Prot Asks: Ro about programmatic thinking, political discourse, and art as self-discovery

start recording. So, hello there. Thank you for joining me. >> Hi, thank you so much for having me. >> You're welcome. Uh, so let's start with a few basics. What is your name and uh what do you do in general? >> So, my name is Ro. Um, for a for work, I am a software engineer. I do uh C++ in software engineering and I do it for uh military systems. Right now I'm working on military simulation systems. So what we do um at the company that I currently work at which I started working here only um about a month ago. But what we do here is we design the simulation software and some of the math that goes into the engines that um determines say if you have an aircraft or if you have a radio or if you have a radar, you have a certain piece of equipment that you're going to be using out in the field. So when our customers uh which tend to be like the US military or the military adjacent things um when our customer wants to plan a particular mission they need to have a software into which they can throw these components be like we're going to place a radar here we're going to place our aircraft here this is where the this is what the communication is going to be between this this plane and this plane or however we need to have they need to have a to like simulate that mission beforehand and make sure that it's going to work or see if it's going to work and what their potential like threats or weather issues or um being seen like being intercepted, those types of issues. They need to be able to have a software where they can model that and simulate it to to see if like their mission will be successful. So, the company that I work for is essentially helping develop some of that sim simulation software and they write a bunch of their own models um for either aircraft or for radar or for radios or for any uh component that might be out in the field as well as uh the math that goes into deciding what the interaction between them would be. So I basically work on a combination of both developing the models as well as the communication or like the interplay between uh several parts of the program. Um and eventually our deliverable is something that the customers can use to simulate a mission for whatever their requirements might be. >> And the customer I imagine is just the government or could there be other customers? So, um, the way that this works is usually there are multiple companies that work on software like this or even on the hardware like there's companies that produce the actual radios or the actual aircraft or however that is. So currently most of our customers are either government which is like the actual agencies that are like maybe intelligence agencies or military agencies that like plan missions or provide data to plan missions to the military or uh our customers can also be maybe some of the companies that are manufacturing these components like the ones that um require like let's say they're producing a radio and we say you need to have this type of communication protocol. enabled on that radio. Um because that's the only way that you'll be able to talk to this other one or however. Then that company will hire us or companies like ours to just come up with those numbers that we find using our simulation software and use that report those numbers back to them so they can use that to actually build their products. >> So it's a combination of government and companies that the government uses. So other contractors. So we contract to >> the government directly or we contract to other contractors. Long story short. Yeah. >> And I imagine there is like um a lock a region lock that you have to conform with like you can only cooperate with certain companies in a certain jurisdiction or it's a free market. So the way this works is um yes, we usually um the trade space is classified um on many different levels. Um for one, like anyone who's foreign is not allowed access to any of the information. Um and you have to be American. You have to have a you have to go through a bunch of background checks to be given a security clearance. Um if you um if you choose to work at a company like this um it's not necessary for all parts of the project actually for my particular uh type of work that I've been doing so far. Well it's only been a month but for any anyone on my team really we've had times when we needed to get access to the actual numbers only like once or twice because it's not it's not so you don't actually need the classified numbers to develop the models. you just need to like you can just use dummy numbers. So we actually don't know a lot of the times whether like what we're working on is going to be used for well we don't know where it's going to be used a lot of times we don't know >> what the purpose of the models that we're creating is except like this general big picture that I just told you. Mhm. >> So >> um so I would say that as long as there are no foreigners involved in the creation of these things um it is mostly um unclassified. The actual work that we're doing the use of it the users and what they use it for that part will be classified. Um they still do try to get us access to that level of information if we might ever need it but so far at least I have not needed it. So that's the >> Okay, that's good. That's good. >> What that means? Yeah. >> And it makes sense of course given how mission critical this is for there to be secrecy at all levels and to compartmentalize uh all the parts that you can and keep it as secret as possible. >> Yeah. Yeah. But I I am able to like as as I just did, I am able to talk about it without getting into the details to like >> to like some level. >> Okay. Okay. That's good. That's good. So, uh, I'm just saying this for the people in the audience if anyone's watching. Uh, so Pratt and I discussed this beforehand. I'm also a hobby artist, so I'm going to be drawing a portrait of him as we do this interview. So, I'm going to be looking down a lot and I'm going to have my pencil right now. I've just been waving it in the air, but I'm starting with this blank piece of uh paper and I'm going to be drawing a pencil portrait um as we speak. So again, I apologize because I'm gonna be like this a lot, but I will I will still be answering the questions. I'll still be talking. >> Oh, that's good. That's good. That's good. Thank you. And yeah, if I need to adjust my angle, uh you can tell. >> Oh. Oh, yeah. Of course. Thank you. >> Yeah. Yeah. Very well. Very well. So, of course, you just mentioned art and I want to get to that. Uh but first I'm curious how does one end up in that kind of uh job that you described here? Like is there some specific set of qualifications you need to have? Do you go through a certain school or is it general purpose knowledge of the kind of programming you are doing and that's enough like somebody from the industry for example could transfer to what you are doing without special training. Uh yeah, so I wouldn't say you need special training per se, but I I don't know if training exists like of that type exactly. Um I will say that so for me, the way that I landed my first job of this type straight out of college, this is not my first job. This is actually my fourth job. Um, but that's because the other two that I worked previously were like I worked one for two years, one like direct hire job for two years, then I worked two temporary contracts and together they made up about a year and now this is my fourth, which is another direct hire. So, I'm not working contracts anymore. That's another story. It it's it's not stable. It's not they don't care about you if you're a contractor. But anyway, the um so the first job I got, the one that I was a direct hire on that I just ended up getting by accident. So I just like interviewed I applied at as many companies as I could um straight out of college and this was the only company seeing that seeing as I had an EE degree and not a CS degree and I was only applying to programming jobs. I didn't have I didn't have programming classes on my resume. So most people, like most companies, would just look at my resume and throw it out because they were like, "This person's not trained in what we're looking for." But this one company, they actually had a pretty bad shortage of people and um they gave me a chance. So I got an interview and then I got the job after I got the interview. So that was the first interview I got where when you're out of college, they don't expect you to have much industry knowledge of anything. they just expect you to be able to code. Um, so they asked me >> they asked me like programming questions, C++ questions, just uh questions like do you know what say threads are? Or do you know what um even simple object-oriented programming uh principles like do you know what classes and objects are? Do you know what constructors and destructors are? So, they asked me like pretty basic questions in that interview and I believe they had me do like a little coding assessment where they just like had a um they had like a big program where there were like pointers and references and um random inputs and outputs to functions being passed back and forth throughout this whole document uh between like a few different types of objects. And they had like inside of their main method, they had like a couple of um calls that would like go into functions that would call other functions that would call other functions and that kind of deal. And then they had um a question at the end saying what would be the output of main. It was just something like that. So I could answer those. Luckily I got those right. Um and I was kind of shaky on some of it, but I did end up getting the right answer. Um, and that's pretty much all that they checked as far as like technical knowledge. Outside of that, there was like some um, behavioral stuff like just seeing if you'd be good a good person to work with, seeing if you'd be flexible to like learning from senior engineers what if you're like younger. seeing if you'd be, you know, willing to take criticism or willing to um even how how open are you to like speak about your own ideas or are you super shy or are you like more bold or you know ready to talk. So they looked at a bunch of different things like that. Pretty much just what any programming interview would look for. Um, and it was after I got that um that job that that first company I worked at started to do the paperwork um to like get me access to any classified information I might need. Um, and they did that for all their employees. So that was just like something they did for everyone who joined. And once you get a clearance, at least like the level of clearance that I have, I don't have the highest level. So like once you get a clearance, you don't lose it after you leave the company. You get to keep it for five years. So two two years or five years. I'm actually not sure, but I never I I was not >> out of a job for more than two years, so I'm I'm not actually sure. But um so you get to keep it and then the fact that you already have one um makes you very attractive to future companies when they're trying to hire you in the same trade space kind of just because um just because the fact that if they had to like process you again, get you like government investigated and verified and made sure that you're a trustworthy person, no criminal record or anything like that. even for that kind of thing, it costs them money because they have to like pay all the they have to pay for your background screening basically. >> So if if you can join their company and be like, "Hey, I'm a person you don't need to pay $30,000 for um >> then you're obviously much more hirable." So I guess like that was a very convoluted answer, but what I wanted to get at is it's not exactly training. It's more of just your background. And if you're really good and you ace your interviews still and you're like coming in at a senior level, maybe not not a junior level and someone thinks like a company thinks that you clearly know what you're doing, then they will definitely hire you from other sectors as well. It's not it's not >> hard and fast. It's not that you have to be from It's not like you can get into defense like straight out of college or you can never get into defense. It's not like that. But >> I see. Yes. >> Yeah. But I will say that since now I haven't been working for very long. I have three and a half years of work experience. I graduated in 2022. Um, but if you've if you have between like zero and five years of work experience, I would say maybe it's a little bit harder to make your way into defense if that wasn't your first job kind of, >> but not super hard. You still can. >> Did your background in electrical engineering um factor into their evaluation? You think like um the fact that you could demonstrate that you have strong fundamentals and you know things even if you don't know C++ per se you can reason about engineering problems in general. >> So did they think of that? Did they tell you anything about that? >> Was that a comment? So there hasn't at least in at least for me there hasn't been much um there haven't been companies that after my first job like they did like in that interview I did have a first like initial question like why why software if your major is e and I gave them some answer I actually don't remember what I said at this point it was like more than three years ago but um the later companies that I worked at like the all the other interviews that I did. Once you have a job, like once you're not in your first job anymore, at least my experience is that they don't really care what you did in college. They just they just want to ask what you did at your previous job. So there there might have been like a cursory glance over, oh I see you transition from E into software, but I don't think that anyone really would dwell on the EE part after that first interview just because they're like, "Yeah, some people change fields. They they just like they tried to like get an idea of how well I could solve problems just by asking about my work experience, not so much about college." >> Oh, fascinating. And do you need any kind of letter of recommendation from your former employee employer or do you get some certification like how does that work in general? Like how would they assess uh the quality of your job in the previous place where you work? >> Well, they they don't really you just have to talk about it. Like it's it's pretty much like any interview. Now, if they think that you're if they think that you maybe now I'm not sure if this is true because it's never happened to me, but maybe if someone doesn't perform like super well on an interview, but also isn't bad, like if someone's kind of middling and they want they aren't sure if they want to hire you, then maybe they might reach back out and ask for a letter of recommendation. Um, just like any other job really, I don't think that it's not a standard part of the procedure to ask for a letter of recommendation. That that's >> Okay. Okay. Very interesting. So um what I gather from this is that non-trivial part maybe the most important part after you get in is uh your quality as a person. So when they talk to you and they can see that you have a way with words and you can see that you can argue your case or maybe you appear confident or convinced. >> Yeah. not argue maybe that's the wrong way but uh to basically make your case >> and to be persuasive >> and to show that yeah you can handle things like you are in control of the situation >> I would say so there's definitely an element of that like I do think that once you're I do think that for most industry jobs like if you're not doing some kind of cutting edge research