Thoughts on 2020
Welcome to the 2021 edition of my blog. I thought I’d start by sharing my review of the 2020 year, and also share some new insights that I found in my journey.
2020 has been a year where everything changed….however the change from my perspective is not what you are expecting. Some of you might know that Jess runs an interview podcast called “French Voices“. This podcast gives her a platform to talk to many interesting French people. Back in August 2020 one of her listeners put her in touch with a lady who is a medium from New Caledonia. Coming from a science background, I’m a huge skeptic of anything “woo-woo”. Not that I don’t believe there are things outside our realm of understanding but I’m very apprehensive to say that things of the supernatural exist without scientific proof. Jess and I are sort of on the same level about this, that is to say we’re not religious or follow any religion.
Anyway getting back to Jess’s interview with the medium, half way through the interview the lady starts becoming very distracted and is unable to focus on the conversation. I’m guessing it’s like having both my kids talking to me at the same time. And the reason for this is that Jess’s dad was talking to her at the same time! He had died suddenly more than 10 years ago. Anyway fast forward to the end of the interview, Jess comes into the kitchen where I was hanging out and goes “I believe everything that she said”… So that immediately raises a number of questions in my mind. What happened, how do you know it’s him, How do you know she’s not a fake, did the light flicker on and off, is it like in the movies, etc. And it was no way to discredit what happened; it’s just out of human curiosity. And the answer that Jess gave me was not what I had expected. It was him because of the language that he used, the humor in his sentences, and in a sense finally given Jess closure. And no it was not as scary as I thought it was, it was just a messages of love. Following that interview, there were a number of curious and coincidental events, where he basically let her know that he was still around.
It made me think, made us both think, what is life? What are we all really? Where do we actually exist? Are we just pure energy that exists in the quantum realm and beyond? Is life just a virtual reality simulation as Elon Musk has said. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not helpful to dwell on these questions as we probably won’t have answers. For me I’m still the same person but this revelation has probably come through in my writing at times. And I have more of a sense of appreciation for the present moment. And I’m not writing about this to convince you that there is an afterlife as you maybe too many degrees of separation from what had unfolded. It’s more to say that in the end, no matter what happens, I can say something that I’ve always believed. It is that “Everything is going to be ok“.
The current state of the world.
This is the state of the world as seen through my lens informed by the books I’ve read, conversations that I’ve listened to, and things I read along the way.
I would highly recommend you read books if you want to get a glimpse into where potentially where we are headed, and where we currently are in the timeline of events. It feels like you need to read a few different books and put them together to make sense of everything. The book I’ve most recently finished is “The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age” by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. Published in 1999 at the beginning of what was going to be the dot com boom. It’s also recently come out on Audible with a preface by Peter Thiel. The book basically predicted the changes the Internet has brought into our lives. Most important of which is it made the case for a digital currency native to the internet based on cryptography, which to say it predicted the coming of Bitcoin 10 years before the white paper came out.
The book made the case that with the coming of the new age, and a new currency based on cryptography. There would eventually need to be a separation of State and money. In the same way as how we had separation of Church and State, which in France is called Laïcité. The state shouldn’t have the ability to print money. And it goes through the history of how it was actually the church that used to make the laws (think of Thou shall not steal). That the church got to big with too much corruption. That power the church held was made obsolete with the invention of the printing press, lowering the cost of disseminating information. All of which is pretty much what’s happening right now with money and state in this new age of open digital currency.
Over time there will be a reckoning with all the money printing that’s been happening, and that society will need to pay with their future prospect.
The book also predicted a push back from central governments as they struggle to deal with the Information age. The changing on how we listening to our music, and consume our news and communicate. It also foresaw the assault on individual liberty by central governments, the assault on our privacy with laws that try to break the maths of encryption. There is no reason for a government official to have a look through on how I’m spending my money, or individual companies are spending their money, for that will give someone with connections a competitive edge and lead to corruption. We are also at the end of how far democratic governments can scale on a global level as they struggle to deal with issues that affect us on a global level. It is also to say that the Nation States we have today is not something that existed even 100 years ago in parts of Europe. Remember the Austria-Hungary empire? Or the Weimer Republic?
Does that mean there won’t be governments anymore? Well no, there will always be a need for government for the protection of its people. But that does mean that governments will need to shrink itself to survive. It compared the government to companies, in that there are 3 type. A company that’s run by a proprietor or owner (eg. North Korea and other non democratic governments). There are companies run by employees for employees which is how we can view all western democracy. And then there’s companies that exist to serve its customers. Which is the model that governments will need to move to to survive. They provide a service and we pay for that service. There will be rough times ahead when push back occurs from the State. We live in a world that is more divided than ever, looking at what has been happening in the US. It absolutely is “unpresidented” times with the de-platforming of a current sitting president from social media. Whether you like him or not, is not the question, it’s more a question of does it go against the 1st amendment of the US constitution that advocates for freedom of speech.
Maybe society needs to progress to a liquid democracy in a Game B society. It’s the suggestion that makes the most sense from what I’ve come across so far.
