: Flat Earthers are incorrect1.1: understandable from the nameFlat Earthers’ are incorrect.
Our belief that
Argument maps will be net positive84% trueRate your beliefStronglyDisagreeUnsureAgreeStronglyHow certain are you of this belief?HighlyDoubtfulMediumCertainHighlyGive rating
if
and
then
1: Definition of net positive61% trueRate your beliefStronglyDisagreeUnsureAgreeStronglyHow certain are you of this belief?HighlyDoubtfulMediumCertainHighlyHow impactful is this to the the above claim?No impactIrrelevantUnsureRelevantCrucial 2: The score is 50%+3: Arguments maps are net positive1.1: The desirable outcomes of time in Universe1.1.1: Well-being for humanity
is why we develop them
Blog reasoningWe choose Blog Reasoning because it sounds great and match the product-features.
Which name of the productThe product is blogging with inquiry-features such as ability to validate/invalidate any claim through argument-maps. is bestIn terms of attracting and retaining users (great product experience, branding, word-of-mouth referral etc)?100%75%50%25%1%52Blog reasoning30Argument blogging12Debate blogging6Social blogging
Because
84% true as unspecified claim17% risk of misinterpretation
if
and
and not
then
1: Definition of net positive61% trueRate your beliefStronglyDisagreeUnsureAgreeStronglyHow certain are you of this belief?HighlyDoubtfulMediumCertainHighlyHow impactful is this to the the above claim?No impactIrrelevantUnsureRelevantCrucial 2: The score is 50%+3: Arguments maps are net positive1.1: The desirable outcomes of time in Universe1.1.1: Well-being for humanity
is why we do it
Personal
I been doing exciting things after work every afternoon and been meditating almost every day. For December, I’ll travel with a Swedish friend to NZ then come back to the house I stayed in this month and celebrate Christmas, then head off with the van. We’ll do hiking, and working from the van – throughout the month.
In December
I wish to get many deep-work sessions – solving tough problems like (december deliverables (structuring argument-variations (ex. different spellings/expressions, inverted arguments, same/similar meaning) scoring of supporting arguments (via ex. criteria based on main-argument, or just one single metric called impact)).
As my friend arrives, I also hope to discuss some important questions regarding argument mapping with him, such as (discuss questions (openness related to impact, ex. misuage of technology and with that, whether to be open open-source) also misalignment in product development, based on venture funding – or else setup crowdfunding donations)
Travels surely will be fun. I hope the work will be the most productive month of the year too. By the end of the month I wish to feel that its even closer to bringing argument-maps to make huge positive impact.
October Review is hopefully the last review written in plain blog-text, as the progress of October has been so well, that the design-solutions for next-generation textwell-structured/social/personalized/interactive text is just around the corner.
In the month of November, I’ll work on implementing these designs, and hopefully start collaborating with more people.
Big update of the month, is the comparison shopping engine is officially shut down. It was, and still is, a good business idea – but lack of time & energy hasn’t made it possible for me to build the team necessary to develop the product. When the new blogging format I’m taking of here is published, I will write (in that format) a post-mortemAn article you write when you shut down the business, containing ex. of why the business failed, lessons learned. and release the business ideas for other social entrepreneurs to pick up on.
The new format has come a far away. The goal is to produce arguments-maps, but the same design can be used for lots of other applications, so we’ll see how well the roadmap turns into impactful argument maps.
An example is here:
Earth is not flat
if
and
then
Supporting argumentsSupporting argumentsSupporting argumentsSupporting argumentsFlat Earthers’ are incorrect.
Official death of SEP (Sustainable E-commerce Portal)
Shutting it down now as it hasn’t been able to release. Will focus all energy on the new text-based products.
Digital text, reimagined
How will the design I make turn out to influence the world? How can I navigate so it makes the most impact? Those are the questions I am contemplating. But to even have any effect on the world, things need to be released. And as I am progressing in the creative design-part, I am also finding the business models to make more sense. The initial plan, of setting up a social-blogging platform (Blogging 2.0. Collective intelligence) seems to be the best path forward. It can fuel lots of knowledge sharing, it’s a great step forward from existing Internet platforms, and will likely not make negative impact through others using it in a negative way.
Personal
Each day has been different in the month. Very little routine. Been traveling quite a bit. Done meditation not every day, but maybe every second. Aim to get back to every day, as it’s such a great experience being conscious. Had many great conversations. Had many good deep-work sessions.
Month ahead
November will be lots of traveling and deep-work. Should be easy to get back on NoFap. In the deep-work, will focus mainly on new designs – and when medium focus will work on implementing such designs to actual prototypes. Aim to meditate every day in November.
Signing out
Thanks for reading this. I hope it helps you. And, hopefully next month reviews will be in an entirely new, interactive text-format.
Best wishes,
Erik
Its time again. And this month has been great. Some important steps further in UXUX (User experience) is the experience that a user has while interacting with your product. has been made. As these designs been made, I have been traveling Australia and enjoying life, whilst in the back of my head thinking about the solutions.
Interactive text
Let me present to you: interactive textText that you can click on to see more or less, to see certain types of content (other’s critique, author’s arguments, comments etc). See below for example..
