Category: Essays

I have always enjoyed witty sayings and statements that make you pause, think or laugh because of their cleverness. I remember way back when I was still teaching (there was no internet then), and whenever I would come across something interesting, I would write those in a journal that I kept.

Later on, I compiled these quotations and typed them up on a page layout software called Pagemaker, printed them out on board paper, then cut them into small 4×5 cards. I would shuffle the cards, pick out one, and pin it on my corkboard at the faculty area where it would stay for a few days until I got tired of it, and I would pick another one to replace it.

Then the internet came along and memes became popular, and people would post quotations along with who said them. I noticed some of them were from my old collection, but sometimes they were attributed to other people.

There was one time when an entire speech was misattributed to the famous writer, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. If you’ve been around long enough, you’ve probably read it or heard about it also. It was supposedly delivered by the author as a commencement speech to the M.I.T. class of 1997. The speech spread like wildfire via email (social media being virtually nonexistent at that point in time).

Australian film director Baz Luhrmann got the idea of using the speech in the hit single, Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen). When he sought out the author to ask for permission to use the words, he found out then that Vonnegut didn’t actually write the speech, but a Chicago Tribune columnist named Mary Schmich.

It turns out that many famous quotations have been misattributed or even misquoted. Perhaps the original was a bit bland or dated so someone sought to make it more poetic.

For example, the famous line “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” is guilty of both. Do an image search for this phrase and you will see various memes. Some attribute this line to Lao Tzu and some attribute it to Confucius. The truth is that neither of them actually said this line. The original sentence is found in the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu and it translates roughly as “the journey of a thousand li begins beneath one’s feet.” (The li is a Chinese unit of measure and a thousand of them converts to roughly 400 miles).

So the exact original phrase would be something like “The journey of 400 miles begins beneath one’s feet.” Then again, that wouldn’t look as good on a meme.

Sometimes, a person is quoting someone else and that person is attributed as the source of the quote. For example, do another image search for “Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school” and you will see many memes attributing this quote to Albert Einstein.

The truth is Einstein was not the originator of this statement as he was only quoting someone else, in and this case he did not name the person but just called the person as “some wit.”

Here is the passage as published in On Education: Excerpts from an address by Albert Einstein to the State University of New York at Albany, on the occasion of the celebration of the tercentenary of higher education in America, 15th October, 1931:

If a young man has trained his muscles and physical endurance by gymnastics and walking, he will later be fitted for every physical work. This is also analogous to the training of the mind and of the mental and manual skill. Thus, the wit was not wrong who defined education in this way: “Education is that which remains, if one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”

The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations and the Routeledge Dictionary of Quotations both attribute a slightly similar phrase “Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught” to George Savile, Lord Halifax as far back as the late 1600’s, but no actual textual reference can be found.

If you are interested in more of these stories, you can pick up The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes. And remember, as Abraham Lincoln once said, “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.”

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

I turned on my laptop to start this article, and found out there was no internet, which meant that I couldn’t scan my bookmarked articles that I found interesting during the past week, to jump-start me on a topic.

So I began to reflect on how, the internet has taken over a major part of our lives in a span of a little over 10 years. Yes, there was internet way before that, but mass adoption of it only began a little after 2005 or so. I know because I’ve been using the internet ever since it found its way to the Philippines in 1994.

I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time. I was in college then and my school and department was the one spearheading research and development in this field. We were one of the first gateways out of the country and into the world. Everyone was excited and our professors were ecstatic and even had us learning Linux.

In those days, you did everything by typing on a command line. If you’ve ever used the MS DOS prompt on your Windows machine, that’s how it was. No windows, no buttons, no wizards. You had to learn commands like telnet, ping, ftp, or finger. I remember sending my first email to a stranger in another university halfway across the world and was delighted when I got a reply.

At that time, the school allowed us to off-campus access their server via dial-up. I got my dad to buy me my first modem. It was a mid-range modem running at pretty decent speed of 2.4 kbps. Yep, that’s a k which stands for a thousand. I was connected to the internet at 2,400 bits per second. For comparison, typical DSL speeds today run at around 3-5 mbps, or millions of bits per second.