The other things I’ve been thinking about is the move to the information age will be different from the industrial age. In that in the industrial age all of society had jobs, with the information age, not everything will be able to master to the shift to working in an information environment. And we can see that unfolding right now in the midst of a pandemic. As more and more of our work get automated, there will be a divide that happens between what has been called the “cognitive elite”, and the rest of society.
As we move deeper and deeper into the information age the thing to keep at the back of your mind is to keep upgrading your skills, keep learning, pursue what you are interested in. You want to purse things you are interested in and things that you can carry across different roles and industry. The joke we have in javascript land is if you knowledge is 6 months old, then it’s pretty much ancient. As I have said before, I’m fine with being made redundant, but what you don’t want is to be made irrelevant. You don’t want to be the cotton weaver in the age where we moved to more industrialised methods of producing cotton.
Education needs to be democratized, it gives every child a fair advantage if everyone has access to the best teachers. You can see this happening on platforms such as YouTube. There’s a movement called the unschooling movement, which I find interesting, it teaches children to direct their own learning. Which is what we do as adults when you leave school, you need to have that drive to keep learning stuff.
It’s not to say that you need to learn to code as I don’t believe everyone has the ability to think that way. And the only way to know if it’s for you is to have self-awareness of yourself, and failing that is to give a really good go yourself at building something from scratch. (think – making a cake). Watching some YouTube videos, taking some tutorials, going to some classes is not enough, you need to put yourself out there and gain the experience.
School in it’s current format is just a place to socialise, and learn to follow rules. It teaches you nothing about self directed learning, dealing with your emotions, money – how it works and how to manage it, curiosity, imagination. That’s something that on the back of my mind as my kids enter school age.
Evolution is no longer something that happens at a biological level. Evolution in our society now happens at an ideas level. Ideas come together and have sex with each other to produce new ideas, better ideas. So go out and share your ideas, it will make the world a better place for all of us, our kids and future generations. And if you think about that, it kind of puts a spotlight on current patent laws, and how they hinder the advancement of society as a whole.
The other books I thought worth reading is the Rational Optimist by Matt Ridely. And the main message is that humanity will find a way. Coal and plastics have a place in the world and has helped us scale to our current world population. Biofuels such as ethanol which involves growing sugar cane to produce these fuels require more energy input, land and chopping down trees compared to coal, so that make it a possible mis-allocation of capital when fighting climate change. But in the end people tend to take the current situation and draw a straight line out into the future and discount future technological advances.
Finance and Economics
Bitcoin is now trading at over $51,000 AUD or close to $40,000 USD. All time high. Sit back and let that sink in. We are in the middle of another bull run. Should you buy bitcoin. And to that I don’t have an answer. You need to educate yourself and make that decision for yourself. That’s the advice that I have for you the reader out there, the conversation that I would have with family member is very different….
Why Bitcoin could be banned and criminalized.
Housing prices need to be maintained at all cost, we are now paying foreigners 50k to buy houses in Australia.
Chamath and Andrew Yang had an interesting chat, we should be funding people to work at smaller companies, at startups. Also check out the conversation between Raoul and Chamath.
COVID
We are at 45 active cases in Victoria. 199 active cases in NSW and of course there’s talk of a new virulent strain (just like in the pandemic board game!)
The world is at 23,669,475 active cases, and 1,936,403 total deceased.
There’s some long term effects on COVID such a lost smell and taste that we are not sure if it comes back or not. It has happen to a family friend in France, and I’ve also heard it happen to other people. That would be terrible to not know if you are eating bread of cardboard.
Tech
Update on my tech adventures. I’m missing a CPU and a motherboard for my new computer. those items are out of stock everywhere. All other parts are either here or on it’s way. Also I manage to get a new keyboard! The Logitech G915, it’s wireless, it has RGB lighting, it’s low profile, it’s got tactile switches, and it’s the best thing since sliced bread!! My typing speed has gone up by 10-20 word per minute. Excellent keyboard if you after something high end, it makes this really nice typing experience. However the issue is that it’s not cheap. I would probably consider the Keychron K1 even though it doesn’t have a Pause Break button, you can escape out of macros by pressing ESC ESC twice. Generally the quality products in the computer sector are found in gaming grade components, which then get filtered down to mainstream stuff.
I for one welcome our new robot overlords. The company Boston Dynamics was recently sold to Hyundai.
Ledger who produce a hardware wallet was recently hacked and there’s a lesson for all of us. Don’t give out your real name. Don’t open links that you get by email, email is the most insecure thing ever. You can check if you’ve been hacked on IntelX. It also shows what information was leaked, ie I found my old password on one of the leaks. You should obviously change your password on all services that has that password if you’ve been hacked. Or better yet use a password manager like Bitwarden.
Links and Stuff
List of commonly mispronounce words.
Wind power comes with many downsides that needs to be solved. Like what to do with those turbines once they come to the end of life.
Here’s a motivation video for you – Don’t pick up your phone in the first hour of the day. Have a great week.
(I’m sure there’s many grammatical errors in this piece. And there usually is before Jess goes back through and kindly lets me know all the sentences that didn’t make sense.)