Limiting this framework to where shareholders can be investors, employees and users but no fixed demand on fairnessrequires a few and some inventions note: even a primitive, heavily-biased framework would still be better than purely-monetary shareholder value maximizationsuch as: ex.
ranked by desirability:
automatic biometrical emotional recognition
ex. body/brain scan, facial expressions, heart ratemanual regular 5 min inputs via ex. smart-watch with 1-10 votemanual irregular inputs, ex. once an hour/day/month whenever user feel like itmanual irregular voting based on individual reasoning
ex. during decision-making, the human individual “think” what outcome will maximize their well-being
this is the earliest implementation, but subject to lots of biases
however, extremely low technical difficulty, a process for settling on what question gets to be voted onand a DAO or similar to how shareholder-companies vote today..
According to my Mac App Timing I spent 91 hours in front of computer in September, thus a traveling month. Mainly this has been spent on interactive-text design.
Products that can be built from interactive text are CMS (like notes-taking, todolist, blogging) and argument-mapping (fake news debunking, strategy-mapping, decision-making). Been chatting with friends over minimal viable product (MVP)A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers and provide feedback for future product development. to build to reach a market and it is likely to either be a personal CMS combining Notes and ToDo or a start of a blogging-platform. More strategy of this is to be determined when more design-elements are finalized in October.
Personal
Meditation been decant, done maybe 20/30 days – but had some great meditation experiences still – often reminding myself in situations to be in the moment. Using Sam Harris meditation app Waking Up.
Sustainable E-commerce Portal (SEP)
Gone very slow with the SEP. Back-end work we aimed to do wasn’t being pushed forward and little to no progress has been done. Front-end developer decided to take a break. I have considered writing a post-mortemAn article you write when you shut down the business, containing ex. of why the business failed, lessons learned. on the business. However, decided to not entirely shut it down as hope of it being developed still exists. An official pause until further development is now the case – until future developers picks up the project. If I have time over in October, I will publish the business plan in this new text-format. That is the bottle-neck holding back much, that I soon will be able to share & receive feedback on ideas via an interactive text-format.
Month ahead
In October I will continue on designing interactive text elements and strategize on first products to build with this new designs. By the end of the month, I aim to have some early demo of a product to showcase to you.
Another month in the marathon of building impactful software-products. August has been productive in the creative sphere. I’m tackling the hard problems of how new information-applications can look like. A few examples of implemented text-inventions:
From last month
Open text before and after and definition example text
Open WikiPedia page in sidebar
Expandable sections/tooltips and much more at Valid.News
From August
Scrollable tooltips & open tooltips in sidebar [
Open tooltips in split-screen [
Early drafts of global argument graph [
Collaboration Association {CA} is the framework we’re working on to create scalable impact-products that compensate contributors & investors and scale as fast as venture-funded software companies.
As a first real-life example of using the CA, is how we as 3 contributors collaborate on developing the Sustainable Shopping Engine {SESE}. This product is still in its early MVP. I haven’t spent many hours on SESE in August as I focus mostly on the new Content Management System (CMS) that over time can develop into a Argument Graph (AG).
To develop these software products (CA, SSE, CMS, AG) requires some scaling. That is the plan for coming months – as the drafts I’ve been doing past 3 months start to take shape.
I’m starting to find a format of publishing all the work I’m doing public so in case I can’t complete the work, someone else can pick up where I finished and/or get inspired by that work – rather than it “going to waste” in the event I can’t finish the projects I’m working on (CA, SSE, CMS, AG).
Personally, Swedish summer is now over. It passed so quickly. I’ve decided to move on, and explore life in Australia. Going there in mid-September.
Been meditating daily for the whole month. Exercise, eating/sleeping good as well.
Setting a goal for September to have drafts ready for implementation of Content Management System (notes-taking, todo-list, personal wiki, decision making) and publish these in next monthly review.
That app would make all writing (ex. this monthly review) so much easier. All related entries (ex. my daily journals) can be compiled to output-formats (ex. a monthly review), with ability for you as a reader to dive deeper into any project/thought/event that you find here in the text. It’ll enable richer sharing of ideas. It can increase productivity. It can spread information better. It can disprove fake news. It can make great impact.
Why I’m doing monthly reviews: I’m being transparent online because I believe it can create impact. The world is in risk of nuclear war, climate change and dystopia so objectively speaking nothing else matters than combating these trends. In liberal democracies, we have gained much collaboration, motivation and knowledge through transparency, and it’s a trend I wish us to maintain as we progress in this digital age.
Going forward, I hope to move to a more Blog 2.0 format, semi-automatically being public with my life while easily getting feedback, support & motivation from transparency. Rather than monthly, it would be real-time. But that software is yet to be created.
July review
Productivity: Knowledge Net
Drafts from June on Expandable text has now been made into code. More drafts on newer functionality has also been made. The progress is very slow and if continue like this will take months to just get a MVP. But the goal has been to showcase that these things are possible – and to now extend the team to develop features faster.
The ideal design process will be working alongside an experienced front-end developer to create designs together.
Some examples of implemented UX: (note: examples works best in desktop)
Open text before and after
Open WikiPedia page in sidebar
Hover, with button for show-inline.
Open text inline (with hinting ‘tooltip’)
Hover, with button for show in sidebar
Expandable sections, show sections with checkbox and much more, examples at Valid.News
Productivity: CSE
Although haven’t spent many hours, but we as a team has moved forward. From technical standpoint, with ElasticSearch now hosting products, we’re just short of back-end attribute recognition and front-end filter-functionality for launching MVP.
Productivity General
Been working few hours almost every day, including weekends. Still, doing many for-fun-activities.
Had some thoughts on how to increase my impact. One aspect surely is better tools. I still run the classic Notes-taking-app without sync to a todo-list, calendar, project plans, messages. Integrating my notes to my actions would be very beneficial, and it is in the roadmap with Knowledge Net.
