How do we think about money? Money is perceived as a physical entity (when we imagine $ we think physical bank notes). But most money is not physical, it exists as entries in a DB. Money can be created at will with keystrokes from a computer. 2/14

Money, thus, isn't "real". It's virtual. People became acquainted with this in 2008 when QE was implemented to save the financial system. OR Russias Central Bank reserves were cut off from the world as a weaponized use of digital money. 3/14

If money exists as entries in a DB, it is controlled by someone and has the potential to be manipulated The money within the system (Fed reserve system) exists as 'Inside Money'. It's issued in the form of debt. 4/14

Credit/debt exists on the trust to pay it back. Even bank deposits are a promise for the bank to pay you when demanded (you don't own the deposits). Is there an alternative? Can you access or own 'Outside Money'? 5/14

For centuries, Gold has filled that role. Gold has the property of "no one owes you anything" - you own the asset. BUT It has holding / transport costs AND isn't programmable to adjust to economic circumstances. 6/14

Ben Bernanke (2004) said: "By allowing persistent declines in the money supply ... the Federal Reserve ... greatly destabilized the U.S. economy (in the 20's & 30's)" Not expanding the money supply in 20's/30's exasperated the Great Depression. 7/14

Regardless of your thoughts on Bernanke, a money supply should be dynamic to the economies needs. But, it creates a tension. We want a money that cannot be manipulated by those in power (real $) but also dynamic to the needs of an economy (virtual $). 8/14

Bitcoin and Ethereum exist as real money, in that if you own a private key with a balance, you own the coins. Ethereum ALSO exists as virtual money as it provides a layer of elasticity to be able to expand according to circumstances. 9/14

Layer 2's act as a mechanism for monetary expansion. In times of expansion, all forms of money remains the same, wETH == ETH. In times of contraction/discipline, people can retreat back to the original asset (ETH). 10/14

The difference between the current & Ethereum's system? The mechanism of control. The expansion/contraction of L2 money is created by individual agents acting in their own interest while presently a central authority determines supply. 11/14

The question is, what form of monetary governance gives us better results? Either way, Bruno makes the convincing case for the NEED for Outside Money that is programmable to a systems needs. 12/14

A final interesting point that was brought up: ETH is produced or burned based on it's service to the system. ETH is in service of the network, while the network is in service of BTC. 13/14

This last point was an 'ah-ha' moment as it fundamentally expresses the values of the network & the type of people they attract. I hope this thread was helpful. 14/14

Let's investigate how “time is speeding up” and see how what used to take decades/years is now unfolding in months/days (+ how that impacts our future).

1/

First, what's an idea? Idea’s can be thought of as beings (non-sentient) that float through consciousness.

Similar to a virus, their goal is to propagate and find new hosts.

Good idea’s change the world, bad ones can destroy it.

2/

They exist as a connective tissue between humans. When an idea is shared, it becomes the basis for cooperation.

Fictional idea's form cooperation: money, counties, corporations etc.

3/

Idea’s that are strongly held and exist in the lower level “Operating System” of humans (morality, religion etc) tend to create features that are incompatible with each other (and can't find compromise).

4/

Thus, when a person “infected” with a low level idea encounters someone they’ll try to spread the idea - if the other person contains a conflicting low level idea, conflict can ensue.

5/

The rate at which idea’s spread is limited by the bandwidth / connectivity of the idea to the person.

The less connectivity & bandwidth of information, the slower an idea spreads between nodes.

6/

The internet has increased the velocity at which people disseminate and receive information, with more people connected to the network, idea’s spread quicker.

"Software" can be downloaded faster to the person's "OS" which influences behavior.

7/

When idea’s spread faster, the feedback loop of decision making speeds up (given it's an idea one can act on).

From micro to macro, idea's spread rapidly leading to quicker decisions in individuals & groups.

8/

Faster rate of change means: shorter job tenure [parents stayed at a job ~20 yrs -> avg now is ~2yrs], companies grow (and die) quicker, political lines shifting in real-time.

9/

Consensus amongst networks is arrived to faster (in the context of markets: “elation -> BUY” - “fear -> SELL”) leading to increased volatility.

10/

Compound this with the advances in Machine Learning, we are outsourcing our need to make decisions: Hedge Funds run by ML algos, Gmail finishing our sentences, GPT-3 writing High School essays.

11/

Takeaways:

• Be discerning with idea's: does this create division between people? Does it upset me?

• If 'yes', discard immediately. As a node in the network it's your responsibility to share what is beneficial to others. Bigger following == more responsibility.