The web was still at its infancy back then and I could only catch glimpses of a graphical interface and a web browser when I peeped inside the faculty area. Only the school had speeds fast enough then to accommodate such a luxury.

And then I discovered online gaming with MUD or Multi-User Dungeon – a role-playing game loosely based on the rules of Dungeons and Dragons. You basically chose your race — human, dwarf, elf or whatever else the particular MUD you connected to offered. Then you roamed around the world, kill monsters, and meet other players — very much like today’s online games, except that it was text-based. There were no fancy graphics or animations. You had to read everything — the description of the room or the monster, and you had to type out all commands like “go north” or “kill griffin” or “get lantern.”

It was fun and addictive and I would often play in the computer labs, borrowing my classmates access cards, as we were given only a limited number of hours (and they rarely used theirs anyway). At home (I stayed with my mom’s friend who was kind enough to put up with me for a year), I connected to the school via my 2.4 kbps modem, but the catch was I could only play from midnight until around 7am. The phone lines in that part of the neighborhood was old and if I played anytime outside that window, there would be a lot of garbage on my line and I couldn’t connect properly. I had to be awake when everyone else was asleep.

When I graduated and came back home to Davao, I was dismayed to find out that there were still no internet providers. I went cold turkey for months before an internet cafe called Weblink opened and started offering dial-up subscriptions. I bought a new modem at a higher speed. No more 2.4 kbps, I was now surfing the web at a blazing 9.6 kbps.

It wasn’t long after when modem speeds went up to 28, then 56 kbps, and so on and so forth until today, when we almost take internet speed and availability for granted. Well, not entirely for granted as one can still see people ranting on social media about whatever internet provider has failed them again. But the point is, they were still able to go online somehow so that shows there are more alternatives and ways to get connected.

The internet has vastly changed the way we do business, and has even spawned businesses based on it — ride sharing with Uber or Grab for example, or AirBNB, or retail with Amazon or Lazada. There are people who can literally live anywhere and work anywhere because their whole business model is online. Even currency is now being fully digitized with bitcoin and the hundred other cryptocurrency “experiments.”

According to a 2011 survey by AGB Nielsen Philippines, 43.5% of Filipinos were connected to the internet. I would say that figure is much higher now. Even your friendly neighborhood sari-sari store owner or security guard or janitor is on Facebook.

No internet? No problem. Let me just turn on my phone’s data and mobile hotspot, and voila, I’m back in the game.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

“Stupid,” “mindless,” and “idiot” are some of the words we hear when we come across arguments in social media like Facebook or Twitter. In the many years that I’ve been on social media, I see these words (and some more colorful ones) a lot and have been on the giving and receiving end of them in my own arguments. I rarely argue now though. People will believe what they want. And to those whose opinions I really care about, I can always approach privately or have a cup of coffee with them to discuss things in a less hostile atmosphere.

A recent study by Schroeder, Kardas and Epley published in the journal of the Association for Psychological Science underlines the importance of the human voice, and why its absence tends to dehumanize the opposing party. The idea for the study came when one of the researchers had the experience of reading a politician’s speech in the newspaper, and then hearing it replayed on the radio a week later. When he read the speech, he thought the politician was an idiot, but when he heard the same speech, he thought it was actually quite reasonable.

They then conducted 4 different experiments on 300 people, by letting them read articles or hear speeches on various polarizing topics and getting their reactions to these. The results were the same in most cases. Respondents tended to have a negative impression of those they disagreed with, but these impressions were softened when they heard voice clips or watched videos of the same.

The research concludes with the idea that a person’s voice gives a humanizing aspect to the ideas behind it, that “a person’s speech communicates his or her thoughts and feelings…beyond conveying the contents of a person’s mind, a person’s speech also conveys mental capacity, such that hearing a person explain his or her beliefs makes the person seem more mentally capable—and therefore seem to possess more uniquely human mental traits—than reading the same content…These results suggest that the medium through which people communicate may systematically influence the impressions they form of each other. The tendency to denigrate the minds of the opposition may be tempered by giving them, quite literally, a voice.”