which to be fair most companies aren't you know like it's only like once you get to the top of the top maybe Google and not not even all of Google like maybe some parts of Google or Amazon or like Meta like I don't know just unless you're at the top of the top as far as like industry research kind of goes you're not doing anything you know super intelligent for your job that the next person can't do at least that's that's how I feel I feel like yes there are some people whose technical skills just aren't good enough maybe but like I feel like once you pass the initial bar. Like let's say you just have to be able to like from not being able to code to being able to code and being able to code decently. Being able to debug, being able to like know what's wrong with your code, being able to like look at someone else's code and be like this might be what's wrong. It's not that hard to do. That's at least that's what I think. I think that many or most people could do it if they just like trained for it or taught themselves or however if I would say that anyone who spends at least a year trying to learn to like code would easily be able to code. So I feel like the the skill set the technical skill set is actually not that that's not the part that you know makes or breaks whether you get a job. I feel like or even keep a job rather. I feel like what's more important is just how you are with people. Um >> in a lot of in a lot of ways. >> Yes. Yes. Of course. That's a big thing because if you are not a team player or generally if you don't fit in with the culture at the office there >> Yeah. >> Ultimately your technical acumen doesn't factor in like you can be the best but if you are a nuisance to work with >> people will just be like oh I don't want to be there. >> I don't want to deal with this person. >> Exactly. Yeah. So I do think that like that is as important or even more important in some cases than technical skills just cuz I feel like technical skill there's no shortage of technical skills. The technical skills are not that hard at least um in any of the jobs that I've worked and I have like a lot of friends who work in the same field or similar fields and they all say the same thing. It's like what what I do dayto-day is not that smart. That that's what that's what most people say unless they're like at the top of the top and they're doing PhD level research or something. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. I imagine if you are at that level then of course there is a distinction between coding and programming in the sense that you can design >> systems of systems like you are what's it called? A software architect I think is the description. Yeah. Exactly. >> Or a senior engineer whatever. >> So software architect is um >> Yeah. Yeah. You can >> No, no, sorry. It wasn't important. It was just my dad. Um, but yeah. Oh, hold on. >> Of course, dads can be persistent, >> but take your time. Take your time. No pressure. >> Sorry, I just texted him saying I'm busy. Yeah, I I I was I did try to keep like my phone was on silent, my uh iPad was on silent, but I forgot that I get calls through my computer. So, >> of course. Of course. >> Well, that's the level of integration that Apple strives for. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Uh >> so basically I was u making a remark that once you reach a certain level of technical acumen of technical skill then I think there is a distinction between coding >> as in just understanding code and programming as in being able to design systems of systems which have logical consistency and they are coherent. >> Yeah. I will say like I really >> I have struggled with people. I'm not the best with people. I have struggled with being uh too opinionated and like trying to push an argument for like something that I think is going to work better technically. um when I guess like something I've had to learn although I haven't had a ton of work experience but I've had like some and something I've had to learn over the course of what I did have what I do have is that sometimes you like the company has the budget and the hours to like implement a roundabout inefficient solution. So what helps you is to just not argue sometimes. Like you even if the way that like other people are suggesting is worse than yours, like I've kind of learned that it's better to not say anything sometimes. That's definitely something I've had to learn though and not something that to me naturally at all because I'm very much an efficiency pusher kind of. I'd be like the kind of person to be like this little thing in the system doesn't make sense and I'm willing to spend five hours arguing about it but that isn't productive I guess like when you're um >> yeah yeah because of course they are companies and what matters is a balance sheet >> then there is a business logic which overrides any other kind of argument. So if it doesn't make business sense, >> everything else ultimately will have to bow out. Say okay. >> Pretty much. Yeah. But >> but yeah, of course I can feel how it is for you. Like it's like, oh, this is wrong. >> Yeah. And that's why like um I mean I don't know. I'm I'm not the kind of person who's too too attached to my job. I am attached to the idea of having a job and being like self-sufficient. Um but Exactly. who I work for or that kind of thing. I do feel like unless you're at the top of the top, like I said, you're not doing anything cutting edge. At least most people aren't. So, um I would like to get into a job where I could like solve challenging problems all day, but it's just not not really realistic to expect that 100% of the time. Maybe 20 to 30% of the time you'll be solving a challenging problem, but it won't be all the time. >> Um >> yeah, makes sense. Makes sense. Sounds right. And also from what I can gather is that you have deadlines because of course there is a business logic. You have deadlines you have to meet which are from a programming standpoint arbitrary. >> They make sense from a business standpoint but >> programming wise it should be like when it's ready right there shouldn't be like a deadline. >> So have you um I I believe you don't currently work for a company. you don't work um like for anyone else. Um but do you have experience like working for companies in the past as well? Because you seem like you do. Um >> uh what was that like? >> Um little experience in that regard. I worked for an institution like a public institution like that was the big thing I did. So the European Parliament that's the big thing I did and then I was working as the equivalent of a contractor. So that's what I did the most. >> Okay. Okay. So what were you doing? Were you a software engineer or >> No, no. So completely unrelated. Me I was uh doing politics. So >> you were doing politics. Okay. >> But the the technical side of it. So not the public speaking side, not the voter fishing side, but the part that has to do with the technicalities. Like for example, there is a piece of legislation that has to go through parliament. uh the politicians have to amend it. They have to table their own opinions and say, "Oh, you know what? This is not right. This is not good policy. We should do this instead." >> So, of course, these amendments are processed by people who approach the text in a technical way. So, they don't think in terms of okay, how will I convince the voters? They think in terms of okay, what makes sense given our position, our ideology, our worldview. Same idea if you do position papers and same idea if you do uh there is this thing in Europe the European Union called the Horizon I forget how it's called the Horizon program but basically it's a way for the European Union to fund scientific research. >> Gotcha. >> And uh you apply for a grant and of course you have to uh write your application and again it's a technical document that a committee will have to review. Gotcha. Okay. >> Yeah. So me I wasn't doing anything related to programming and then circa 2016 I discovered Linux >> and I'm like oh this is a cool thing right. So I started playing around and little by little I learned to program and uh to write Emacs lisp eventually long story short. >> Okay. Okay. Yeah. >> But yeah my background is definitely not in programming engineering or any neighboring field. ended up here is kind of uh yeah off field how it's called. >> Yeah, I would say like I I'm probably like someone who's I considered myself a little bit off field but then I meet people like you who are like what they did and what they ended up like working in or trying to do with their lives is so different. So like yeah um like compared to that I'm just someone who stayed in my own field but um >> there is this uh a well-known programmer called Matt Maleng I think that's the expression that's the pronunciation um the author of WordPress or one of the lead developers anyway of WordPress >> and what Matt was saying in some podcast that I listened to many years ago is that uh even though his background is technical I think in yeah software engineering he benefited the most from reading history >> yeah the idea was basically that he had a more uh grounded appreciation of systemic phenomena like there is a system at play here and what we are witnessing cannot be reduced to just a part of the system you have to understand the big picture to understand the little things >> yeah yeah exactly yeah um I will say that like you you mentioned so I'm guessing your major was political science did did you go to college yes okay So political science I'm guessing >> it was uh actually multid-disciplinary. So it was polit politics of the European Union, economics and law. >> Oh, interesting. Okay, >> that was and me I focused more on economics rather than the others. >> Okay. >> But I did a little bit of everything. So it's basically a generalist. Yeah, that's actually really cool because I tend to have so I'm not I never had any formal education in political science or theory or economics or anything like that. I I I mean I took a couple of like economics electives when I was in undergrad, but that's about it. Um but I am very interested in in political systems. I will say not necessarily political ideology because I feel like a lot of it is halfbaked and doesn't really go anywhere. Um, which is why I don't like reading most um, political authors in their original because I feel like they kind of circle about the same thing over and over. Now, I could be wrong. Of course, there might be like a lot of authors that you've read but maybe I haven't read which are like um which don't do that. But um I've I really feel like a lot of times uh when it comes to political thinking like when it comes to mapping out a political system, people are just trying and I'm not talking about like distinguished philosophers. I'm more talking about just people who are maybe you meet day-to-day who try to talk to you about like what they believe and how they believe the world world should work. Um, a lot of times people pick a frame, people pick a system and they argue inside it. Like they say we're going to we're going to have a world where this this and this happens and then with those, you know, with those principles already there, this is what I believe. And I just don't think that that's very useful because your your um view is your opinion is not it's not unrespectable like you I respect their opinion but at the same time it's actual implementation value is kind of not there you know and I feel like these days a lot of political discourse has kind of moved towards that like it's moved towards this is what I think the ideal situation is, but people are thinking too much about the ideal situation and not about the real situation. I think that that's um and I I said this in the vaguest way I could pretty much like I said this without having to name any specific people or specific examples, but I do feel like that's my opinion. So, I wanted to know like do you have a similar opinion? Um, of course I'm not as well versed in European politics. I mostly just know about America. But like if you um have similar thoughts or do would you say that you have a different perspective on this? >> Yeah. Yeah. In short, I agree with you. You mentioned the word which I think is key implementation. >> Yeah. >> Implementation value you said and I think that's key because many people think in terms of vibes >> like oh I like this basically like this world. I like this outcome >> but they don't have the technical the programmatic if you want understanding of how do we go from the current state of affairs to that outcome to that eventuality. >> So because they don't have that programmatic way of thinking ultimately then opinion is not grounded in any kind of rigor. So they cannot actually go anywhere with it >> and you see that with a lot of opinions. Of course, there are people who do have that and they are the people who ultimately get to do what they >> but generally when you hear people talking it's vibes. >> Yeah, exactly. And that's that's pretty much exactly what I mentioned. So, uh, who who are some political thinkers that you really like or ones that maybe you don't resonate with as much um as far as um maybe what they say and um maybe give me the the person and also like a general one or twoline summary of what their thoughts are in case I that is >> of course there are there are many but generally if you pick the political philosophers just to say political philosophers doesn't mean that they were only talking about politics but they contribution philosophy and then they apply it. >> Exactly. So >> psychology >> they exactly that's what I wanted to say like they provide insights into human nature. So it's not so much of what is their proposition ultimately like what system do they want to see if things were to go their way but rather how they have understood the human condition and of course what kind of lessons they have learned from that. what kind of inferences they have drawn. For example, there is Plato which in Greek we call Platon who has this famous book called the republic and it's a book about a republic but of course it's nominally about the republic because much of it is about ethics and about how do people behave >> and how should we understand people and given that what kind of society we should have. So even if you say you know what I disagree with Platon's uh program with his ideal society you cannot just say because I disagree with that therefore I dismiss all his insights. No, you can't. I agree with you. And there are there are many thinkers which I think fall in that category where it's like of course insightful but maybe I don't agree fully >> and you could go from antiquity for example platon and aristo would aristotal would >> yeah there is another one which is what malenweg was referring to called thusidis in English we say in Greek >> yeah that one if you said Greek I wouldn't know who that was but yeah I could you maybe uh give me an idea of what he said because I'm not as familiar. >> So he was a historian and he was describing what is known as the Paloponyian war which you can understand like the big war of the era the regional war between the two superpowers. Okay. >> In of course the the small geography of Greece, but the two superpowers of the region and part of it of course is historical like what happened, what were they doing, what were the battles and all that >> but again a part of it is insights into the nature of people. So there is this famous one which it's still influential which is like maybe you have heard it like this. The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must. >> There is a saying like that. >> It's not written exactly that way, but that's the gist of it. >> I might have read it that way because in English >> there is another part though. So people tend to quote this. It's like oh the strong do whatever they want. There is no morality. But then there is another part which is >> in that discussion what they are saying is that morality or our notion of justice anyway exists between equals. >> Okay. >> So if we don't think of ourselves as equal then of course we don't have a moral basis that is common to us. So for as long as we think of ourselves as equals then we can start talking about justice whatever justice means to us but it's a prerequisite. So I think that's an interesting insight and of course it's an insight that is incorporated for example in the constitution of the United States where all people have inalienable fundamental rights like it's not about if the majority doesn't feel like it you don't have a right to liberty and freedom of religion etc. >> I agree. Yeah. So, I think I wanted to like touch on that point where you were like all people are equal because there was a I would say that the fact that different definitions of people pretty much existed throughout history has more than anything influenced I would say the way that society has has evolved more so than like any particular law itself like you said. So when you said in the United States Constitution for example when they said people they weren't including women and they weren't including slaves. So those were I would say two things that changed history like when you know liberation of slaves happened when um black people or generally people who were enslaved were considered free citizens and they were given equal rights and then when women were given equal rights they were allowed to vote. So it was I will say that it was those two things more than anything else that changed the entire political landscape. Not because a particular law or a particular right given to people changed but because the definition of people who are considered equal changed. >> And that's a key point. That's correct. But it it speaks exactly to the fact that if you if you rewind history and you go back to that era, the concept of equal was there but it had a different meaning. So >> yeah, >> justice in that sense was applying between those that were considered equal. So of course the white men >> and then through political struggles it got expanded to cover all the other groups of people. >> Yeah. Mhm. So that's a key insight of course and there is the other thing which is >> it doesn't matter what a piece of paper whether you call it sacrosan or not such as the constitution it doesn't matter what it says ultimately because if people are not willing to uphold it it won't fight for itself >> that's what happened a few years ago >> yeah yeah yeah so of course there is that but the point is this that there is truth to be had in interpretation. I think this is a phrase that um I forget who it is now. A famous American law scholar said there is truth to be had in interpretation. I forget I will yeah I have to check I will say their name wrong so I don't want to yeah but a famous scholar of the 20th century but I think there is a point there like >> of course there is the letter of the law like all people are equal and then there is okay who are the people >> yeah exactly >> and what does equal entail what does that mean >> you must have seen the like a famous quote the I think it's like the George Orwell Um he's like all everybody's equal but some are more equal than others. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I I believe that's in the animal farm. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. So some animals are more equal than others. And I think that's a wonderful insight. >> Um >> Yeah. >> Because of course it speaks to what happens when you have a collusion or when you have institutional capture as they say. So where a group of people will run the government >> in service of their own interests. >> So of course when that happens some animals will be more equal than the other animals in the farm. >> Yeah. But it's it it's actually like I think that that book is really genius and like it again it's not very long but I feel like it's one of those novels that everybody should read, you know, like >> uh even more so than 1984 because 1984 is considered like required reading in a lot of schools. I don't really see that about Animal Farm and I feel like that's if anything more insightful. 1984 is your typical dystopian story which it's good. It's really good. It's very entertaining. But I would say as far as like what's a book that will really like change your perspective, especially if you read it as a high schooler or something, it would be Animal Farm. Um >> yeah, good point. Good point. And um >> I like that um way of writing as well where it's not really verbose and dense and really technical and you have to check the dictionary every couple of lines to see if you understand the word or not. It's not like that. It's easy to read. It's straight to the point and I think it it communicates the message with great effect. >> Yeah, exactly. Um, so again like u this might be like pivoting the topic a little bit entirely, but you you mentioned like looking up things in the dictionary and stuff. So I just wanted to like ask what was your journey learning English like or did you like always did you grow up speaking English or was it something that you learned as an adult and what was that like? Because I do see that you write in English on your blog and almost all I mean all the interviews on your channel are also in English so I'm sure it's not your native language. It's not your first language. So, how was your uh process with that? >> Mhm. So, my mother tongue is Greek. So, I grew up in Greece and I learned English at school. Uh we were taught uh but they don't teach you high level stuff. It's basic stuff just for you to be able to uh talk to a tourist and give instructions or okay, turn left and head to where the cafeteria is, >> that sort of thing. But um um what I did was uh to try to learn more myself. I would try to uh talk in English to practice. I would uh I of course many parts of Greece are tourist attractions. So I got to talk with a lot of tourists as a teenager for example. Um and uh part of that is an exercise in English and I really enjoyed it. Um then um I worked as a bartender for many years which of course is in the tourism industry mainly not exclusively but mainly >> where I would be dealing with uh English speakers all the time while I was there and my colleagues were also English speakers because they were from different parts of the European Union such as Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic today called the Czecha and many other countries of the European Union and Um then I was like okay you know what I will also write in English because I want to practice it further and be as good as I can and also that's why I do videos in English. That was the original motivation. I didn't have >> That's what I was going to say. I wonder if that was part of like maybe learning English better was part of your um part of what led to the creation of this channel or what led to the creation of your blog. Uh because I do find that very interesting. It's I I do find that with a lot of like European bloggers and content creators is that they choose to like they originally start in their own language and then they choose to branch out into English just to like get a broader audience. And I think that that's definitely very respectable because I've never learned a language as an adult. I would like to try, but I don't think that I've I mean I just haven't done it. So I do think that that's that's something that I find very fascinating. Um, >> I think for English speakers is a little bit more difficult like native speakers because everywhere you go, everybody will greet you in English. So, it's very hard for you to be incentivized or nudged or forced to try. Yeah. >> Mhm. So, at least for me, like I I was born in the US, but I grew up in India for a lot of my life because my parents were immigrants who for their own personal reasons, they decided to move back to India when uh my sister and I were both little kids. Um so, I grew up there and I went to a school where there were a lot of other kids who were also like transplants like who who were born in the US and they were they'd moved back. Um, so at least my year, my specific uh kind of like set of people that I ended up interacting with in school, uh, like at elementary school, middle school, those kind of years, uh, there were a lot of people who would just speak English to each other and they would they would pretty much talk the way that I'm talking right now. Um, even though it was in India. So I would say that like I always had like a group of friends who I could just speak English with. Um but when it comes to communication with most of the locals um in any part of India, you have to learn the regional language which luckily I already knew because my parents spoke that language. So I did grow up learning I kind of grew up speaking both English and Marathi. That's the name of the language that the people in my family speak. Um so I am fluent in it speech-wise, but I'm not fluent with reading or writing it. I'm only fluent with English for that. So >> and how is India in terms because of course India was a colony of the British Empire >> before it gained independence. >> Is English still recognized slashofficial language or not? So India is uh India actually recognizes only English as its um official language because um the regional parts of India won't like South India won't like it if you uh make Hindi the offic the official language because many South Indians don't speak Hindi and um there are also many like other like parts every part of India has its own language kind of there's thousands I think um and thousands of little languages they're not some are dialects but some are not dialects some are just like completely different languages um and like the population of India can't really decide on one language that they all want to like one Indian language that they all want to claim is their official the official language of the country because for any language that you speak a good number of people in India would not be able to speak it. So I mean it's it's a very I think India is a very interesting uh case study for uh just how diverse one country can be while also being one while still being one country. Like I have friends in the US who are like oh so do you can you compare it to like the difference between say California and Texas? And I'm like no it's it's really nothing like that. If you look at the US, it's still much much more similar to like all parts of the US are much more similar to each other. There might be subtle variations, but in India, it's like if you go from one end of India to the other end, you'll feel like you're in a completely different country. So >> like unless you knew, unless you already knew that you're still in the same country, you would just feel like you're somewhere else. And I feel like a lot of people who grow up in a more homogeneous country like say the US, the US is not homogeneous like as far as like racial or ethnic diversity or that kind of thing. But I will say that in terms of language and culture, it's much more homogeneous than a country like India. So a lot of American friends that I have don't fully understand this concept. I would say like the fact that you can be in one country and still have nothing in common with someone in the next state even. Um >> yeah. >> And what do you think um binds those diverse groups of people together? Of course there is a shared history, a shared historical trajectory. I imagine there are shared traditions. Um like culturally they have similarities even if there are big differences. Of course, I know that there is a majority religion and then minority religions. Uh but how different are those? Are they reconcilable? >> So again, different people will give you different answers on that. I think that um yes, the majority of the population does practice Hinduism. Um and I would say that a lot of India is pretty um unified in like their religious pride. I would I would guess and then there's also like not so good aspects of Hindu I wouldn't even say they're aspects of Hinduism but they are parts of um the Indian culture that have you know that still are unfortunately a problem like the cast system which is still something that a lot of Indian people have to deal with. Um and then there's the fact that Hinduism has a bunch of rituals and a bunch of things that pretty much mo most parts of India I would say no matter how different they are in the way that they practice them they do practice them in some or the other way. So I would say like shared problems is is honestly one and shared um culture shared traditions is another. And then as far as the the minority religions go, I will say there has been a lot of conflict of between um different religions in India. I personally think that these are more um political like these are more things that are happening at the political level than it is people just hating each other like mutually because they're different religions. That doesn't happen. like Islam is kind of one of the minority relig religions and then there's like some Christianity and some Buddhism or like Sikhs. There's a big population of Sikhs in India. There's a big population of Janes in India. There's a big population of a lot of uh little religions along with Hindus but I would say Hinduism and Islam are probably the biggest. Um but and that to Hinduism via a landslide and then there's like a lot of political conflicts some of which say things like um you know there's there the current there's a political party which currently their reputation in India is that they um are you know Hindu nationalists meaning that they want all of India to to have Hindu customs and Hindu culture. Um there's another side which I wouldn't say that they're necessarily more accepting but they are accepting in response to this side being opinionated a certain way. Um now I am not the most informed on Indian politics or Indian um history that leads to this current you know situation in Indian politics. So, I I guess like whatever I say about this should be taken with a grain of salt. Um, >> but I do think that it's a very complicated uh cultural like environment or political landscape. Um, and anyone who wants to have an opinion on it, including me, anyone who wants to have an opinion on it should be pretty well researched in the topic because I think that there's a lot of people in the west uh especially who try to like use western styles of thinking and apply them to India which don't really work. Um, and I can see why. I can see where they're coming from when they make arguments like that, but I just don't think that it's it's a onetoone mapping like this person who had this particular ideology in the US or in Europe or anywhere directly maps onto this other person in India who has this similar ideology. It doesn't really work like that because it doesn't really allow it. So I would say another thing that unifies a lot of the Indian population is just their distaste for um being viewed through a western lens kind of um they don't like it. They they want to be respected as their own set of people I would say. >> Yeah. And of course that has farreaching implications. But I think what you said here is key uh because it's very easy to flatten the differences between people. It's very easy to think that oh how we are here is how people are everywhere and how people have always been. >> So there is no cultural specificities and there is no historical trajectory that underpins those. And when you do that eventually, of course, you are so simplistic >> that we go back to that point about the vibes where it's like, "Oh, it would be very nice if they had done such and such." Oh, yeah. Sure. >> If you ignore all those important details. >> Yeah, exactly. So, I will definitely say that's one thing that unifies Indians. They don't like >> the their culture being framed like that, but nobody would. So, I mean like Yeah. Um >> and it makes sense. It makes sense. >> Yeah. Sorry. >> No, no. I said I think I went on a pretty long rambly explanation for what was supposed to be a simple question, but I do that a lot. So, >> that's fine. That's fine because part of these talks is to go with the flow and see where we end up in. And I think that's fun because there is an authenticity to the discussion. It's not like, okay, we reached this milestone, let's continue to the other topic and >> Oh, yeah. >> which of course has its use. I'm not saying that it's useless, but I think here I like this style. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, >> I if I can pivot now to a topic that >> Oh, sorry. Yeah. Yeah. >> Because I'm curious about art. So, of course, you are drawing. >> Oh, yeah. >> How did that happen? Did you have an interest in artistic form forms of artistic expression? Uh were you doing it for a long time? What kind of art interests you? I've always been drawing, I would say, since I was like a very little kid. Pretty much since I knew how to hold a pencil, which was I don't know, how old are you when you do that? Three, four. Um, I've been, um, I've always been like doing little scribbles and doodles. And growing up, I would always like make my little characters and draw them. I like it would be stupid stuff like I'd read like fairy tales, like princess stories or whatever, and I would be like, "I'm going to invent my own princess now." And then I would draw it. Like it was just that kind of thing. the way that any kid would probably start drawing. Um, but I think that the real thing that maybe sets me apart from some people, like a lot of people who draw like in a similar way as kids, is that I continue to do it as an adult. Um, and here's where I'm going to like again pivot the conversation to something that might not be the original question, but um, >> no problem. So my parents are Indian but I think that a lot of Indian or Asian parents in general or even like these days even like you know American parents or however tend to want their kids to get into particular hobbies like there there will be many parents who push their kids into drawing. They're like you have to do this or you know into learning a musical instrument. They'll be like you have to do this or into sports for that matter. like you have to go, you know, play soccer after school or however. And I will say that most of the kids that I grew up around who had a parents asking them to do to be drawing or be, you know, singing, playing instruments, playing sports, however, they ended up not retaining those hobbies. Whereas for me, I would say my parents didn't care. They were just like, "As long as you're doing the bare minimum, you're going to like school, you're learning the material, you're getting good grades in your classes, that's all that really matters. You don't need to have 20 other hobbies on top. Like your childhood is for you to just have fun." That was my parents like mindset. And I feel like, ironically enough, that mindset led me to actually have a lot of hobbies that I carried into adulthood because anything that I did, including drawing or like I also like singing, I'm I'm also into music. Um, all of that stuff is stuff that I decided to do by myself and not stuff that my parents made me do at any point. Mhm. Mhm. And I think that's a great way of um into parenting but also into treating people in general which is allow the person to express that which is innate that which um they have an inclination towards that which feels natural to them. And there is also this idea I think which is consistent with um trying to um force kids into specific uh fields which is that it's about the outcomes like these are instrumentalized in the service of some goal where it's like well if you go into I don't know uh art then you will have a way of thinking pictorially so now you will enrich your logical thinking with >> Oh yeah yeah Yeah. Yeah. >> Trying to make something happen now, of course, but maybe it doesn't. >> But the idea is that it's in the service of something else. So the hobby isn't an end in itself. You don't do it because you like it. You do it because it's, let's say, a productivity boost. >> It's something I hate that too. Like I I hate it when everything is everything has to become about some kind of deeper meaning or some kind of like um yeah you're doing this to like upskill on in this other uh yeah I do think that like that isn't the the correct way at least for kids like when you're older it makes sense if you decide to like start things that you want to do on your own for reasons like that for example I have never been into sports I know you are you're you're pretty athletic Um, you you have like articles about that on your blog and stuff as well. Um, but I have never been athletic. I have never been into sports. My parents didn't make me do it. Again, that's one thing that they didn't make me do. And as a result, I didn't do it. And as an adult now, I'm starting to try to maybe do a little bit more athletic activity than I used to before, which was basically nothing. Um, so and that I would say is for self-improvement and for socialization. It's because like it's a good way to like meet friends and you know to have an active lifestyle is a good way to like socialize that. >> But I do think that framing it that way to a kid is not going to help. >> Yes. Yes. >> Because it um it doesn't resonate with them. Like they don't feel anything. It's like I don't care about what you're saying. like and of course they they cannot reason about the end state. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> Well, what you are saying now sounds really vague. I have no idea what it means to be a professional 20 years from now. Like I'm just a kid. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And it was never framed that way to me. In fact, like when I was considering I I really wanted to be an artist like after uh high school, my parents were like, "Uh, so what do you want to do now?" And I wanted to be an artist. My parents kind of discouraged that actually. They they pushed me into engineering because they thought that it would be more useful, which again like I would say some parents do that in a way that's um maybe a little too pushy, but my parents weren't like that. They were like uh they were always supportive of what I wanted to do, but they just like laid the options on the table. They were like here's realistically what will happen if you end up pursuing art versus if you pursue something technical which will um actually like that here's what your lifestyle would look like because some fields just pay more. That's like the harsh reality of like the way the world is. So um that's that's why they pushed me into technical stuff and I ended up liking it. Like I I have I enjoy programming too like I I enjoy both. Um, in fact, I would say that like it's almost good, I think, for a person. Now, it doesn't have to be something that you do professionally necessarily, but I do think it's good for people to have a combination of like artistic activities and technical activities in their um day-to-day kind of like lifestyle. The you should kind of be thinking both ways, if that makes sense. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that makes perfect sense. And of course, one informs the other. There is also >> there is also um something to be said about the word recreational. So these are recreational activities we say often and we mean the hobbies that we do >> and >> if even if you approach it from a productivity standpoint which I don't advocate for but let's for the sake of the discussion. >> Yeah. >> You say you know what I I'm interested in maximizing my productivity. >> Well you need to take breaks. You need to have something that recreates you. So it has that recreational effect. >> It's the same as with sport. If you want to be fit, for example, you cannot just train all day because that will lead to burnout. You will be injured. You have to train, you have to rest. And recovery is as important as exercise. Like it's not like you can skip it. Uh so yeah, I think of course there is much to be said about having generally a rounded kind of experience and this also connects to what you were saying earlier about the interview where >> there is of course the technical part of what your job is about but then there is the people side the social part. >> Yeah. >> And you cultivate that through experiences such as what you described or more generally recreational activities. >> Yeah. Mhm. I agree. So, I think that uh I I'm actually one of those people like and if you you've interviewed some of my you've interviewed Eric, he's my friend. Um if you ask these people like um they will say that I'm actually someone who doesn't rest enough. Like I'm someone who is a little bit too obsessed with not necessarily productivity, but like having a a thing that I'm doing that I can like describe at every moment of the day. I don't want to like just sit and chill um like at any point really. Even like I mean again like this is not I'm not trying to like use this as like just to say that I shouldn't have done it but I mean like I feel like even this interview is kind of an example of it where I'm like well in the middle of this interview I'm also going to be drawing a portrait like you know >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a a busy bee as it were. >> Yeah. So, I tend to do that a lot and I think that that's that's actually something that is a good message for me because I'm definitely one of those people that doesn't like to slow down and um does it lead would it lead to burnout? Well, I haven't had that happen yet, but it might if I if if like it can for anyone if if they're not careful. So, I do think that that is definitely something that you shouldn't any nobody should really be losing sight of if that makes sense. Mhm. >> Like you just said that resting is also important >> and what you described about yourself is also a descriptor for me. I am exactly the same like I >> like >> I never sit still. I have to do something always like it's basically the same. Um what helps I think uh to avoid burnout is um to remain mindful of your emotional state like do I like what I am doing like because if you are mindlessly doing it then you are burning out without realizing as it were like there is a slow burning fire and you don't even notice it >> so it helps to check from time to time and be like okay is this something I am interested in doing uh to continue doing is this how do I feel about it. >> Yeah. >> And having that um selfreflection I think ultimately keeps you fresh and you keep going and um even if you are super busy ultimately it doesn't harm you. >> That makes sense. Yeah, that's actually really good point. So again, like I'm just so curious to hear more about this or like talk more about this, but mostly because I would say that in most of my like day-to-day conversations with friends and stuff, I don't really get to discuss this very much. But back to what you were saying about like your political kind of like philosophy uh and that kind of thing. Um so like could you describe to me or like maybe tell me like what some of the the issues are on which maybe you have a very strong opinion or maybe an opinion that um might be a little bit controversial or maybe not even necessarily controversial. It can be an opinion that you just think you're very um passionate about that opinion on any issue and could you expand on that a little bit more for me and like I can provide >> so I used to have really strong opinions about everything. I used to be headstrong and opinionated and argumentative. But eventually I learned to um take a step back and to withhold ultimate judgment. >> In other words, to observe how things work and try to understand if >> if I were to do them, how would I do them differently given the prevailing conditions? And having that thought experiment uh grounds you in the reality of the here and now where it's like I cannot longer think in terms of my ideal framework in terms of >> what are the available resources what are the states of affairs >> given this well what are the options and what do those entail >> like implementation like we talked about >> and then we go back to the implementation and thinking in terms of that kind of uh work where once you do that of course you can still have sensitivities and opinions >> but you understand that you cannot u just wish for things >> like oh let's say just a random thing oh I wish that uh tomorrow India implements uniformity for all its citizens like that would be very nice for them they won't have anything to fight about blah blah blah of course maybe you say I wish for that to happen it's very good there are many benefits kids blah blah blah. Well, how do you actually go about it? If you start thinking about it, okay, what resources do you have? If we were to put you in the relevant ministry, what would you do? Step one, two, three, uh, please outline it. And I think once you think in those terms, you start not >> your opinion starts falling apart. Yeah. It the argument starts to fall apart because it's like, >> yes, maybe you want that, but you can't do it. So, does it really matter? Like, it starts to become >> Yeah. And one relatively strong opinion I have still is about the European Union. So >> I am torn, I am conflicted because on the one hand I have a cosmopolitan outlook or let's say Europeanist outlook where I want uh the people of Europe to collaborate. I want them to be in good terms with each other eventually for the wider region not just Europeans. So for example all of the Mediterranean and so on. generally for people to be uh peaceful and communicate, keep the communication going, keep the commerce going and so on. >> Yeah, >> that's my outlook. That's what I like. But then I see that the European Union has certain mechanisms where it has the adverse effect >> where where because of the balance of power because of the historical trajectory of the European integration process as it is known meaning the evolution of the European Union from where it was to where it is now. Because of that historicity, you have a certain constellation of forces which creates certain outcomes and precludes others. >> And we saw this a lot and we see this still with divisions that exist in Europe along geographic lines such as what was known during the financial crisis of post 2008 as the core of Europe and the periphery. and the periphery encompassed uh Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and then of course depending on how you frame it, it could be other countries as well. Um we still see similar tensions now in how the European Union wants to integrate its fiscal policy. Not to go into the technicalities, but basically for them to have a common budget, >> which they don't really have now. It's much more complicated. But for them to have a common budget and a common treasury like there is in the United States a treasury which is the counterparty to the Federal Reserve Bank. We don't have that in Europe. Uh so >> having that is of course a really tough cell for certain countries versus other countries because for example the Germans will say hey hold on a second we are fiscally conservative/disiplined here and the French our fellow neighbors over there they are frivolous and they spend more than they can