12/

• Wealth generation (and loss) occurs at a rapid clip. Be early & practice optionality to reduce downside (see: @nntaleb).

• Institutions by design, can't keep up with the rapid change of the markets (see: Fed relying on "past" (read: outdated) data) .

2/ Before we start, we’re about to navigate some challenging times.

If you think the world is crazy now, strap in. Don’t panic though, take solace in the creativity of humans and that good will prevail.

The world will be better off after the chaos simmers.

3/ Through this, I’ve discovered my life’s purpose: to be of service to humanity & help guide and provide light (even when it feels like there is only darkness). My DM’s are always open. ❤️

4/ It’s important to ground ourselves in the cyclical nature of creation & destruction. We’re in a period of destruction. Institutions will fail, currencies will falter, modern amenities that we’ve taken for granted will not be as readily available.

With death, comes new life.

5/ Re: predictions; will they come true? I have no idea (and hope not) as the suffering that will ensue is distressing, but the message must be delivered.

Now we’re primed, let’s move onto them:

4/ Xi will be deposed from power in the next 6-9 months. (This vision felt the most certain)

This will create extreme global instability. FX markets (current GBP & JPY price action is just the start) will be highly volatile creating major disruptions & mistrust in intl. trade.

5/ All liquidity will retreat to USD (more on that later), creating sovereign debt crises. Expect Arab Spring-esque crises all over the developing world as govt's default on debt.

6/ A leader closer to the ethos of Deng Xiaopeng will replace Xi w/ an emphasis on freedom & choice provided back to the Chinese people. Short term, China will be weakened, long term China and it’s people will come back stronger.

中国人民的权力

7/ The CCP will remain in power but closer aligned to a party for the people rather than the current regime (Xi is Mao 2.0).

The instability in China coupled with the on-going conflict in Ukraine + Europe’s energy crisis will make for a tough northern hemisphere winter.

8/ Expect:

• Global famine (see: @friedberg / UN: https://cutt.ly/HVDSfLG)

• Sovereign debt crises + rise of authoritarian leaders

• Riots

• Disruption to global air travel / borders closing

9/ Countries / leaders to be vigilant about:

Liz Truss: She is saying the right words but has authoritarian leanings (in the vision she had V for Vendetta vibes). If you're in the UK and crisis hits, be wary of any moves by the govt to exert control & power over the populace.

10/ Germany: will get hit the hardest by winter/the energy crisis. To the German people, be vigilant of any strong leaders promising sweeping reforms. Let the lessons of 70 years ago be your guide.

11/ I didn’t get much feedback on Putin / Ukraine war. While he is a catalyst that's unleashed a fire within Europe, his regime will go out with a whimper.

Unfortunately, his actions have (word) set Russia back a few decades. It will be a project to rebuild the nation.

12/ We are IN a US (information) Civil War. @balajis has spoken about the combatants.

Understand when getting engaged and liberally ignore & block. Combatants are like a mind virus, they'll either look to recruit or destroy (you) - protect yourself.

13/ How to prepare?

• Have compassion for your fellow humans; anything or anyone that spreads division, harms, or spreads a message that creates "us vs them" mentality, is the enemy

• If you are a leader, lead. Otherwise, look for leaders that espouse unity and understanding

14/

• Understand your information diet (see: @MichaelGuimarin for more info)

• Question your sources; media that pushes fear and division is not to be trusted

• Regulate your nervous system (I'll be putting out content on how to calm the mind / body); calm mind = better decisions

15/

• (Not Financial Advice!) The USD will gain in strength (until it breaks); 70% of the worlds debts are settled in USD, in times of distress liquidity goes to the USD (see: @SantiagoAuFund for the dollar milkshake theory)

• Find physical & online communities to connect with

16/ - Apply the golden rule ("treat others as you wish to be treated") and help others that are less fortunate than you. There will be suffering worldwide it's our responsibility to help.

• Humor; it's the health of the soul (comedy & dark humor is our shadow expressing itself)

17/ It is also our own responsibility to educate ourselves on what is happening.

I will be putting out resources on people to follow / books / videos to read/listen to (depending on how you learn), to help educate.

18/ If you've read this far, thank you. I'm of service to you and here to help.

If you found this useful please like / retweet & follow so I can amplify the message.

www.artcollective.live

It’s almost officially been a week since our team in Le Wagon initiated our final commits to Github, tuned up the presentation and shipped our app to the world. In what amounted to a frantic two weeks, we hacked together a working Auction House that would make our 1st Grade teachers beam with pride. Baby, we made it!

So how did we do it?