During July also launched a website http://valid.news and participated in an essay-competition on Economist.com.
Personal
Met good new friends and synced with many old friends. Been hosting Meetups in Stockholm and attending many too. Feels good to be back in home town with deeper friends circle than when traveling.
I’ve lived without smartphone for latter half of July. A bit tricky with meetings but hasn’t been a problem. Found it quite liberating to not wear a phone. Will however likely go back to wearing one in August.
Did a no-stimuli-day during July. Found it challenging but rewarding. Will do another one in beginning of August. Been exercising regularly. Without my phone last 2 weeks I haven’t been able to do daily guided meditations, instead I’ve been doing focus & awareness meditation throughout the day, ca 10-30 minutes per day. In August, I feel I want to have longer, more focused sessions.
Roadmap ahead
Build knowledge-net to 1) use the software to make impact ex. better UX for news-platform, reviews, debates 2) organize my own information better 3) start sharing notes, tasks, activities with others (social web)
Deliverables:
Designs on Informing.org (Done) Inline-text QuoteMap (quote, rephrase, track quote from ext. source + justify rephrasing)
Designs on Informing.org (Roadmap) Social QuoteMap Summary (aggregate from debate on justification of rephrasing (ex. shortening, interpretation)) Social QuoteMap Debate (argument-map of different user’s opinions on a quote-rephrasing
DebateMap based on references (any claim, using references for support)
DebateMap on logical reasoning (make claims with/without references. Support by logical reasoning/fallacies)
Collaborate on the roadmap From now on the roadmap can get assistance from front-end developers & UX designers. Before start with back-end development, should have drafts/front-end of above done.
In this challenge, we want you to rewrite the rules on how we experience media online. [..] Web3 is uniquely positioned to create a healthier media landscape through transparency, incentives, identity, and reputation. We leave it to you to design the new conditions for trust in media, and offer the following provocations as a place to get started
Thus far I been writing around 3.000 words on Knowledge Consenus, Reputation, Modern UX. Will publish the paper on Informing.org and send into Web3 Foundation before 10th July.
Personal
Moving
Moved to Prague late May and found a very nice co-working space with an outdoor area and great co-workers. Now I left Prague late June to live in Stockholm.
Enjoyment
Did some hiking, found the Czech nature beautiful. Found good companions to hang out with in Prague. Philosophical Meetup was wonderful, something I’ll set up in Stockholm.
Remain productive
I now have a base to stay for a few months. As mentioned moving to Stockholm this afternoon. Either way, June was a fairly productive month and I believe July will be even better. Getting closer and closer to large-scale-impact projects being built.
Summary(since attention is limited):Graph-reasoning has existed as a concept since the 60s, and are likely soon developed as a software (thanks to AI, crypto and new social entrepreneurs). It is bound to have as much impacton society as Internetitself has had the last two decades. Like all technology, it’s a double-edged sword(both beneficial and harmful) which requires it to be developed with well-being of humans & other species in mind. Developed in the right way, it can bring global peace, increase well-being of all species and enable safe exploration of space, biology & consciousness.
These are the same goalsas what people thought of the Internet in the early 90s, which is why it’s even more important to ensure this type of innovation benefit us all. You might still wonder what graph-reasoning is, so basically it is about connecting all informationin the world such as collective human knowledge, human emotions, and each individual’s own experience in this world & universe. In the best case scenario, this technology will assist decision-making, determine truth/falseness in claims, fight fake news, connect people, help people build great habitsand enable you to create your own utopia.
Now for the 15-minute read, which I wrote to be easy-to-follow.
An old vision, not yet implemented
In 1965, Ted Nelson published a whitepaper with the abstract: “The kinds of file structures required if we are to use the computer for personal files [..] are wholly different in character from those customary (used today) in business and scientific data processing.”
Here I am, 54 years later, and feel like I could start my white-paper with the same abstract as Ted Nelson, who’s today 81 years old and not yet seen his vision be realized.
Today’s computers/smart phones/Internet websites miss architecture for thoughtful concept-understanding, debate, group-alignment and much else.
This is a large part of the reason why many see Internet in a negative light. Facebook & YouTube addictive/extremist recommendations. Reinforced beliefs from Google searches. Instagram depression. Extreme-censorship in China. Chinese propaganda on open Internet.
The visionaries of the Internet in 80s, 90s and 00s didn’t see these environments emerging. Rather, many believed that the “semantic web” would develop. That ideas would be shared freely and that as such peace & democracy would go global… and so it will… but it’s a matter of time and innovation.
To once again quote Ted Nelson, a bit more technical this time (hang in there). The information architecture “need to provide the capacity for intricate and idiosyncratic arrangements, total modifiability, undecided alternatives, and thorough internal documentation.”
intricate = very complicated or detailed idiosyncratic = unique modifiability = ability to modify (edit) (since Medium miss a (+) button for Definition next to difficult words)
In this white paper I will (to end the abstract of Ted Nelson) “explain why the problem is not simple, and why the solution (a file structure) must yet be very simple [and] finally, I want to explain the philosophical implications of this approach for information retrieval and data structure in a changing world”.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, second best is today
A common Swedish expression is “A loved child has many names”. So is true for graph-reasoning. I don’t even know what to tell people I’m working on. Semantic web. Semantic reasoning. Giant Global Graph (GGG). Argument maps. Endless concept maps. Canonical Debate. Complexity management. Associative reasoning. Pros/cons lists. Mind maps.
By now you might get the point. It has something to do with how information relates to each other. How one concept is born out of another concept. How all knowledge is connected. That all information is connected.