they live beyond their means. So why should we bankroll French debt? Ultimately it's that of course now I am simplifying the argument but the idea is >> and um I a part of me wishes that we could um just start from scratch and be like you know what >> let's uh do it again. But of course that's not realistic. So in practice I'm like okay this is what we have >> what can we do given uh the available resources and >> the only path forward to have the Europeanist outlook that I was explaining >> is how it is nowadays where they want to do a military union. So they want to have greater capacities for >> not necessarily European army but a coordination among European armies >> that sort of thing that in the long term could become a single army. >> Uh but >> that has as with everything in life that has knock-on effects where you want to do something of course you have to do other things that are ancillary to it. So for you to have like a common army well how do you finance the common army? So you have to have a common mechanism for doing that >> and again not to go into the technicalities but the point is that >> maybe in practice even though this looks ugly like why would you be promilitary pro war or whatever in practice it can still lead to a good outcome all things considered. >> Oh yeah I actually wanted to ask the question about that. So, one opinion I hear in the in the US a lot is that now I can't say whether I agree or disagree. I kind of see both sides a little bit of this opinion, but an opinion that I do see thrown around a lot in the US is that the the EU like Europe is too dependent on the American military. Would you say that that's something that you agree with? And would you say that it's something that you like the argument that you just gave about the EU military? Would you say that it's something that you want to like move away from? you want the EU to like militar militarize themselves and become self-sufficient in the in that sense because technically if there's a Russian invasion for whatever reason then the US is not going to be the first to get hit. It's going to be those European countries. So there's many people who say in the US that it's not our job it's their job. Um now yes NATO exists but NATO is pretty much just the US protecting everybody else at this point. So what's your opinion on that? >> Mhm. I think if you take it as a descriptive statement, it's true in the sense that of course uh America is having forces deployed forces all over the continent. So in that sense, of course, the continent is dependent on the US. But I think it is um it is dishonest in the sense that we are ignoring the historical context of uh the US wanting that to be uh the outcome. They didn't want to they wanted to have influence in Europe because of course of the cold war. I'm not saying that they were m malevolent in that regard, but they had an interest in that being the case and for them to have bases all around Europe. >> Um, furthermore, um, Europe, American bases in Europe have the effect of projecting power beyond Europe. uh for example if you are doing something in the Middle East >> you have a retreat closer uh to home than if you didn't have those bases so you can retreat back to Europe you don't have to retreat all the way back to the states >> so that projects force well beyond the confines of the European continent >> and that is a point that if you don't uh make then of course what you are saying is true but it's half truth. It's in a way you are twisting. >> I don't agree with it. Like I don't fully agree with it. I also don't fully disagree with it. I have my own thoughts which are like pretty much like you said. Um and that's another thing like I feel like right now I'm I asked you a very specific question but I feel like one thing I've noticed again in the current like like landscape of political thought is that people need to like a lot of people not everyone but a lot of people really need to organize themselves into tribes. There is no such thing as seeing both sides of an issue anymore. It's either I fully support this or I don't. And sometimes it goes beyond individual issues and even gets to like parties themselves. It's like either you support everything that the left says and you become an extremist or you support everything the right says and you become an extremist. And I think that that's just so unproductive. And I think that that's pretty much what's causing most of the political rot that's happening all over the world, which is that people are not thinking critically about the issues anymore. They are not able to have a nuanced issue, nuanced opinion on one issue. They're not even able to have split opinions across issues and say, um, this is what I feel about this thing and this is what I feel about this other thing and these two can coexist. And in the end of the day, I'm a person. I'm not like, you know, just a checkbox on like a party's ballot. So, you need to be able to say, um, you know, that I believe in some things that this group supports and I believe in some things that this other group supports and sometimes I might be split and that's okay. But I feel like the idea that people can think like that is slowly vanishing because um, at least here in the US all pol all political discourse is becoming very emotional. It's becoming about like maybe it's always been that way. I can't say for sure, but I maybe I'm just one of those people who's like it was better in the past, which everybody has ever everybody ever has said that, but like I mean, it was the best. >> Yeah. But I mean like of course it's not across the board. There are many many ways in which the state of the world now is much better than it was like 20, 30, 40 years ago. Um I'm not saying that I want to return to that. That's not what I'm trying to say. But I'm saying that like certain things um with political discourse especially now that it's moved to social media platforms and now any idiot on Twitter is like you know is someone who can talk and people will hear. Um that's led to I would say the general IQ level around political discussion dropping a lot and now it's just like who can shout the loudest and who can make people feel the best. And if you manage to do that, you get these people to join your tribe. And no one's actually thinking critically about any of the issues. That's that's how I feel it's become. Maybe it's always been that way. Maybe it's just that now because of social media and the internet, the perception of that is amplified. But I guess like I would like to know what are your thoughts on that? What are your thoughts on that? Is it similar in the EU um to like what I'm describing? Because what I'm describing is very US- ccentric. Would you say it's similar all over the world or would you say that maybe it's just an America problem or maybe do you have like a counterpoint? >> Uh so two big things here. First there is the electoral systems which themselves already precondition politics a certain way. um if you how you count the votes of course this is a very technical topic that goes into statistics but >> basically how you count the votes gives you different majorities so in America the system you have is district representation >> yeah yeah but basically you cannot have a a multi-arty system in practice because you don't have a proportional representation you cannot have a scenario where a small party wins a little bit here a little bit there a little bit elsewhere and gets into Congress. >> Yeah. >> So, you don't have that. So, of course, that effectively gives you a a permanent two-party system. And that's why in the states you have this phenomenon of the so-called big tent where uh both parties are inclusive of different uh currents of ideology within them. They are not monolithic. So, they have their differences. Um these differences are of course flattened nowadays and this goes to the second part which is uh in the internet in general which I think what it has done it has shrked the the spaceime of politics if that makes sense in the and what I mean by this >> oh yeah that's a really good point >> it's like everything that happens happens instantly so there isn't like a travel time >> and it feels proximate it's like next to me so >> I am always in this news cycle of constant uh churning of information and I get the feeling that there is imminent calamity and unless I pick my side in a crude fashion as you described the tribe then we will we are heading towards our doom and I think this is hard to reverse it's hard to change this because of course you can deal with the electoral systems you can change how people are represented at what representative means but it's very hard I think to change the technology because the technology now creates its own realities >> in Europe we have more pluralist systems in the sense that there are multi-party systems that's the norm and you will see in many countries that it's not one government sorry it's not one party that governs it's a coalition >> in many countries >> Mhm. This is possible because of how the votes are counted fundamentally. >> And uh maybe it's also possible because we haven't yet reached that point where uh people are as invested in social media as they are in the states. Maybe >> would you say the language barrier is part of that because most of that stuff tends to be in English like is that part of why >> Yes. Yes. though what I am seeing of course I don't have a picture of the whole but the trends I sense is that we are moving more towards um a memebased uh way of doing uh things and by meme here I mean the mimetic behaviors where um somebody says something and it's the lowest common denominator around which uh people can agree on and then everybody repeats that >> and that doesn't really scale because what you will get is politicians such as in Cypress there is one such person who is a a social media persona uh politicians who present themselves effectively as managers of public opinion. It's like I don't have any opinions. You will tell me what the opinions are and I will just implement them. So I will just be doing the leg work as it were. Um and I think that is not constructive because fundamentally people are not well informed of all the topics. They cannot have >> that's when yeah >> they cannot have an insightful opinion about everything like a politician has to be there like I agree with you mi Mr. or Mrs. politician or whatever, I agree with you on certain principles and then I expect you based on those principles to figure out the technicalities. >> I as a person who has a job and a life outside of politics, I cannot be keeping up with everything. >> So there is also a division of labor in that regard. >> I agree. And I think when we reduce everything to a memes based um decision making ultimately that goes to what you were saying which is the quality of the discourse degenerates it deteriorates and eventually we oscillate between the extremes. >> Yep. So yeah, because it's just like in the end and tribalism or like meme based discourse like you said it's in the end of the day it's like like you said you hear something and then you repeat it. This is the kind of thing that becomes much more um effective like as a system it becomes more effective when there's just the maximum number of people repeating it. And that's why it makes the most sense to just divide your population into two parts that are fighting against each other and everybody's in one tribe or the other rather than if you had if you had three or four, the system would just not be as strong. It'll still collapse to the the two main rivals. I think if you have a situation like that um where it's so much easier to like you know band like I don't know buddy up with half the population and yell at the other side um as opposed to if there were bigger bigger groups based off of more nuanced things. Um >> because in the end I feel like >> emotional offense or like shouting is emotional offense or shouting. It's not it doesn't matter if your argument is intelligent at that point. it just um so yeah, it it does seem though like maybe it's not as bad in the in the EU from what you're describing, but it seems like you're you're trying to say that it's getting there. It's getting to the same level as the US. >> It's more fragmented in that regard. Depending on where you look and what you want to check for, you will get different results. But I will say no, it's not as extreme in the US. I I feel it's too extreme. Like it's like reason went out of the window. It's like, "Oh, I'm out of here. You can keep talking, but I'm leaving." >> Yeah, pretty much. And I'm I'm starting to like I'm definitely like very disappointed in the way that things are going. Again, it's not it's not just about like who might be in power or whether I agree or disagree with them. It's it's also just about like the way that people are getting there. Um, and the fact that it's just not intelligent anymore. It's not interesting. It's not intelligent. And honestly, that's that hurts. Like that's actually going to hurt the system even more because I feel like so many smart people are just like checking out. They're saying, "I don't care." And and when people who are actually like somewhat aware of what's going on say that when people who are, you know, they're like, "Okay, I can think critically, but because I can think critically, I think all of this is stupid and I just choose to completely disengage." If that's your um if that's your opinion, if that's what you choose to do, then the entire pool, if everyone starts doing that, everyone who is smart starts doing that, then the lowest common denominator gets even lower. Like I mean it it's it's almost like a self um reinforcing kind of cycle where the stupider the public platform discourse gets, the more smart people are checking out of it. And then as a result it gets even stupider. Like I think that which is why I think that one of my maybe slightly different opinions maybe compared to a lot of people of my age I would say is it's important to talk about politics. Like I think that there's many people who are just like that doesn't concern me. It's it's a vibe killer. I don't want to talk about it. It's not fun. It's not interesting. But I'm like, if everyone starts doing that, if you're smart and you start doing that, then it's going to get even worse. And in the end of the day, it is like the thing that keeps your country a country. It is a thing that keep your keeps your country functioning. And to participate in politics is pretty much something you have you should be doing. Like I wouldn't say that it's not yes it's not a constitutional duty or anything but like it is something that I believe that every citizen should be doing just because they are a citizen if that makes sense. >> And um I think we what contributes to this um apathy effectively where people just withdraw >> is um the fact that we don't have an appreciation of the history of well how did we get the rights that we have now? How did we get the lifestyle that we enjoy now? It didn't just come from the sky. >> It came through a lot of struggles. It wasn't a given. And if you think that it is a given, if you think that it cannot possibly be taken away, uh then of course that's when it will be get away, taken away. >> Exactly. And you could see that with so many things that have kind of been happening in the US lately. like about you know 5 years ago at this point I oh four years ago at this point or sorry 5 years ago um January 6 happened and that was literally a group of people trying to disrupt you know trying to overturn this idea like the constitutional idea that power needs to be handed over from the previous president to the next president when someone new has won the election. And it's it started