Figuring out the user journey

The first step before any code was shipped involved figuring out what our users needed. Art has long been a platform for the wealthy to invest their wealth (and well, get richer) which has gated off purchasing art, specifically in auctions, for the rest of us.

That’s where we fits in: democratizing access to art auctions while providing artists quicker access to liquidity (without losing 15–25% at sale). For art enthusiasts, access to art and being able to purchase art seamlessly (without needing millions in the bank).

At it’s core there are two user journeys:

Artist; enabling them to create a profile, add/list artwork and setup an auction to sell off artwork.

User; enabling them to create a profile, and find auctions plus bid on items.

Developing the Database schema

What’s a nerd post without some DB schemas? The standard Database (tech stack for project listed end of page) for Rails is Postgres which is open source DB suitable for our production environment (untested at scale but good for theMVP).

We opted for 4 tables (listed below) with the primary being the User table and 3 others (Bids, Artworks and Auctions) having it’s Foreign key within them. Users are able to create Artworks & Auctions and a separate JOIN table is created called Auction Items which has a one-to-one relationship with Artworks and is assigned to one Auction.

After an Auction Item is created a Bid will be created which will be assigned to one user (our auction style will be a blind auction where the bidder can only bid once).

User profile

Rails follows a MVC convention where Models represent the row in the DB (and an object within Ruby), the View is what the user sees, and Controller is where the logic is held.

In terms of workflow, Rails follows the convention of HTTP verb->Controller->View. Simply put, the request comes in — it gets assigned to a particular action within the Controller — the view is shown to the user which includes any data from the database or computation that is executed within the Controller.

The initial user journey started with a beautiful homepage (designed & executed by Josh Merrill), a truncated version can be seen top of the page. From there the user could enter a page to view all Auctions before being taken to their profile page (screenshot below).

Users were able to upload an image directly through the platform which on the backend uploaded the image to Cloudinary, created a representation in the DB via ActiveStorage and changed the users profile picture from the default grey box shown in the image. Snazzy.

The same approach was applied to Artworks which then showed up as an Artwork within the users profile.

Beyond the scope of the MVP, but it would be interesting to be necessary to be able verify the identity of the Artist and authenticity of the Artwork. This may be easier with Digital Assets such as NFT’s.

Auctions are the final step of the journey for the Artist (aside from bathing in tubs of cash Scrooge McDuck style). The Auction form asked for important details such as date/time when the Auction ends.

Auction page

The Auction page brings the Artist who created the Auction to the Auction page. Within here, upon request for the page it initiates an Action within the Auctions controller which assigns the Artworks that have been created to Auction Items. Once that one-to-one relationship has been created the Auction Items are shown in View for the page.

Outside of the scope of the MVP, the Artist would be able to choose which Artworks would be assigned to each Auction. As it stands, all Artworks that havn’t been assigned will be at Auction creation. Not an ideal UX.

A timer is also rendered on the Auction page leveraging code from W3Schools (https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_js_countdown.asp). Once the countdown hit zero, JS manipulates the DOM to show text telling the user the Auction is done.

Bidding functionality

Here is where it gets fun! Now inside of the Auction Item a user is able to bid on an Item. This is done via Web Sockets and StimulusJS.

The initial setup included creating a form within the Auction Items page which listened for a Bid (in place of where the green box), which was added to the Bids table as an entry.

This created the required functionality except the user would need to press refresh in order to show all the Bids. Enter Action Cable. Action Cable integrates Web Sockets into a Rails app (using Ruby code) to be able to have the server push data.

Action Cable works on a subscription format where a “channel” is created that “subscribers” (anyone who is on a particular page with that ID) will receive the data.

Now that the Bid has been saved and broadcasted, we need Stimulus to listen on behalf of the Auction Item page and broadcast to all Subscribers.

When the data is pushed, magic happens (“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”). Stimulus listens to the data as a Subscriber and injects the data into HTML which is rendered in real-time for the user. Neat, right?

The last step occurs once the timer ends. A POST request is pushed from JS to Rails which initiates a ‘change in ownership’ for the highest bidder. Rails returns a JSON object with the winners information and JS inputs via the DOM the HTML for the ‘congratulations’ green box shown at the start of this section.

And that’s it!

Conclusion

I personally learned a ton around creating an app (but have a lot more to learn). I’m looking forward to learning more around JavaScript and how to have the front-end interact with API’s (React, anyone?).

I also learned a lot about working in teams (GitHub takes the headache out of a lot of it, while adding some migraines in the process). I’d like to thank my team: Fred Clausen, Tempestt Woodard and Josh Merrill. It was enjoyable building with you all!