As explained in the intro, this has been spoken about since the early days of the Internet. Ted Nelson is also known for coining the term hyperlink(a web link, just like that one). Although the discussion, this digital collection of human knowledge hasn’t yet been achieved. We’ve made progress, but many lost sight in the progress. Graph-databases has come into the world, and without that software, Panama Paperswould have big problems to identify all the money launderers. Recent years, great initatives has also emerged such as Canonical Debate, Kumu.ioand Kialo. But the fact still remains, most of conumer-Internet (Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube etc) offers an Internet that is wide, but is without depth.
Commercial software for depth has been around a while. You are likely familiar with mind maps software (hundreds of these). Then the next step: 3d-mind-maps such as TheBrain, DevonThink, Thortspace, TopicScape. Also argument maps like ReasoningLab, DebateGraph.org, Kialo. And corporate AI’s like CYC.com or SAS.com. However, they’re far from improving society in the mass-scale that this technology can.
An example of TheBrain — a non-linear file management being 20 years old yet still the best consumer-software for organizing networks of knowledge — but far from adapted to every-day usage for mass-market.
ince big efforts have already been put into this with limited result, to achieve this we really need to think new. And we need to realize we might need newer technologies to make it happen. 2D-UX is comfortable, and adaptable to mass-market. But to do efficient work in an information-rich environment, it is likely this software will have to support 3D-environments as well. At the same time, improvements in NLP (AI for understanding text (Natural Language Processing)) may prove to be useful as well. Not to mention how tokenomics (blockchain economical theory) can help scaling. This is a whole-of-technology approach, to build the next generation of information software.
But here I am. Not an expert in anything. Not a coder. Throwing out buzzwords. Without any developer-partner. With a great vision. And a product roadmap for how to build this.
Use cases
This article focus on how everyday people will be affected by this technology. First off, let’s talk about you can make use of digitized human knowledge in your life.
Purpose in the 21st century
The first and foremost important innovation that can be enabled by graph-reasoning is individual autonomy. Finding a purpose and path in this complex world. Making it easier to build habits in a high-stimuli environment.
The modern struggle: Lone individualssummoning inhuman willpower, fasting, meditating, and exercising, up againstarmies of scientists& statisticians weaponizing abundant food, screens, & medicine into junk food, clickbait news, infinite porn, endless games & addictive drugs.
Use case example: habit-tracking
When interacting with the habit-tracking app you would tell it things like how you feel (described in words (I’m satisfied after the exercise) or with numbers (feeling 8/10 grateful after meeting friend). Over time, you can map things you like (positive emotions like gratefulness, satisfaction) and things you don’t want in your life (confusion, anger, loneliness). With enough data, the habit-app will start to recognize patterns of what activities make you feel well.
This could help you overcome unwanted habits (as mentioned in Naval’s quote above) whilst increase your mental well-being, impactful productivity, your health, your personal relationships and more.
The technology to build a good habit-tracking app is already out there. What’s necessary is just good design and a privacy-focused organization building it.
Use case: Brainstorm and combine ideas into a compelling narrative
Narratives (stories/beliefs) are used everywhere. It’s a large part of human sense-making of the world.
Finding a compelling narrative that 1) fit your intention and 2) is relatable from your audience 3) preferably has as few as possible unintended implications.
Narratives are great for things such as writing an article. Such as pushing through a decision to your friends or in a company. To motivate yourself. To set the message for a political campaign.
China is doing this very well. For example, the 30 year anniversary of Tiananmen Square (Pro-Democracy protest in 1989) was heavily censored in China. They post on Twitter (to influence non-Chinese audience) that the censorship should be celebrated, as it helps avoid political turmoil.
With China’s central-planning they are able to construct & maintain narratives that benefit The Party, as “Censorship is good”
Whilst China has big resources of brainwashers to determine best narratives, in West very few of us understand the process they use to set these narratives that are later used in psychological warfare (PsyOps). In this global environment, our own narratives get shaped by their propaganda, and we have no clear way of reviewing narratives spread throughout society.
Cluster of labels
Things become particularly useful, but also complex as we break down text from the original source its from in an article, to see it only as a standalone item, whether it’s a single word, a paragraph, a section or an article.
As Ted Nelson said:
The information architecture “need to provide the capacity for intricate and idiosyncratic arrangements, total modifiability, undecided alternatives”.
Use case: product management
Another complex use case of this is for product management. For example on the aspect of roadmap, a PM (product manager) can use previous meeting-notes and his/her own ideas and map up different features, all as individual concepts, label these with expected resources to develop, label conditions (any condition, ex. technical requirements, required partnerships, statistical data (with variations)), The product manager can then use the individual concepts and map these to a timeline. Of course this whole process is also collaborative, so all affected agents, whether developers, external reviewers, users, politicians, business partners and else can have their say.
Example use case: Debunk narratives
Just as graph-reasoning can be used to find compelling narratives, it can also expose false narratives. An argument-map that looks at the “raw arguments”, the pros and cons, how the narrative relates to concepts and what those concepts actually are — can help to understand which narrative is most true to reality, and which actors (nations, corporations, individuals etc. are Actors in game-theory) benefit most from different narratives.
This one is the very important innovation, as it can bring the Sokrates-type of discussion, whereas we don’t know much, but we can know with high certainty that many things are true (ex. nuclear warfare would be devastating, genders have differences, climate change is man-made).
ChangeAView.comwas a Subredditthat got so popular (750k members because people desperately urge for a debate-platform) that made their own website, with a few cool features (best out there) but much more innovation is needed to determine real consensus on topics.