there and then it just gotten more and more insidious. Like I mean, think about the fact that everybody was shouting back and forth about issues which I think were more um I would say they're more hype than substance, I would say. And I'm not going to like name what the issues were. Um I feel like that might create a lot of um angry people. But I I'm going to like I'm going to say that like it's when people are arguing about irrelevant things that the real damage starts to happen. For example, look at um Roie Wade getting overturned for like the abortion law in the US getting overturned. That was that was a pretty big thing I think that no one was talking about it at all until after it happened. it was just kind of like in in the in everyone's blind spot because people were too busy talking about things that you know were not immediate and not realistic and not implementable like you said. Um similarly in the US shutdown that was hap that happened like um a few months ago the October uh November shutdown it was not even like on anyone's radar that like they're trying to cut SNAP benefits until they started doing it until they said they would do it and then it became like you know a an uproar kind of situation. But I feel like the reason why this stuff is happening is because everyone's just focused on like the scandals and people are focused on, you know, talking about all the noise that is being created as a distraction. Like for example, like what Trump is doing with immigration, like ICE agents or like just the fact that he's making immigration so much harder for everyone. It is getting much harder. I agree. There's a lot of um there's a lot of chaos. It's a very tough situation for anyone who might be an immigrant in the US right now. But at the same time, I feel like the theatrics are maybe about 10 times the actual problem. Same thing happened with Trump's tariffs. Like yes, he did implement some tariffs, but people started yelling and screaming about tariffs so much more than what the actual tariffs were. Like if you look at the fine print, if you look at what actually happened, yes, it was bad, but his party is so good at shouting. Like the Republicans right now are so good at shouting and almost fueling that outrage because they want people to keep talking about them. They're so good at yelling about a particular radical thing that they've implemented, even if that that that thing might not be proportionate to the the scope of the yelling. it. Not to say that thing was not was not a problem or not a big deal at all, but it was a big deal. But these people like inflate it to to this level where it becomes more of a shouting match than actually a discussion that concerns the topic. And on this background, people are so busy like yelling back and forth about these issues which are not trivial, but they're also not as massive like proportionate to the discourse that's happening. And then these types of things, which is like people are literally not going to get fed if the government stays shut down. They're just like slipping through the cracks and no one's actually talking about them until after they've happened. If that that's kind of how I >> that's kind of how I see it. Now again, I could be very wrong on many fronts, but >> I do think that that's that's what's going on. >> And just to add to this, I think it's um above specific parties and specific um ways of uh controlling public opinion. I think it's also in inherent to the nature of the technology um social media in this regard and clickbait in general because journalism nowadays is really clickbait like there is a headline which says something completely different than what is actually in the body of the article. And if all you do is retweeting headlines, then you have a very different understanding of the world than if you were reading the articles. What happens now is that we have clickbait and we have rage bait and we also have a certain pace of change. So the space time of politics in that regard which is so fast that we cannot actually process anything. So um you want to start a discussion about something. Well guess what there are 10 other things that came up this morning. >> So you are already Yeah. You are already outdated. >> Oops. Sorry. >> Yeah. Yeah. I know where >> I dropped. >> Yeah, that's fine. So, you are already out of sync and uh you are out of sync. Therefore, the discussion isn't going anywhere because we have to talk about this new topic. >> And that's a little bit that I I also saw when I was working in politics where you have a frenetic pace of change even back then when social media wasn't as entrenched as it is nowadays >> where effectively you work all day long like 247 like you don't have actually free time because >> you have to keep staying updated. Yeah. >> Yes. So somebody will tweet something at midnight let's say in America. So in our case it's a time where we are normally asleep and then you're like well you have to know what they actually said because it has implications for us. >> So >> that also makes it so that people are jaded >> and even the people who are making decisions ultimately are operating with far less imperfect information that they would otherwise be operating with. >> Yeah. So that also has the effect of bringing down the quality of public discourse in general and it is a cross party and cross country I would say. >> And another thing I like to say is like kind of tying back into what you just said like with social media and with like just how many variables there are in the picture. It's like I I almost feel like like kind of in contrast to what I said earlier like talking about politics is important but smart people are checking out and that's a problem now. I also think that on the other hand, I can't fully blame them just because I would say staying informed on like what's going on in the world has almost become like a full-time job. Like you just said, it's it's not as easy as just like wake up in the morning and like while you're drinking your coffee or whatever, turn on the news. It's not that easy anymore because what the news says is biased. The what the newspaper says is biased. what the tweets say obviously is biased. There will be 20 sources of journalism that you can look at to read about the same thing and they're all going to be biased with their own specific um you know ideology that they're trying to push. And I guess there are like workarounds. You could try like ground news or any of those like um apps that kind of like try to like show you one thing from each side or whatever. But I can how do you as a person even know that that can be trusted, you know? Like how do you know they're not trying to also push an agenda? Like it's >> or one thing that I do like personally I like to read Reuters because it's international. It it doesn't try to bias like they'll just report what happened. They won't really report like opinion pieces on the internal affairs of any country. But pretty much like these are also things that these are judgments that you have to make by yourself like okay I think Reuters is good enough not that it's good I think that Reuters is good enough I think ground news is good enough whatever you choose to look at but there's just become like so much so much trash kind of like in that pipeline so much noise in the system of journalism that to look for a specific thing that you want to like read about an objective quote unquote objective read on a particular situation is just so hard. Like first you have to find what's objective and then you have to read it. And I feel like it would actually take you all day if you were trying to do that with all issues all the time. And people are just like it's not worth it anymore. Which honestly like I don't blame them. But I think that more than anything, this is why people need to be getting together and talking about things. Like people need to be making these topics a part of their daily discourse with their friends, with their family, with anyone that they might be around because that way like maybe you'll read your own little biased source of news, but hopefully by talking to everyone else around you who might be reading theirs, you'll come to like maybe a situation where you can see all sides. And of course this isn't sustainable to do every day. But I feel like trying to like move away from this saying like this is all beneath me, I'm not interested is very counterproductive. That's >> Yes. Yes. Yes. And uh two things. One is the the sheer volume of information. Of course it boggles the mind. You cannot keep up with it. That's the first thing. So you need division of labor in that regard. >> Yeah. And then the second thing is that um in a group that is open to discourse common sense tends to prevail but they have to be open to discussion. If they are just antagonistic and they just say oh no we are shouting louder than you therefore this is the truth >> then of course it's the opposite effect is groups become less and less reasonable. But otherwise if they are willing to talk it's common sense and the common sense will work. >> I do agree that like and that's another thing like again I have so many opinions on this but like that's another thing I feel like it's almost like every opinion I have is like a node in a circular chain diagram where it's like kind of going like this. But I think that another thing that on the one hand yeah there's like a lot of tribal discourse and shouting and yelling and stuff like that. On the other, I feel like there's started to be this notion in political discourse or pretty much any discourse really that you need to make people feel safe by not offending them. And when you say not offending them, you mean not disagreeing with them at all. So like a lot of times sensitive topics, the topics that might trigger someone are just like kept out of all conversation ever. And um it's considered socially, you know, it's considered that you're emotionally intelligent or socially um savvy if you do that. If you just completely avoid any discussion of religion, any discussion of politics, any discussion of like your identity in whatever way, it's considered good. And the reason it's considered good is because people, I think more and more, are being sold this idea that you have to be comfortable at all times and not have to deal with disagreement or conflict ever. And I really don't like that because I think that like first of all, you get closer to your friends, to your family, to the people around you by having disagreements and working through them. You don't get closer to them by just sanitizing everything and making sure that all the topics stay safe. I think that it's become uncool and it's not just become uncool, it's also become offensive or it it's like you're too much socially if you bring up these topics at all. And the public discourse I think is reinforcing that idea like the idea that oh this is a safe space for you know x group of people and that usually means we don't attack that ideology at all like even if it's just an intellectual um disagreement even if we're not saying you're wrong for living your life a certain way even if you're not saying that you're just not allowed to disagree and I think that that's really like harmful and it's going to only lead to these tribal groups forming even more. Um >> because what happens is that you have an expanded conception of identity. >> Exactly. >> Where it's like what defines me now is more than what would otherwise define me. And once you include preferences as your identity and specific opinions, ultimately you reach a point where you cannot actually argue about anything because somebody will be offended somewhere. >> Yeah. >> H there is also this uh like in everyday talk they say oh I don't mean to criticize but >> um what do you think about such and such? And criticism has acquired this negative connotation where it's like if I am saying something that you don't agree with or you are not doing therefore I am being a pmicist. I am attacking you. >> Well I think criticism is >> the hallmark of a good discussion. It's like how you are able to grow as a person. And this goes back to for example the dialectical method of Socrates. >> What Socrates is basically doing is asking well why do you believe what you believe? Can we actually check? So in effect Socrates is criticizing and is saying have you actually considered what you are saying or it's just vibes. >> Basically that's what Socrates is saying >> and does the system uphold questioning. >> Yes. Yes. Exactly. And through that process, you get to become better as a person because now you get to understand the parts of your thinking that are well grounded in fact or research and the parts that are wishful and you think you know but you actually don't >> and you are defensive about because >> subconsciously you don't want them to be exposed as um empty words basically. >> Yeah. Yeah, I fully agree with that. I think that that's >> Sorry, go on. >> No, no, no. Please, please, please. >> No, I think that that's like a I think that that's important and like like I was saying before, it's important to like question each other. It's important to disagree with each other and it's important to like see each other's side without being offended. And yes, you should be respectful. You shouldn't attack someone saying, "Oh, I just don't approve of your lifestyle. I wish you would change." That's not what you do. But you at the same time I think it's completely valid to say while you may live a certain way or you may choose to like think a certain way. I don't think that way and I think you should hear me out and I will hear you out. I think that should be part of you know everyday discourse like if you'll look at not just like people's uh conversations but also look at um media not just like conversational norms but also like what is being showed to to people. Have you noticed that these days everything is very sanitized, very um you don't touch offensive topics? Like you don't have um anything in there that might, you know, offend anyone in your population. And again, this ties back into the fact that like all this stuff is just going to like this bigger capitalist system now. They're trying to like maximize their audience as much as possible in all forms of media really. And they they see that the the easiest way to do that is to not offend a single person. They want to make sure that everyone as many people as they can get to pay for their thing, they will get to pay for their thing. Um, >> which is another part of like another point that I always like to make is that people who are talking about identity politics, they like you'll look at people who are criticizing identity politics, they're criticizing this idea that like your race, your gender, your um sexual identity, your you know, any identity that you choose to like latch on to is stupid. Like there's people who are like don't do that. Like that is not and I kind of agree. I think that like it's not important, but there's people who are very um very attached to their identity um based off of these things. And that's where identity politics comes from. It's like I identify with this race or this gender or this uh way of thinking and anyone who disagrees with me is attacking me. Then on the other hand, there are people who are, you know, so there's people who are criticizing that. And have you noticed that those are the same people usually like the the right-wing in this in like the US anti-woke people, people who are against identity politics, they're the same people who are supporting corporate, you know, they're supporting corporate monopolies. They're supporting capitalism. They're anti- like labor regulation or anti- like market regulation or anything like that. And