This explains why it is so easy to dismiss opposing arguments on social media, especially if one doesn’t personally know the other person. It’s so easy to think of the other person as stupid, idiotic, bobo, or tanga (oh and remember that whatever you think of the other person, he thinks the same of you too). Continuing the argument usually degenerates into name-calling and ad hominems rather than debating the issue itself.

I experienced such a few years back when I would go into heated arguments about religion on Facebook with a childhood friend. I had not seen this person for a long time as he has moved to a different part of the world. At first our exchanges were friendly, but as we got into deeper disagreements, I got more vicious. There were times that I would read what he wrote and I would literally be seething and would think unflattering thoughts about this person. How could he think that? What kind of reasoning is that? A monkey would have better logic, and so on. I would be so affected that I would rush my lunch or dinner so I can get back to my computer to type out my reply.

Of course, the saving grace was that I knew this person. I knew his background, his family, and a bit about his life. I knew he had the best intentions and so on, and despite our not communicating verbally, these were the humanizing aspects of our arguments. If I relate it to the study, it was because I knew this person that I somehow “heard” him speaking even though I was reading the words, and after a couple of years of back and forth, we finally decided to stop arguing on Facebook because it was going nowhere.

So the next time you see an idea worth arguing about, resist the urge to punch an angry reply on your keyboard, and invite that person to coffee instead. You’ll have a much better day, I promise.

 

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

Click here for Part 1

FM: So what is it about the blockchain that makes it the perfect vehicle for UBI?

ED: Well, the great blockchain experiment started with Bitcoin back in 2008, and if there was anything we learned from it, it’s that it is transparent and virtually incorruptible and unhackable. Being decentralized by design, it has no single point of failure and cannot be controlled by any single entity.

So if you go back to my objections about governments implementing UBI — policy changes, the possibility of corruption or cheating or manipulating the system — then you will understand how putting UBI on the blockchain is a perfect fit.

FM: Why did you choose to clone EOS?

ED: What I really like about EOS is that, unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, there are no transaction fees for using the blockchain. I mean, it wouldn’t do to build a token on a blockchain network where you would have to spend to receive an income. And at the start, the UBI token won’t probably be worth very much so you might even end up spending more in transaction fees than what you would actually be getting.

And of course, EOS’s delegated proof of stake (DPOS) consensus algorithm makes it very fast and scalable, which we would really need if a huge amount of people want to claim their tokens. And since it’s practically free, why wouldn’t anyone claim the tokens anyway? We already witnessed how Bitcoin went from being worth less than a cent to now being worth thousands of dollars. Even if UBI doesn’t go up to those levels, it’s still going to be worth something, and who would turn his back on free money?

FM: Why not just use EOS and build UBI on top of it? Why clone it?

ED: With a market cap already in billions of dollars even before officially launching its own blockchain, EOS has become quite expensive. If the UBI project becomes very large, we would need a large amount of EOS tokens to run the project, which would cost us maybe millions of dollars, something we don’t have at the moment.

And also, we don’t own EOS so we can’t really control the infrastructure on which UBI will be built.

But by cloning EOS, since the code is open-source and free, we create our own blockchain and the infrastructure, which is Enumivo, on which UBI will be built. And I want to continue creating and developing other projects on top of Enumivo, and I want the community to pitch in also and share their ideas and talents, so that we create real value for the blockchain.

FM: So it’s really about creating value from the ground up?

ED: Yes. Even in the token distribution, I decided to give the tokens away virtually for free, instead of having an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). Why? Because an ICO creates value only artificially. People will be investing on ideas on paper but which may not see actual implementation. And once the developers cash in on their tokens, they may not be as motivated anymore to make the project work.