The big impact: understanding the world
Graph-reasoning can enable probabilities of understanding the world. It can bring science to the true forefront of our understanding. Not just science as in reinforcing beliefs. Science as in being critical of each-other’s claims. Being highly critical on provided data. Ensuring replication in scientific studies.
Finding consensus on theories based on statistical data. Applying various theories to concepts. Mapping out how the world of human knowledge relates to each other. Everything from physics, maths, biology, economy, sociology.
Utilize the understanding to optimize well-being
From what lens should decisions be made? It can serve individuals, corporations, nations a lot to have a thoughtful understanding — and this can be very dangerous for the world — as knowledge is power and if used wrongly it can make it easier to manipulate humans. As such, building and ensuring this software is only used for improving wellness of all conscious beingsis a good way of using this software in a positive-impact way.
It can look at all issues and ask the question what is the best way forward to optimize wellness of all conscious beings? This framework can be used to answer questions like: How much tolerance should there be for political freedom (like in liberal democracies, but not in dictatorships)? How high tolerance for religious freedom? How much free speech?
The biggest sector can be revolutionized: public policy
Governments provide great support for our modern world. But setting public policy is today done through representative democracy or dictatorships. Neither of these really offer a way for everyday citizens give feedback and have their voices heard. This is where graph-reasoning can have most impact.
Graph-reasoning will make public policy fit for the 21st century. By asking questions to citizens (or if finding a privacy-friendly solution, collecting opinions during the everyday life of citizens) this will enable policy-makers to take into account the true sentiment of the population when setting public policies.
Graph-reasoning assumes nothing is 100% true
On the topic of knowing things and articulating them. Nothing we claim is certain. Nothing. Not even “I exist”. ¹ Thereby, nothing anyone says, especially on more abstract levels are fully knowable.
This doesn’t imply we should throw someone under the busfor articulating things we don’t believe in. But neither that we‘re not to be held responsible for our words. What matters is society evolve from intense-judgement to a state of accepting we all make mistakes. We believe in things that we later change our mind on. That’s how learning fundamentally works.
And expressing oneself is a large part of accumulating knowledge. In today’s society we have very little safe-space for articulating ourselves. In liberal democracies, we quickly get labeled. In China and other autocracies, one can get jailed for saying the wrong thing.
Since we all believe in false things, we need safe space
We therefore need to have a place in our world, a place on our Internet — to articulate ideas where we can both be held responsible for them, but also be safe in that our ideas won’t be held against us. Or else future generations won’t learn to be thoughtful. And our generation will live with tensions in our minds for not being able to express ourselves. Therefore, judge me not for holding controversial positions. Attempt to understand where I’m coming from. And use this same framework for all other people.
But to make it really easy to be non-judgemental, a debate platform that gives a good overview of different positions on hot topics, displaying the main pros/cons, showing actors benefit from this position, what’s the typical background of people holding this position etc. This way, we will see where people form their opinions from — how it makes sense based on their life history. The ambitions and narratives of dictator of China, Xi Jinping, will show how he has reasons to articulate what he do. Same with Mr. Donald Trump. Or Jordan Peterson. Or Sam Harris (my favorite philosopher). Graph-reasoning can enable thoughtful understanding of people’s beliefs, and assist to create a non-judgmental mindset for observers, opening up for harmony and collaboration.
¹ “I exist” isn’t 100% true as our existence could be a simulation. One may say “I experience existing” but it ain’t either 100% true because as you say it, it’s a reference to previous few seconds, a memory, and thereby subject to fallacies. Thereby we can’t make any single claim with 100% certainty.
Production of information is critical to a healthy information diet
Providing people better rewards for producing information through 1) improved UX for understanding one’s own past writing (one’s own thinking) and 2) enable seamless feedback from friends, family & public (as set by user’s privacy settings) and 3) allow user to use their writings to form an argument-map to better understand themselves and 4) offer personalized feedback on produced information based on graph-reasoning and 5) facilitating real-life meetups based on produced information and 6) having a sense of purpose as produced information learns a distributed well-being-AI that assist the graph-reasoning. Note-taking + knowledge-graph + feedback = thoughtful reasoning
Personal-graph + social-graph = fulfilling social life
Graph-reasoning will be able to first and foremost 1) properly track our lives (habits, goals, beliefs (possibly even emotions)) as well as 2) give personalized feedback based on knowledge-graph of how to achieve the goals we set and 3) make it easier to achieve goals through the tracking mentioned above, or by 3a) gamify habits and thereby make it fun to do irl goal-hunting as well as 3b) assist beneficial and enjoyable real life experiences such as 3b1) recommenend irl-people, events & actions based on an extensive social-graph.
I hope I didn’t lose you in the last 2 sections. They were dense, highly abstract. To give further explanation of all these concepts would need another UX. UX = User Experience (such as (+) expand-buttons of concept-explanations)
Graph-reasoning can determine net sum (net positive/negative)
A bit more technical from here on. But still easy-to-read.
Decision-making is about predicting outcome. In essence, we calculate the net sum. What can bring me most well-being? Often it’s not that abstract, but its about specific emotions, money, work-environment, friendships, family-matters. But in the end, all these decisions sum up to improving well-being of oneself and those in one’s surroundings.