they're kind of feeding each other. I feel like this whole identity politics woke kind of culture is more of a corporate thing than it's a political thing. It's not really a like there's no law saying like woke people rule. There's nothing like that there. There is just nothing there. It it's not a thing. I feel like the right creates that as a scapegoat to fight against. And even though it's not really the left, it's not really something that people on the left are doing politically. maybe as a talking point, but definitely not as far as policy goes beyond like to a certain degree. And what's happening as a result, the corporations, the same corporations that are the donors for the right are getting to capitalize on how look how inclusive we are, look how we um look at all perspectives, look at how we treat everyone equally, and they make money off of it. In the end of the day, it's just a way for them to make money. And I feel like this whole like woke and anti-woke thing that's become like such a big um talking point in the US um and it's kind of becoming like one of the base um things on which like all political discourse is kind of built is just a non-issue. It's literally a self-feeding loop. The people who are criticizing it are actually enabling it and the people who are enabling it are you know they want the criticism because then their their side can keep winning you know. >> It's um also a way of not discussing anything of substance beyond identities because fundamentally the way it is framed is >> well either you agree or you disagree. Uh but what will happen in practice in terms of um uh political realities that will be created after the government does certain things any government is that you will be oscillating from one to the other. >> Exactly. >> And what happens is you have people who are divided along those lines. I think what part of the problem here is that it is an easy win. So it was fashionable a few years ago to have this sanitized approach where nobody touches anything and that sort of thing. Uh but once that becomes demo day so on it goes out of fashion you have the opposite which is let's be provocatorial let's just provocative rather let's just be provocative and let's just be edgy and we go to the other end. I I definitely was in that phase like I would I would trigger people online just for just for fun. I had a phase. >> So what effectively happens is ups and downs that are fashions. So you will go through I don't know five 10 years of the reaction and then the action and it will go back and forth like this without actually discussing anything else beyond that and in that regard it is a distraction because there are like however you identify there are still >> material realities >> and these material realities will not change because the argument on identities is leaning one way or the other. >> Exactly. >> Just to say this is of course more of an Americanism, but we we have that elsewhere. We have that in in Europe in different ways where we have the identity politics in terms of ethnicity in terms of us against immigrants and the anti-immigrant position I think is fundamentally not saying the whole truth like you can say for example I am against migration so that's an opinion fair enough let's discuss it what are the pros and But you cannot just stay there because if you think again programmatically you have to consider what are the implications for the social uh system like if we don't have people doing jobs who will contribute to the social security funds. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> Who will be doing the jobs that locals do not want to do like construction work for example or um agriculture? Who will be doing that if it's not the foreigners? If it's not the migrants. So it's very easy to win points which are tokenistic but again we come back to >> yeah exactly tokenistic uh and we go back to this point of well what is the programmatic view of this policy any policy so pro migration or anti-migration like have you thought it through have if you were tomorrow to implement it have you thought about all the ramifications or are you just going with the vibes >> the answer is obviously ly no, right? Because it's not a black and white stance. Pro migration, let them all in, anti-migration, close all the borders. It's not like that. Exactly. >> But again, like >> current the current like political discourse or like the fashionable political discourse like you said rewards people who are thinking in black and white without any nuance. Um, so yeah, I it's it's like it's very refreshing to have a conversation like this with someone who kind of like sees things similarly, if that makes sense. Um I I might have gotten like a little bit rambly and lost people along the way, but like the um but I mean it's very interesting to see that like this perspective that I have is not like impossible to discuss I guess. Um >> no no it's not impossible. There is another thing to it which is the kind of person you are because of course there are the arguments and then there is the how you carry yourself like your body language your conduct like what kind of person you are >> and if you are going with the memes so if you want to only get cheap easy wins what happens is that in practice you are a swindler >> in practice you are just there to manip ulate people >> like you don't have integrity fundamentally that's what it is. >> So if you don't have integrity and you are a leading figure what happens is that others will likely do the same. So it creates this effect where it's a race to the bottom. >> That's fair. Yeah. So here's another one. >> No no go ahead. >> Go on. Mhm. >> Uh so basically the idea is and this makes it so that the ground for the next series of discussion is already primed to start from a position of disrespect in that regard at the interpersonal level notwithstanding the substantive points regardless of them. So if you are if you are just treating people as a means to an end >> then it means that you don't respect them and you start with that. >> Sorry. >> Yeah, no problem. >> Yeah. So um yeah, I mean like I guess like here's a question that I had like kind of building on what you just as what you just talked about. So when you when you look at a public figure like not just a politician but maybe just someone who when they talk people will listen someone who's famous enough someone who's uh considered respectable enough by like a good number of people in the population. Do you think that they have a certain responsibility to um maybe not exactly filter what they say, but to maybe think things through a little bit more before they make a statement? Um because that is what the people are seeing and that's what the people are like using almost to form their own opinions off of. Would you say that that's something that public figures that's a responsibility that public figures have or would you say it's more of just like they're human just like anyone else? They should say what they want and people should be able to like know that not everything that comes out of anyone's mouth should be trusted. Um >> you can understand the dynamic here if you think about the parent and the child dynamic. >> Like what the parent does not what the parent says. What the parent does is what the child will follow. >> H so if the parent says oh don't do this it's terrible for you. But the parent does it chances are the child will do the same. Yeah. >> Because it's like well you don't stand by your word. You don't actually believe in those. I say my dogs are making a lot of noise. I don't know if you can hear them in the audience. >> I can but it's not it's not too loud. I can hear you just fine. Yeah. >> Okay. Okay. So then the point is that the same dynamic applies when you are an influencer figure. So when you are somebody who others look up to and want to hear their opinion of their take on the matter. You are a tutillary figure. You are a little bit like a parent. >> Okay. >> So you have more responsibility because of the consequences of your words. Like somebody who is influential >> can say one word which has farreaching implication. >> It can create consequence. Whereas somebody who is a nobody in that regard, not um influential, their word lives and dies where they are. It doesn't go anywhere. So the person who is more influential ultimately has to lead by example >> and you see that you see that in you see that in families you also see it in in groups of people like if you are in a because you mentioned earlier about the the work and how they want you to be a good uh team player >> like in a team in a group dynamic if your higher up is um fooling around ultimately you have the incentive to do the same and I have seen that in many jobs that I have done. So I have done a lot of jobs not just bartending that I mentioned earlier lots of different kinds of jobs and you see that everywhere because it's the same dynamic with people. People are the same everywhere >> and once you understand that then you work with that and you have to think from the interpersonal relations then you have to think into the political relation. >> That's fair. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, I guess like again like not to like completely like to push back a little on what you said, would you say that maybe like in the process of treating these public figures or like influencers as the parent kind of in the dynamic? Wouldn't you say that on the flip side that's al also kind of treating the average person like a child? Wouldn't you say that's al also like kind of almost assuming stupidity from the majority of the population? Um, which again like what's your thought? What what are your thoughts on that? Do you think that like when a politician or a public figure is making a statement, they should be making that statement almost with the assumption that your your audience is not at all intelligent? Or should you be making that statement assuming some prerequisite knowledge or some critical thinking from the the people that you're targeting? Um because I feel like it's becoming more and more so at least in in American politics I would say it's becoming more and more that it's just becoming about like you know who can shout the loudest and who can like reach the most people the quickest. Um what would you say is a good balance between like um upholding responsibility from the public uh figures and to say something that won't misinform the public or won't mislead the public and also just like knowing that the public is not that stupid like what would you say is like the correct balance between the two >> h so first of all the familial metaphor is a metaphor it doesn't mean that it's a one so so I'm not saying that therefore you should be infantilizing people. First of all, that wouldn't work. Secondly, >> yeah, >> even in a parent child relationship, >> ultimately that doesn't work for too long. Maybe when the kids are very small, then maybe it works. But >> yeah, >> the child ultimately is a small human. It's not stupid because it's young. >> So, it's not like that. So, effectively, you have to tweet to treat it as a small human like a young person. >> So, there is that. Um but it's mostly a dynamic between the the tutillary figures and those who are being tutored. So those who uh follow or who get influenced or who listen it doesn't mean that they are drones. They are just mindlessly following instructions. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Uh it means that they are at the receiving end of some communication you are putting out. >> So there is that dynamic. They are recipients and as recipients of course they can think for themselves and that's good but what I'm saying here is in terms of your quality as a person >> regardless of what you are saying like you have to >> uh communicate a certain kind of uh personality which shows responsibility like you understand that you hold power there is this saying like when you launch the Unix terminal for the first time and you want to do sudo it says says well with great power comes great responsibility. Are you sure? >> And basically it's that like understand that if you are in a position of power you don't just have power you also have responsibility. And if you decouple the two then what happens is you have egregious power. >> That's fair. >> And power that will become ever more hostile to others abusing. >> That makes sense. Yeah. That's actually a really good point. Yeah. cuz um so here's um I guess like just again this is more of just me trying to ask like a question that I had in mind for a while um but you started writing right on your blog so completely pivoting from politics or anything that we were discussing um you you have like a lot of different sections. You have like a like an inspirational kind of section where you talk about like lifestyle. You have like a section where you talk about politics for one. You have a section where you write poetry even and then you have a section where you like post pictures of yourself. Uh you have like >> yeah you have a lot of sections in in your blog. So I guess like a question I have is um what was the thought process behind like you know wanting to write about each particular thing or like wanting to say this is when I felt like I should write about this or this is when I felt like I should write about that. It's a very broad question. So feel free to like make it >> the scope as you see fit. But yeah, I wanted to just generally ask about your blog and your writing. >> Uh so um it's kind of anticipated in what I said earlier about keeping keeping yourself fresh uh by uh being mindful of your feelings like how do I feel about it? For example, I am blogging about the European Union and I'm doing that for a while. How do I feel about it? Do I want to keep doing it or do I want to take a step back and experiment with something else and try new things? So it's basically that it's a way for me to reinvent myself and to keep myself fresh and to ultimately broaden my horizons because and this is something I see for example I have mentioned this concept of programmatic policym right >> that's something that is informed by my exposure to programming >> that's fair yeah >> where in programming you don't just do vibes it's like well I want something but ultimately there has to be an implementation of this >> unless you're vibe coding. I'm I'm kidding. >> But >> but even there even there of course yeah I know what they are saying somebody is implementing it. So maybe you don't know but yeah the but the point is that you cannot just express a want or an opinion like there has to be a step a step b etc. uh which culminates in some product. >> Yeah. And also when you start uh thinking in terms of programs you understand how uh one thing leads to the other like the return value of one function can go into another function kind of thing right and there is a certain state of uh that you are dealing with of your program and so on. Um >> this is helpful when you do politics it's helpful when you think in terms of politics because now you have a more practical way of going about it. It's not just this is how I feel about it and it would be good if it were to happen. >> Yeah. >> Um other sections such as the lifestyle section um or the commentary as it is called um >> Yeah. >> H came about um not uh by personal initiative but organically where people would uh send me questions >> and I was like well I will respond in full which is what I always do. I always respond to all the correspondence I receive. >> Yeah. >> And I will respond in full. I won't leave you hanging. It's not like a yes or no. I will respond in full, but then I'm like, hey, >> others may have the same question. How about I publish it and of course um keep