Stack

• Ruby on Rails

• JavaScript (StimulusJS)

• HTML

• CSS (Bootstrap)

• PostgreSQL

• Deployed on: Heroku

Sore knees. Leg pain. Gun shots. Fugitive on the run. Why am I here? A path through the misery of life?

The first mistake was thinking Twentynine Palms had palm trees. The sort seen with an idyllic movie backdrop as the camera pans to some A-list heartthrob casually puffing a cigarette in a convertible. The dream was shattered when I pulled into the Airbnb and realized trailer parks, not trees, would be the main attraction. It’s also home to a Marine base whose inhabitants on Reddit affectionately describe the place as ‘being deployed to Afghanistan without having to actually go there.’ I tend to agree.

I was stationed there for two days prior to the retreat and got my first dose of reality when Uber didn’t work. After 30 mins of staring into the abyss of ‘no cars available’, I prayed to all that is holy for something to show up. With a twist of irony I found a taxi company named Lucky777. My spidey senses tingled as they wouldn’t venture out unless my Credit Card number along with other obscure details were shared: address, the last 4 digits of my Social Security number, my mothers maiden name, which toothpaste I use (some of the details may have been fabricated for the sake of the story, but if you’re curious: Crest). After debating the man I came to terms that this was the only option, I gave in with the expectation I’d be skimmed for everything I had.

Thankfully a car showed but my fears about the place were confirmed. The cab driver, let’s call him Rick, detailed story after story of the characters in town. After hearing something about someone biting another man’s face in a fit of passion I asked him to turn around so I could grab my passport and computer. If I were to go down in a blaze of glory, they should at least be able to document the body and verify I’d over indexed on all things Apple. Millennial priorities.

The rest of Twentynine Palms was thankfully uneventful as the start of the retreat neared. I coordinated with a driver to pick me up and made the trip from Airbnb to the retreat center. As I ventured into what would be complete isolation from the outside world, I did what any digital native would do: allay their anxiety by furiously scrolling through reviews.

This popped up:

Cool cool cool. Anxiety now revving! While the risk of sitting still for hours likely has a low probability of death or psychosis (I think?), am I going to be the lucky winner and/or get converted into a satanic cult? The Uber pulls through the gates and the opportunity to turn back is now. Screw it, let’s do it.

After signing forms that repeatedly stated I would not be able to leave the premises over the course of the 10 days and surrendering my phone (be still my heart), I made a commitment that weird rituals aside, I would persevere for the 10 days. And so we began.

Days 1–2

A prerequisite for everyone on the course included adhering to ‘Noble Silence’ meaning no communicating with other attendee’s either verbally or nonverbally. What this meant in practice was going against thousands of years of evolution and awkwardly trying to unlearn all social norms. Watching two people try to be polite around who goes into a door first without communicating deserves its own late night skit.

The first couple days were rough; wakeup started at 4am with a gong (surprisingly much less jarring then a phone) and you were to be seated in the meditation hall by 4:30am. Initially, more fidgeting than mediation happened. If it wasn’t rearranging posture I was deep in calculation on how many hours, minutes and seconds until the course ended. Of course, it’s necessary to double check your calculations ad infinitum to maximize time burning. The next iteration of (mind movies) meant I had to revisit every conversation that’s happened in the past 15 years. Arguments were had and unsurprisingly I came out unscathed every time with zingers that my imaginary friends and strangers never saw coming.

In these opening innings I got insight into the mind in action. Like the ancient mystics described: monkey mind. One thing you notice is the repetitiveness of thoughts with the same story / reaction / feeling on repeat — thankfully some creativity was applied by the writers in my head to keep things somewhat fresh. The ongoing dialogues raged on (with the occasional reminder to focus on what I was actually there for) until the realization struck me that only a small percentage of conversations I’ve had in life have been with actual people!

These insights remained few and far between as I spent the majority of the time fidgeting in the hope that the friction created might generate enough heat to burn the place down and get out of there. Unfortunately, Ricky Martin is the only human on earth to create fire with friction from clothes so the sitting continued. Livin’ la vida loca, baby.