Net-sum for all involvedis immensely complex to determine, yet even a simplified calculation can be very useful. Some questions can be answered very easily. “Would a full-out nuclear war be desirable?”. Given we do some reductions ex. only looking at individuals only on planet earth, it becomes apparent that large future values of consciousness & well-being may be eradicated. This is obvious common sense, we don’t want nuclear-war. How about democracy/dictatorship? Not so certain. It depends on tons of factors. How effective are the democracies? How cruel are the dictatorship? To go ahead, the question need to be more specific, and calculate net-sum in an isolated area, such as “Does Venezuela provide better well-being to its citizens as a democracy/dictatorship?”.
What complicates determining best outcome is 1) time 2) what agents (individuals, companies, countries, etc.) and how important is each?
Reducing these two factors to a single variation (one sole individual for the biological lifetime of that individual (ex my own life until I die)), decision-making becomes slightly more logically tangible. One even more simplified framework one can use (not using net sum, but only the lens of regret) is the model of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos: “Will I regret it when I am 80?”.
Using graph-reasoning to answer this “simple” question can actually prove to be very useful. However, be aware that even though the graph is reduced to a single individual lifetime basis, it is still very complex to answer “Will I regret this decision when I am 80?”.
There are so many arguments to take into account. Alternative outcomes. Lets have a look at it.
First we need to define regret. What is regret? What type of things do I regret? What affects what I regret? How may these factors (societal norms & narratives, friends & family-opinions, personal values) change until I’m 80?
Writing the arguments for this — and mapping them on a timeline with various variations of how regret would look like is actually tangible.
Now the specific decision: Will it give me less regret when I’m 80 if I quit my Wall Street job & start Amazon?
Here comes into account family, friends, money, health, personal values. The affecting factors are vast and so the amount of variations, essentially unlimited. Thereby, reducing the factors & possible outcomes to only key signals, ex. 100 factors — would create maximum a few million outcomes. With each factor mapped to the definition of regret that previously was done, the graph-reasoning software could now run the calculation and produce an output: “With 97% certainty, you’ll experience 74% less regret quitting Wall Street and starting Amazon, see more variations”.
It won’t be perfect, but as Yuval Noah Harari says:
“The recommendations may never be perfect, but they don’t have to be. They just have to be better, on average, than human beings.”
The well-being framework can in fact answer all and any questions. But all the answers, every single one, will be immensely complex. That complexity puts grand pressure on 1) data input 2) human cognition 3) computational capability. For these reasons, some abstractions (simplifications) need to be made, as well as limiting the argument-graph to certain conditions and contexts.
This design-simplification will enable graph-reasoning to be made with economical computational-power fit for todays IT environments. It will also enable smoother UX for the human-interface of the graph-reasoning — as well as reduce the data requirement to make sufficient understanding of concepts.
In essence, the graph-reasoning doesn’t need to understand the whole world, just the key signals/concepts. The magic happens in the relation between concepts, but to make the system lightweight so it can run in todays IT environments, these relations will be far from complete, only containing key signals.
Risks
Technology should like medicine, disclose possible side-effects to its users. Here I present side-effects how graph-reasoning can harm mankind.
Mainly, it’s about a concept called black ball invention, something that’s so harmful and shared with the public, it can’t be undone and the technology becomes humanity’s doomsday.
However, let’s also not forget people have been protesting against industrialization since 1800s. And would you agree we have higher well-being than the average farmer in the 1800s? New technologies bring risk, but also bring benefits.
If developed without verified identity
Botnets and propaganda armies. False narratives in argument-maps. Like Twitter, Reddit today, but the impact of the narratives much stronger.
Used by actors harmful to global well-being
Probably China already has a graph-reasoning. Either way, this software will enable their central-planning even more efficiency. So goes for other interest-groups that care more about their own power than the well-being of themselves and others.
Increased polarization
It is possible the combined knowledge-social-graph won’t be able to bridge the differences between people, but rather build tribe-mentalities and more clearly point out the differences the people have with no way of overcoming them. An example of this can be those who don’t trust the reasoning-process.
Fuel warfare against existing power-structures
We have nuclear weapons. It’s a huge accomplishment of the war leaders last 70 years to not have blown up the planet ❤ . We need to ensure we don’t go to full-out nuclear war in the coming centuries as well. Graph-reasoning will bring more transparency, which might be threatening to those in power today.
Over-digitalization losing humane values
This would be a digital tool, because that’s where the technology exists today. It will be artificial. Not natural to the human environment, or that of any other conscious animals on our planet. Like our social-media have had negative effects on humans’ real lifes, so this might bring intellectual discourse to the digital domain, making people speak less to each other in-person. Therefore it requires an organization which is not operating in the attention-economy (building addictive products) to build this.
If working effectively: Losing individual autonomy
When you start giving algorithms the authority to decide what to study, where to live, who to marry, who to vote for [..] the algorithm makes recommendations and it’s up to you to decide whether to follow the recommendation or not. In many cases people will follow the recommendations because they realize from experience the algorithms make better choices. The recommendations may never be perfect, but they don’t have to be. They just have to be better, on average, than human beings. That’s not impossible because human beings very often make terrible mistakes, even in the most important decisions of their lives. This is not a future scenario. Already we give algorithms authority to decide which movies to see and which books to buy. But the more you trust the algorithm, the more you lose the ability to make decisions yourself. After a couple of years of following the recommendations of Google Maps, you no longer have a gut instinct of where to go. You no longer know your city. So even though theoretically you still have authority, in practice this authority has been shifting to the algorithm.
This isn’t necessarily bad, we lose individual autonomy. But so we already have. Do you know how to survive alone in the forest? No. Will humans a few generations from now know how to make decision on their own? Maybe not. Maybe that will bring them more internal peace, which they can use to explore the spectrum of consciousness, or do mighty materialistic things like space exploration or biological upgrading.