But here it’s different. I have a core team of volunteers whom I decided to pay in ENU tokens for their contributions and efforts. These tokens aren’t worth very much right now but that motivates us to make this project work because there’s a reward we can look forward to later in the journey, instead of the ICO mentality of getting the money up front.

In the initial distribution, I estimate that around 100,000 people were able to receive ENU tokens for free, and we are still giving away tokens via bounties and other programs. What I want is for ENU tokens to really be scattered as widely as possible, and somewhere along the way, we will have people come and work with us, who believe in the vision, who will help concretize ideas, educate others, and even build applications on top of the blockchain, so that more and more people will use it and find it that it helps them in one way or the other.

This is how we create real value.

 

Disclosure: This writer is part of the Enumivo Core Group.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

Following last week’s discussion of the Enumivo project, this writer was able to conduct an online interview with the Enumivo developer, to discuss and expand his ideas about the project. Here is the transcript of that interview (FM – Freethinking Me; ED – Enumivo Dev):

FM: Thanks for giving some of your time for this interview. I’m sure you’re pretty busy now that the project has picked up speed and yet you still have a million things to do.

ED: Well, this is how it is. I believe I have a worthwhile vision of how society, the world, ought to be, and I’m glad to share that with anyone willing to listen.

FM: Let’s start with Universal Basic Income. This is a pretty new concept and not everyone is familiar with it just yet. So, what is it and how does it work?

ED: Universal Basic Income (UBI) is the idea that everyone is entitled to receive a fixed and regular income. This is unconditional, meaning there are no prerequisites, other than being alive and human, for one to receive that income.

Some proponents of this idea come from the premise that as technology advances, especially in the field of robotics, automation will soon displace many people from their jobs and they would need a basic income to ensure their continued survival.

However, I have a deeper reason for advocating UBI. I strongly believe that all the material wealth in this planet ultimately comes from natural resources as raw materials. Just by being a citizen of this planet, everybody has a rightful claim and a fair share to its resources, just as we have the right to breathe air.

I believe that poverty is a huge injustice to society. Somewhere in the world, some obscenely rich guy is having a big problem choosing between buying a Bugatti or a Lamborghini while in another part of the world, someone is dying of dysentery because he had no choice but to drink dirty water. Fast food chains are throwing their excess inventory to the garbage bin while people elsewhere are dying of hunger.

If you think about it, the world has enough natural resources to sustain every single person living today. I read somewhere that a very rough and conservative estimate of the total value of the world’s resources comes up to around USD 500 Trillion. There are currently 7 billion people on earth. So if you divide that, each person has a rightful share of around USD 70,000. But some people live their entire lives without even seeing half of that amount.

No one should die of thirst or hunger. Like air, no one dies because they are not allowed to breathe. People should have a share of the earth’s resources. It is a basic human right.

FM: That sounds like a utopian ideal. Will it ever work? How will it be implemented on a practical level?

ED: Well, yes at first it sounds very idealistic and we can immediately see many implementation problems. The early believers of UBI thought that it was government’s job to distribute the income. In fact, there are already some governments that have done small-scale testing of UBI like Finland and Alaska and they have shown quite promising results.

FM: Won’t receiving this income simply encourage people to be lazy because they are receiving regular dole-outs from the government?

ED: No, as I was saying, the initial findings from the experiments show that people do not stop working even if they receive UBI. I think this simply stems from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. When people have their physiological and security needs taken care of, they move on to fulfilling the next level (love and belongingness, esteem, self-actualization) which usually entails that they become productive and contributing members of society.

Now, the challenge is how to take this to a “universal” level which would mean for governments to take this to a national implementation, and later for different nations and governments to work with one another to take it to a truly worldwide implementation.

That is a huge challenge for any government especially since government officials change, and policies change, and there is always the threat of corruption or of cheating the system or of someone somewhere simply being uncooperative or not following the rules.

But then, we now have this wonderful invention called the blockchain, and it is the perfect vehicle for implementing UBI.

(To be continued…)

Disclosure: This writer was recently recruited to be part of the Enumivo Core Group as a volunteer.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.