Day 3

The course follows a linear structure which builds up the technique with a foundation to develop awareness, concentration, and equanimity. The core pillars of Vipassana rest on awareness and equanimity, often synonymous as a form of mindfulness. It boils down to the ability to be aware of a bodily sensation (touch, feeling, emotions etc.) and not react to it. If you analyze your own life you’ll see that everything exists in a continuum of stimulus and response, much of which we’re not attuned with and react to unconsciously. String together enough of these reactions stored deep in the depths of the unconscious and you have a personality. An interesting thing to observe is when something happens, people’s response varies wildly; some are stressed to no end, while others are totally relaxed. At the surface layer you could argue we don’t have control of these responses (does free will exist?), and you may be right, but upon training the mind (what the skill of meditation is) we can at least develop a space between the stimulus and reaction.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

― Viktor E. Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning)

The first few days act as the foundation for the core technique (you guessed it, Vipassana) which started with a focus on breath. You’re instructed first to center on the passing of breath in and out of the nose before gradually moving onto the space between the tip of the nose and top of the lips. Here the goal is to be aware of each sensation as it comes up without craving (if it’s pleasant) or being aversive to it (if it is uncomfortable). What you naturally find over long periods is a whole range of feelings come into your purview, coming into awareness and at some point dissipating. Once you’re able to repeat to train this skill of observing without reacting while sitting, the idea is this slowly will train your reactiveness in day to day life.

This approach has resonated with thousands of people as there are centers all around the world. What’s amazing is it’s funded 100% by donations and all volunteer run; no participant is required to pay but if it’s within your means you’re asked to donate. The main teacher’s name is S.N Goenka who unfortunately passed away in 2013. His legacy lives on as the course still uses recorded videos to teach the theoretical elements of the technique and philosophy surrounding it. He’s a fascinating man as he started life as a successful businessman before getting severe rehabilitating headaches. He travelled the world going from doctor to doctor but couldn’t find relief. He soon after discovered Vipassana and as the story goes, alleviated the headaches and dedicated the rest of his life to spreading the practice. There are currently 225 centers on every corner of the globe.

Day 4

After making it through a few days the idea popped up that I’d figured this whole meditation thing out. Who knows maybe I’ll be levitating by the end of this? As the sessions went on I was able to consistently settle into a sit after squirming for the first fifteen minutes or so. Part of this process involved swaying back and forth which I did to get acclimatized. As I was mid sway, I got a tug on my shirt with one of the assistants politely asking me to stop moving.

At first this seemed like an innocuous request, after all I could have been distracting others. But this comment sat in my psyche as a seed before multiplying and erupting into an all out flame war in my head. “Who does this person think they are telling ME what to do?!” I took the fantasy argument outside of the meditation hall and paced around going back and forth. It finally reached peak incredulousness when I found myself imagining a scenario where I had to fight out (tooth and nail I might add) from the retreat center as, per the story in my mind, they were unwilling to hand over my belongings. In a fit of rage scenes of Rush Hour 4 played out with me kicking bystanders in the face to finally regain freedom. The number one rule is maintaining plausible believability and once the absurdness of the situation set in I started laughing. Alright, maybe I’ll give this whole Vipassana thing a shot again and even begrudgingly sit still.

This advice was actually the best thing this person could give (I thanked them at the end of the course). That evening, after this episode, we were told to engage in a “Strong Determination” sit — basically, meditate for an hour without any movements. After questioning whether I was physically capable of doing this, It turned into a transformational experience.

Everything was relatively straightforward until the last 20 mins (I MAY have peaked at the clock) when all of a sudden throbbing pain went up and down my legs. Staying true to the practice I opted not to move and just observe the pain. It became excruciating as my body started shaking with literally every fiber of my being telling me to move. Like the afternoon fit, my mind became a toddler throwing a tantrum with every profanity in existence coming to the surface. I felt like crying out of frustration yet was somehow able to hold the position. Then an incredible thing happened: the pain didn’t go away but there was a distinct separation between it and awareness. It was like inspecting the feeling of pain without being absorbed in it, analogous to being in a lab and watching something occur without being directly involved.

It was a powerful insight into the nature of existence. When something uncomfortable happens my first instinct is to change or avoid it. If anxiety or a disagreeable feeling arises I unconsciously pull up my phone as a means of distraction but as Carl Jung said, “what you resist persists.” While the feeling may be suppressed it has a habit of coming back with exponential force in the next go-around. Through dealing with feelings of direct pain I realized it wasn’t the pain that was the problem but the relationship and reaction to it. By just observing and not trying to change it, it became another sensation that eventually moved on.

Day 5

The halfway point of anything marks an interesting transition; you’ve made it through half of the goal/expedition/project yet there’s still substantial effort left to finish. Now, I would be lying if I wasn’t ecstatic that there were only 5 days left but also reestablished the intention to see this thing out. Day 5 was uneventful until the night meditation session (I seemed to have “breakthroughs” at night; put it down to being a night owl?).