If work effectively: fuel artificial general intelligence
Altho the benefits from an AGI would be tremendous, it is also very scary as it can be a black ball technology that figures out how to destroy humanity.
Keeping the debate going
To fully explain all the use cases, how the software would function, what the risks are and much else require more than a 15-minute article. Preferably it could be presented & discussed in a graph-interface, but as you now know, that software isn’t out there yet. So, until then, I’ll continue my contribution of describing how I see this ecosystem evolving and where we need to be extra thoughtful.
Reviewing my life, not emotionally attached but as information/data, based on 1) Personal enjoyment 2) Personal growth 3) Information Innovation Productivity and 4) Comparison Shopping productivity
General life-position thoughts
One year of brainstorming
Learnt me a lot.
Made me disregard tons of business ideas.
Aligned my life more and more to first principles.
Got hundreds of thousands of words on the software I wish to create.
I am still in the brainstorming stage, but more on the actual specifications of how the software will look like — so its starting to shape to an actual buildable product.
Excited for this summer, as I might move beyond brainstorming and specification phase, to finalize the specifications and start the process of finding building-partners.
At this moment I am still writing down more and more ideas, whilst not really crystallizing the heaps of ideas spread out over 20+ documents and endless amount of notes. My ambition for June is to read through these documents and shape the ideas into a single specification.
CSE
New team-member
A new team-member has started onboarding as front-end developer. Based in Melbourne, alongside another co-worker in Mexico City and me in Prague — we are a truly international team.
For readers, CSE = Comparison Shopping Engine (similar to Google Shopping)
Future of CSE
The back-end is almost finished for MVP, and with a new dev joining we are likely to launch MVP in near-term future while having a stable team for pushing the product to mass-market. For your interest in our solutions to consumerism, please see the Medium article Sustainable Shopping can save the planet.
Information Innovation
Update on schedule
In April Review, I set out to “spend 30 minutes every single day on draft of MVP for note-taking app”. The month didn’t quite turn out that way — although total productivity in Information Innovation was above average and personal growth & enjoyment was high.
Progress in May
Clarified specifications for early versions of Publishing, Debating, Note-taking. Still quite diversified — but clearer what features are easily implementable. I also got some new inspiration.
Found some great software that possibly can be built on-top of such as Argdown.
Private
Appreciation of lifestyle
I’m glad that I have the freedom to pursue my dreams — and work on my computer on very innovative things. What I’m looking for now is a team to build this with, and until then — an inspiring co-working space with loving, innovative & thoughtful people. I hope I’ll find one in the next coming days.
An enjoyable month
Spend time with wonderful people, travel to wonderful places. Being on good social energy. Mainly due to surronding myself with great, caring people, continuing with daily meditations with Sam Harris courseand not watching pornography for the whole month of May, something I’m quite proud of as it’s been a long struggle of mine.
Future
What to do in June? The two main categories of my work is doing Drafts — which seems quite tricky to solve. Other is creating awareness. Writing articles on what problems argument-mapping can solve. Such as:
Holding organizations accountable
Mapping best paths forward for companies & politics
Debunking false claims (fake news)
Creating decentralized reputation-economy, rather than capitalism
Writing clear paths to building the above ecosystems can also clarify my design-thinking in how the argument-maps would function.
Altho all gold and glory with a mission the actual implementation needs to be figured out. There’s no shortage of people with this mission, Kialo, Canonical Debates and else. What I need to do is build and present a clear path to a functioning solution.
Therefore, June will have higher priority Design & Drafts than spreading awareness. But when I’m not in flow for design-thinking, I’ll write articles.
And I’ll update the monthly progress, hopefully off Medium by then — on a much more thoughtful platform.
Anyways, I hope you’re learning something and enjoying reading this.
Try meditating in public, you’ll feel being looked. Dress different, you’ll feel being different. Why so?
The moment is what is. Language & narratives are tools, deep in us
Being in the moment can make you experience all microexpressions happening in the environment surrounding you. Experiencing moods, desires, perceptions, archetypes are all possible through deep awareness. Its the feeling you get when reading this. The feeling you have right now. Might be subtle, but you can sense it. This is the moment.
We are our moments
Now is happening. You are reading. You are feeling your mood. You are breathing. You are feeling gravity. You are existing.
Any words we apply on top of The Moment are a tool
I’d say human-made tool, but expressing our emotions to others, or internally reflecting our moods has likely been done by all historical & current-living emotional & conscious species.
We are percieving things, reacting to them as an expression. Every moment. Sometimes the expression, reaction or perception is stronger — which could increase our awareness at that moment — usually those stronger perceptions are more strongly effecting our reaction patterns (a type of behavior pattern), which are usually linked to our conditioning (which is biological and cultural, based on our lived experience).
Microexpressions shared in physical space
We are all connected. Sitting in an office is a clear signal how the mood in the office is synchronized. One microchange in your body posture or where your eyes look effect the people closest in sync with you (part of the story, it is rather a 3d graph of dots as agents reacting to your expression (weighted ex. 1–100) with two more axis of 1–100 in sync and 1–100 strongness of their reaction (where sync is defined as other agent’s awareness of you (affected by importance of you for that agent, ability to grasp you (through the 5 senses (altho mainly sight, sound)). This gives a ripple-effect as first 1) everyone around you get affected by what you do (just as you get affected by everyone around you) and 2) those with highest sync to you first react, and those closest in sync with them react to their reaction. This way, we are all connected — but most so with those we share physical space in this moment.