While doing the technique, I scanned to the soles of my feet before feeling an uncontrollable surge of energy fire from the floor all the way to the top of my head. It was indescribable and felt like I’d been connected to either end of jumper cables with thousands of volts passing through. My heart rate shot through the roof and in the field of vision everything was vibrating, I was completely taken by whatever this was but also present to the situation. The thought quickly popped into my head: was I about to orgasm in a room full of strangers? There probably wouldn’t have been much competition for this being the most embarrassing event in my life so rest assured that because you’re seeing this text, everything and everyone was safe.

This happened a few more times in session and many more over the course, so much so that it became just another sensation to meditate with. It did illustrate something; as it was pleasant there was a moment of desire for it to happen again. Fittingly, Goenka spoke to this as the desire within life is not for external objects but the feeling that accompanies them. In this instance it was clearer than say a desire for a car as the object/feeling wasn’t abstracted away; it was after all within my body. I realized I’m addicted, like we all are, to chasing this. Be it a new phone, car, thing it’s not actually the thing we wanted but the partnering feeling. It posed the question, does feeling that temporal feeling of pleasure add to happiness or detract?

Day 6

Day 6 brought reality back into perspective. After the morning meditations and in between one of the breaks I heard what sounded like fireworks going off in the background. Now, having graced the streets of Stockton, CA during college (during those years it ranked as the 5th highest crime rate in the nation) I had become fine tuned to a ‘pop pop pop’ in the distance. Maybe there’s a shooting range close by? I mean we are in the desert after all. As we exited the next meditation session (about an hour after the sounds) a police helicopter was circling above blaring a recorded snippet over loud speaker: “Person on the ground, we’re looking for a missing person, 19 years old, black shirt & brown pants, please contact the Sheriff’s department if seen.” Twentynine Palms, the gift that keeps on giving. Noble silence was broken for a hot second when my neighbor said, “you know if I was on the run from the cops this wouldn’t be the worst place to hang out.” Thankfully, no additional guests joined our ranks.

Day 7–9

The structure of the day included 10 hours of meditation broken up by meal times and small breaks. The only structural change came in the evening where Goenka would speak for an hour or so in the recorded discourses. A comment he made in one really stuck with me. It incorporated ideas from western psychology and interestingly, quantum mechanics. Previously I’d mentioned the concept of being addicted to the feeling of something, not necessarily the *thing. *Goenka put the dagger right in the heart when he suggests the strongest addiction we have is the addiction to self.

Say we (the royal we in this case) blurt out a joke that is socially inappropriate (anyone else guilty of this? No?) and everyone not only doesn’t laugh but gives that look of “wow, he really said that.” Soon after that piercing feeling of shame envelops and I’m left replaying this until the end of time. Social psychologists call this cognitive dissonance as it goes against our own perception of who we think we are. Perhaps the software gets updated in our minds and others, and now we have the reputation of the ‘guy with the terrible jokes’. With the trait in place we now spend mental energy trying to live up to the reputation or change it. This applies to all the qualities of our personalities but yet we see it as so concrete.

In the book Moral Tribes (Joshua Greene) he runs through studies and examples showing that our test scores, temperaments, proclivities, even political leanings are dependent on the people and communities around us. Yet we assume that these traits are stable and revel in the praise when someone adores us and wallow in the depths of embarrassment when someone insults us.

The point I’m making is that the form of identity is created and maintained not only by our thoughts but the thoughts of others and is completely interdependent with them. Our identities continually brush up and are shaped by those around us and vice versa. While it may be disconcerting that our sense of self doesn’t exist in of itself, this is the nature of how the universe around us, specifically the quantum world behaves.

A book I recently read (Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli) argues that the irregularities in quantum mechanics occur because each piece of matter doesn’t exist in of itself but only has form due to its dependency to other particles (in this case quarks, the smallest known particle). In the same spirit, in Our Mathematical Universe Max Tegmark theorizes that in mathematics a number has value because of the interrelation between them. i.e two is only two because its relation between one and three. If this is the case, it would appear that everything in our universe from matters to ideas only exists because of its interdependence, not in of itself.

Which brings me to the concept of self; if the self we hold dear exists in a dependence of matter (brain & body) and thoughts (ourselves and others) does it really exist?

Day 10

Phew, finally here. Ten days of observing the mind, pondering the nature of reality and wondering when the f*** this thing is going to end. Noble silence ended on the tenth day and a change was made to the regular scheduled programming: on top of the regular technique ‘Metta’ was added. Metta is a Pali word (a language used in India from 5th century BC to the 14th century) that stands for loving kindness. When I initially saw this in my teens and early twenties I brushed it off as ‘soft’ and not relevant.