Awareness of connectivity of micro expressions
Your perception & reactions (which are expressed) can increase/decrease with your awareness of the moment. The more aware you are, the more you understand your own reactions & expressions (as a node in the connected space)— as well as that you can increase the perception of what everyone around you is expressing. Somebody reacting very short time-period (less than a second) after you made an expression is high-likelihood (although we primitively assume 100% (or main-stream if ignoring these theories – 0%) correlation) to be more in sync with you (higher value on the expressions you do). This is a basic fundamental how humans work. Operating in the high awareness is… (with no further words to describe whether its good/bad for any reason (ex. increase social skills (likely to do, since at least high social awareness)) interesting.
Micro-expression Awareness as a hobby
A concept I love. Being with a woman and talking about Being. Being present in a social situation. Pointing out micro-reactions and discussing those with the human performing them. Aware of existence (perception, reaction, expression). Time feels longer. So much around us to perceive. Interesting as the whole cloud of awareness — or fully grasping another agent’s expression and staying in the perception & own reaction of — or being aware of the never-ending reaction-chain. Are we on the same page?
Two conscious individuals can approximate but never fully reach same perception of the world
Googling Social Awareness
As you might have noticed from the above writing style, I am writing this in an presence of high social awareness — which I’ve upkept since lunchtime half an hour ago. I was planning to write this article since, and spent a good twenty minutes on it already. This moment I will leave the Medium.com Editor to go to google.com/search?q=social+awareness.
Spending 30 seconds on the SERP (search engine results page) none of the results seems to be corresponding to the definition I’d like to give:
Micro-movements in the Moment — prior to / indifferent to any language is expressed
Thereby, the term Social Awareness is too broad. It involves complex linguistic concepts (ex. group-feelingarticulated by Karl Marx (social consciousness he calls it — although the use of consciousness in this concept is more on a societal concept level than on a human-brain experience level).
Why not try Microexpressions? Does this term apply? Yes — from early on I had a sense in the back of my head this was the right term, but I didnt want to give up on my unique thinking into an already well-developed concept ^^
Lets dive deeper into Microexpressions. [Google SERP]
Paul Ekman is the main contributor to the scientific knowledge of this theory. I actually read one of his books as a teenager. Telling Lies(understanding when someone is lying) certainly influenced my experience in the world. I remember seeing signals (like rapidly looking away with the eyes avoiding eye contact, sudden facial expressions lasting less than half a second before returning to deliberate expressions). Back then, and still today, it is impressive to tap into the experience of picking up microexpressions. It takes plentiful of more energy being that immersed into other’s reactions, but it also gives energy when you can exchange deep positive energies with peers.
Microexpression Awareness
We finally got the term we’re looking for. And so I’ll use that for the title.
I hope you learnt something — and increased your awareness.
Yin-yang is often the counter-argument against pure positivity. But truly understanding yin & yang makes you see that misapplying it to 50/50 is wrong — the meaning is to have Balance. But enough with ancient philosophy.
Nowadays we know that narratives and our inner-talk are shaped by the complex environment we are in. Our deliberate efforts can improve us — and we can deliberately attempt being entirely positive.
Even the most devestating storylines can be shed light on:
1. The rise of authoritarianism and polarization
The most negative current trends is the chaos in political & geopolitical landscape. Election of Trump, the reaped reward of China’s long-term game, the vulnerability of open Internet and Liberal Democracies.
All this can be seen in positive light. I have enough examples for myself, and you can form your own.
Ex. Trump showed how outdated most of Representative Democracy is, China is showing (some positive) alternative ways of governing society (although in my worldview: net negative), the vulnerability of social media will lead to Identity Verification, which will enable more trust > intelligence > well-being.
2. Nuclear weapons exist
.. but we didn’t blow ourselves up during Cold War — and the probability that we blow ourselves up in the future is reduced considering we didn’t do it for so long in the past (common sense + articulated in probability theory as Lindy Effectby Nassim Taleb. Also, since 1970s — no more than 7 states got access to nuclear weapons.
3. Climate Change will bring lots of innovation
The world is gathering more and more around the topic. Belt and Road initiative is completely unnecessary — the greenest thing to do is not build it.
As we are all effected by it, we will push more and more combating it. The trend to social entrepreneurship has heavily accelerated past decades.
Carbon Removal Technologies, Renewable Energies, Sustainable Consumption and much else are positive trends so climate change might not become a serious problem.
4. Social collapse might never happen
The acclaimed “inevitable” collapse of societal institutions (in part fueled by above trends) might not happen, as with Lindy Effect, doomsday predictions has existed for millennia (god-made til 1800s, then capitalism & politics) but we are still here in 2019 — which assumes we will navigate future difficulties as well. This said, we should never discount the risk and danger of such tail-event and continue acting with highest responsibility avoiding such danger.
Dear fellow humans, You are (with 95%probability) not a farmer. Emotional intelligence are well-documented on Internet. In past, we could go around angry/frustrated for a lifetime — while today we get pointed out if being too negative, and we can Google how to improve our well-being. It’s easier than ever before to shape your external environment Dear males, you don’t have 10%risk (as hunter-gatherers) that your death is caused by violence from other human-beings. Rather, its about 0.001%.
Final point: in my worldview — we have higher well-being than ever
Life in past history was tough. Toughness brought hardship which we admire, but that life also brought lots of struggle. Although we hear about mental struggles today, there is very low probability that you as an individual struggle more today than you would if you were born earlier in history.
Enjoy life, and improve your well-being by increasing other’s wellness