This changed when I started listening to Tim Ferriss’s podcast.Tim has been an influential figure who along with the guests and ideas introduced in his podcast, shaped how I view the mechanics of the modern world. In an episode he opened up about depression while going to college (which almost ended in him taking his own life) and how only after encountering the teaching of Metta it allowed him to move away from self loathing to acceptance and love. It softened me up to the idea but only as an intellectual curiosity.

There are two different modes of learning: knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is what is learned in books and wisdom is hard earned, lived experience. After going through my own bout of depression, Tim’s words resonated on a deeper level. It was no longer an academic experiment to ‘love and be loved’ but one of necessity.

It was a beautiful experience on that last day as memories of my mom, dad, family, friends and random people throughout life popped in my head. I realized how incredibly lucky I’ve been to have people that have been so kind and cared about me. It’s only because of other people who have done so much in my life that I’m able to exist in this very moment.

Once I felt this on an experiential level, it felt only natural to want them to be happy and remove the suffering in their lives.

Closing

Life is tough, there’s no doubt about it. It’s a continual struggle of dealing with ups and downs, disappointment, heartbreak, loss and everything in between. One point that becomes abundantly clear is the incredible resiliency of people. It’s clear to me though, that it requires community around us and a mental hard hat and training to deal with the inevitable storms that come. An interesting point emerged in this periods of introspection: all happiness and misery comes from within. A simple point thats easy to forget.

There is immense power in that as the Stoics realized. If your condition is self contained, that means there is the power to change. It’s my belief through this experience, that meditation (in whatever flavor) is a path out of said misery. Kind of like finding the code exploit in the simulation, it provides a path to actual happiness that everyone can take advantage of regardless of background, race, or religious affiliation.

If you’re going through a hard time, I feel you. Just know a) the feeling will pass and b) there is a path through.

If you’re interested in doing this specific course, go here: www.dhamma.org. If you’ve read this far, thank you, and I hope you found this beneficial or at the very least entertaining.

These observations have been seen throughout my network in what I’ve interpreted as growing distrust of institutions and what they’re being told. ‘Science’ can fall victim to these attacks as the leaders delivering the messages from organizations such as the CDC or WHO are associated as part of the failing institutions and thus discredited.

We see an exit from traditional institutions happening across the board, in Crypto, the rise of network based communities (WallStreetBets), and exits from centralized media platforms (Parler).

Aside from the cultural undercurrents there have also been well publicized cases of adverse reactions to the vaccines, including death. The question is, how dangerous are they?

As humans, we’re drawn to stories. It served us well when navigating the serengeti with our hunter gatherer tribes, illustrating the dangers of a saber tooth tigers and how we should probably avoid interacting with one. They convey emotion and allow information to be passed from person to person, generation to generation.

The problem is stories don’t always encapsulate risks in our environment. We as a species are inherently bad at understanding large numbers and deciphering the risk of a given thing.

With that I set out to dive into the data from the latest vaccine data in the US. Objectively as my biases will allow, what are the relative risks of the vaccines? Should I/we be concerned and are there any other insights to be gleaned from the data?

The following sections will lay out in order, what the relative risk of the vaccine is (using a couple benchmarks), the impact of age and comorbidity on vaccine risk and finally how each manufacturer compares with each other. The hope is that the reader can quickly determine how much of a risk the vaccine is to them.

Caveats:

• Core data gathered from VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System), which is part of the CDC and reports on adverse reactions to vaccines across the US

• Accurate as of May 1st, 2021

• Data was cleaned and formatted to derive meaning. In the process data could have been lost which may skew some of the results.

Relative Risk of the vaccine

Unless you’ve confined yourself to holing up at home or wrapping yourself in a bubble suit every time you leave the house, we assume a certain amount of risk when living. Some people have a higher appetite for risk like throwing everything on red in the casino or jumping out of an airplane with a pack of inflatable sheets on your back. That said, we typically observe risk on a relative scale.

If you know how dangerous a set of activities are, you have a relative scale to compare against and determine whether it’s appropriate for you to undertake based on your personal risk tolerance.

The image below was gathered from Nerd Wallet and highlights the causes of death and odds of dying of a variety of different activities. It’s important to note with any form of probability, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. These are macro averages designed to provide a general view for the purpose of this investigation.

For additional context, the odds of winning the lottery are a few orders of magnitude less likely to happen: The Irish Lotto is 1 in 10,737,573 & the Megamillions is 302,575,350. Truly an outside shot.

As the author is living in Australia (and it’s not included in the below) it felt appropriate to include the odds of getting attacked by a shark: 1 in 3,748,067.

The second table provides the odds of contracting COVID and dying from it, along with odds of something dire happening once a person gets the vaccine. It should be noted that the COVID odds were gathered from an independent source (https://19andme.covid19.mathematica.org/) which projected the data. It uses the authors personal information (age 32, no vaccine, w/ above average social interaction) to determine the risk profile.

The hospitalization odds was gathered by dividing the number of hospitalized patients from the dataset across all people that have been vaccinated. The death odds were gathered using the same approach.

It should be noted again, that this is an average taken across a large population. It’s well known by now that COVID disproportionately impacts the elderly and people with comorbidity.

The impact of age

The below bar charts represent 1) the total population of responses from the dataset (which could represent a patients minor reaction to something as extreme as hospitalization/death) by age range 2) frequency within the population of patients that got hospitalized by age range 3) the frequency of deaths out of the population by age range.

The two initial charts show that the 50–64 age range is most likely to have a response to the vaccine and even perhaps get hospitalized. The third chart is most striking however, as it shows the death rate amongst the elderly in a much starker contrast. From the ranges of 40–49 and below it appears to be a negligible quantity.

It should also be noted that to take a look at the frequencies. This sample is taken out of a total population of ~146 million people that have been vaccinated (at the time of writing).

Another angle to look at is the relative risk per age category of getting the vaccine and dying compared to contracting COVID and dying. Looking at the below data in just about every age category you are more likely (by 2 to 3 order of magnitude) more likely to die by contracting COVID. The startling stats fall in the 65–74 & 75+ age category where death rates are at 5% and 17% respectively after contracting COVID.

The chart is shown on a logarithmic scale to give a better showing of relative change between the vaccine and virus.

A striking thing about this chart is the risk of COVID to the 65–74 & 75+ age categories. The percentage chance of dying sits at 5% & 17% respectively which amounts to a 1 in 20 or 1 in 5 chance of dying should a person contract the virus. Considering this accounts for over 15% of the population extrapolating out, if the population doesn’t get properly vaccinated this could account for another 2–3 million deaths within the US. ( approx. 50mm of pop * 0.05).

Comorbidity and its impact

It’s of no surprise that comorbidity play a significant impact on the recovery of any disease as it puts the patient in a compromised position to start. With COVID it’s been well documented that age and prior conditions weighed heavily in people struggling with dealing with the virus.

It is no different with the vaccines. Across the population, 15% of people die due to heart complications. Within the data close to 30% of patients who died from vaccine based responses were noted to have heart complications.

The first word cloud below is taken from the list of patients who were hospitalized. The larger or bolder words indicated a higher frequency of occurrence.

This is shown in the word clouds with ‘heart’, ‘hypertension’ and ‘htn’ showing prominently. Quite a few of the high frequency words also coincide with older age brackets (including dementia and osteoarthritis etc.) .

The second word cloud is taken from the segmented data set of patients who have passed away.

Comparing risk of different vaccines

Since the delivery of vaccines to the general public, there have been well publicized cases around various vaccine manufacturers that have brought question marks around the safety and efficacy of each one.

One in particular, Johnson & Johnson (represented in the chart as ‘Janssen’) came under fire for reporting of blood clots (6 reported cases in the US). This led to the CDC & FDA to pause delivery of the J&J vaccine until further testing could be done. After subsequent testing it was concluded that it is safe and effective and the chances of blood clots appeared to be very low.

The below bar chart corroborates that (showing 0.012% of cases to have hospitalizations) but still shows a higher reported likelihood of a serious reaction compared to the other vaccines. The Pfizer vaccine has also shown based on current data to be the safest vaccine.

Conclusion

The context of this project was to do two things: provide an impartial look into the risk of getting the vaccine and a framework to make a decision around whether one should get vaccinated.

While we admittedly don’t know the long term impact of getting the vaccine the number one should be to eliminate the virus so more people (especially the elderly) are out of harms way and we can return to regular life. Based on the above, and what the data is showing, I feel that the overall risk profile for getting the vaccine (for any age) is relatively low.

Another key point to consider was mentioned earlier (within ‘impact of age’) that the risk of COVID to the older generations is unacceptably high. If 15% of the population has a 5–17% risk of dying that is a startling stat. The second order effect is that if that many of the older population are exposed and are hospitalized, it would overwhelm the health system and lead to a rise in deaths for normally treatable conditions.

With that in mind, and from observing the data, I personally feel very comfortable getting the vaccine (preferably Pfizer).

What are your thoughts?

Github for code: https://github.com/niznet89/covid-vaccine