away the private details. So, not sharing the person's name or contact. >> Yeah. >> So, like that it uh came about that I have a lot of publications along those lines, general life issues. And um I thought it was very interesting that this happened without me forcing it to happen. >> That makes sense. So did you just start getting people who started writing to you by reading like your blog and then you decide to like start addressing their points like one at a time? >> So they will write me there are many such publications where somebody will ask me a few things like for example you mentioned AI. Hey AI what is the impact of AI on authenticity and art? and um I am feeling depressed about it that sort of thing and then I provide my opinion on >> actually what are your thoughts on that like >> yeah yeah um it goes back to what you were discussing about um parents not forcing their children to go a certain way in terms of hobbies meaning >> doing something because you like it fundamentally it comes from within >> and my idea is that if you do something you like in this case art. >> It doesn't matter whether the rest of the world does art through an LLM or there is a machine that does it because you still enjoy the process. >> Exactly. >> Like for example, now you are drawing a sketch >> and fundamentally you do that. >> Wow, that looks elaborate. That's very nice. um you are doing that because ultimately it's something that expresses a side of you, a part of you. It comes from within. It's something you like to do. It's something that fulfills you. It's something that has the recreational effect to go back to that word I mentioned earlier. >> So no future can take that away for you from you. >> Like no future I mean technological development in that regard. And no person it's something you enjoy, you like it and it ends there. Um and then I basically say also that uh art has always been standardized slash streamlined. It's not a new phenomenon. It's not AI that does this. It has been uh happening since antiquity. For example, you know this uh Greek uh the pottery the the Greek pottery where they have all those paintings on them. >> So um at one level you can think of this as art. At another level, you can think of it as branding because imagine in the old days people are doing trade and the Greeks for example will share something with the rest of the world which is I don't know wine or olive oil or you know something that they produce locally and they will take it to a country far away. Let's say they will take it to Egypt or they will take it to um Georgia where the Caucasus mountains are. And how do you say made in Greece? What a better way than to have those figures where it's like all the gods and the heroes and stuff. So it's a streamlined art. It's branding. It's marketing. It's if you want the tourist to trap and uh it has been happening since antiquity. Not to say that this is the exception. >> I can't do that. Yeah. >> Like for example where I live in Cyprus, >> it's called the island of Aphroditi. Aphroditi. So Aphrodites, an ancient goddess, the goddess of love, etc. >> It's not that people actually believe this, but it's a good branding. It's a good marketing like come here, it's the island of Aphrodity, blah blah blah. So it sells well >> statue of Aphrodite on it. >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. >> Yeah. So it makes for good business ultimately and this has been happening and it doesn't deter your as an individual your artistic side. If you if it comes from within it will come regardless. >> I agree. Yes, that is. So yeah, I guess that that goes back to like what you were saying earlier. It's like you're doing it for the fact that you like it and it's not for productivity. You're not trying to optimize the result. It's more about just the fact that you're doing something that you enjoy and you're doing it because you enjoy it, not because you want to produce something that you can show off about. And I think that AI is only going to like make it make the result as you can say, it's not going to like look as impressive maybe because it's like an AI can do it too. But if you enjoy doing the thing, if you enjoy the process, it's not really about the product. It's not really about the result. It's it's about like the fact that you enjoy art or that you enjoy music or whatever it is that you enjoy. Um and the fact that you're doing it because you like it, not because you want to like say, "Look, I did this. Look how productive I was or look how um yeah." Um so I I do agree with you. So I would say that like if you had to summarize, I guess would you say that your stance is generally like pro- AI? like you're looking to um >> it's a nuanced it's nuanced I would say >> it is nuanced okay >> in the sense that um it technological progress is inexurable like you won't stop it >> and every single progress every single step has good things and bad things this is again ancient like um there is this myth the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus Prometheus as we say in Greek. And uh what Prometheus is basically about is somebody who grants people who bestows upon them the art, the knowhow of how to use fire. >> And of course, once you know how to use fire, you can cook, you can warm up your house, heat the place so it's nice and comfortable for the family. But you can also uh burn a place down. So you can also use it for war. Yeah. >> So since the very beginning we have technology in this case fire which is both good and bad. >> And if you say oh we don't want fire because we can use it as a weapon then you won't have fire for all the good things it gives you like cooked meat >> or warmth. So you cannot have one without the other. That is the idea. And this is true for every technology and it's why ultimately you cannot be technopobic or anti-technology because there are good things in it. There are problems of course but for example with AI many of the problems that are attributed to AI or LLMs in this case >> problems of people. Yeah >> exactly. So for example, if I want to impress somebody that I am a painter, right? I can draw stuff, I can sketch, and I seek validation, right? I'm like, hey, look at me. I drew this right now. >> And it's the product of a prompt of a LLM prompt. >> What happens is that I cannot back that up. So I am a fraud in time one, but now I have to be a fraud in perpetuity. >> Mhm. >> Because otherwise my charade will be exposed. So now instead of empowering myself to get to have a a good relationship, a good dynamic with this person I'm trying to impress, I am acting insecurely. >> Yeah. >> So that's not the AI that did it. That's you trying to defraud somebody effectively. >> I I agree. I fully agree. And I think that that's um that's definitely something that you need to like think about when you're doing uh when you're like making an argument about AI. you need to think is AI really the thing that you're attacking here or are you just attacking oh this makes it easier for people to do this and and yeah that's been the case with like every technology that's kind of come into being since the beginning of time really like yes it's going to enable people to do things that maybe they shouldn't be doing but is that really because of the technology or is it because of you know people just being you know hostile sometimes or people just being insecure feeling inadequate wanting valid validation whatever it is that is generally you know considered a problem with human behavior. Um >> and just to add to this just to add a little bit to this so >> what is considered a problem I think it ultimately is um benign in the grand scheme of things because it's a little bit like if your code has a security vulnerability now you have to improve your code >> so it's a little bit like that you have something out there that people can abuse and they will abuse of course if they can >> and now you are tasked asked to actually improve it, make it more robust, and that engenders a new innovation. >> Exactly. >> Of course, the cycle repeats itself. >> Yeah. >> For the better and the worse. >> So, yeah. I I actually think that like what you're saying like security vulnerability is a big thing that AI is going to cause. like the more people start to like code with AI, that is one thing that the AI is not going to do cuz like there's so much code that it like people's random GitHub repos like AIS have been trained to code. Um LLMs are not going to consider those things. LMS just don't see why they need to account for those things. I think unsafe code is one of the biggest um issues with what an LLM would produce. And would that require like would LLM's existing maybe change how coding jobs look? It'll probably change just like what the day-to-day work of a software engineer is. Um it's it might be it might move a little bit more towards VIP coding and might might move a little bit away from sit down and write every line yourself. But there are other things like security for example which are going to become um something where you need a person because uh LMS are not going to optimize for that. Their training sets are just not good enough kind of on that front to do that. I think that along with the negatives like people are there's a lot of fear-mongering about AI going on where people are like you're going to lose your job, you're going to lose your individualism, you're going to lose your like ability to do this thing that made you a unique unique compared to other people because now an AI can do it. There's just so much stuff like that going out there about AI. I feel like there isn't enough discourse like at all about look at the bright side like look at what's look at what this whole world of innovation that's still waiting to happen because AI is now enabling the grunt work kind of to be removed from the system from the process and I think that so many people so many intelligent engineers or programmers or people who are in those industries are being a little too pessimistic about what AI is going to do I think >> which is understandable of course and this goes to a general point about people and their behavior we don't just have a rational side it's not like oh I will perform a costbenefit calculation and come to a reasonable conclusion we also have an emotional side and if you see that for example your job is in danger and things are happening and you cannot keep up then of course you have a different outlook than if You are thinking from a position of security. >> That alone like the the precarious standing ultimately will condition your thinking other things being equal. >> Exactly. >> So of course people might be more pessimistic or optimistic depending on their material conditions and expected material conditions in the near term. >> So there is that. The other thing is that you have to think of every technology but I would say rather every topic not in static terms. It is dynamic. >> So >> you may say okay but LLMs cannot actually solve security vulnerabilities. Well >> not yet. >> Yeah exactly not yet. We cannot have that as a foregone conclusion and just be complacent about it. There may be a future not too far from here. uh where things are happening and you can actually rely on AI to do that >> or maybe people by using it more they get better at using it. Like at the beginning we are exuberant we are over excited about it and we just play around and we think it is the panacea like the the cure for everything. But eventually we are more sober and we have a more grounded and then we are like okay this is a good use for it and then we start using it uh better >> that can also happen. >> So here's a question you just mentioned like people have an emotional side as well as just a rational side. So um I am definitely a person who has a lot of trouble tapping into my emotional side. I definitely try to apply engineering logic or like programming logic, that kind of thing to everything that I do. And it's kind of been a problem, especially because I like music. I like singing. And there's like emotional components to stuff like that that you can't analyze your way out of. You have to be able to actually like get in that mindset and feel it out. Um, would you say that like I I'm just getting the impression from like interacting with you that maybe you've also struggled with something similar uh throughout life and how would you say that like writing about more emotional topics like your poetry and stuff has helped you come out of that a little bit or maybe even >> yeah just just your process? >> It's it's basically to accept the fact that you are multifaceted. So of course we have a rational side and many times it is the dominant side >> but we don't have just that and we if we pretend that this is all we do uh then that will be detrimental to our state of mind and I think people who are extra logical in that regard like because of course there is a different distribution of competencies people who are more on the side of being uh rational than being emotional I think those people are more prone to it speaking for myself for example where it's like >> well my default mode of uh working is to put things down to something that is logical and think them through. >> Yeah. >> But what happens is >> you have to understand that this is not your only side. So you have to accept that there are times in life where >> you need a different tiebreaker because thinking things through ultimately doesn't lead to an outcome. >> That's true. So it's it's the gut feeling as we say like okay at the end of the day how do you feel about it? >> Mhm. >> And uh there is something to be said here about faith. Faith um is a term that has been appropriated if you will to mean something very specific like oh I have faith in one specific kind of God. Yes. But what I mean here is um faith in the sense that I don't know the outcome ahead of time. >> So if I If I commit to a course of action, >> for example, I commit to do this meeting with you. I have faith in the fact that electricity will not fail. >> For example, as simple as that, right? >> So >> once you start thinking about faith in those terms, you understand that we are always always operating with within imperfect circumstances. Our information is not complete. So even when we are really rational ultimately there is a gap there and that gap is filled by faith. What I call now faith here that makes a lot of sense and how does that tie into like the poetry that you do or like the uh emotional parts of your writing that that are like in your >> uh it's a way Let me take a step back here. Writing in general is a way to show who you are because you cannot hide ultimately. >> Like uh through writing you show how you think things, how you approach things, you show what your current level of writing skills are, what your um command of the language is. So you show all that basically you are transparent. You cannot fake it. Of course like you can actually but I mean if you are not trying to fake it ultimately your real self comes through. >> Yeah. >> And if you have that then poetry in this specific example is a way of um accepting that side of you in in my case me it's a way of uh saying look this is how I feel about things in the current moment in present time. >> This expresses me. So it it captures a certain feeling, a state of mind and in so doing it is uh true. >> Yeah, >> it is true not in a factual in terms of the objective reality as it were but it is true in the sense of this is how I feel right now >> with the specific words that came to mind. >> That yeah that makes sense. So, it's the truth of the moment. And if I were to retry, maybe I would do something different. >> Okay, that makes sense. >> And would you say you use music? Maybe I know you're not like necessarily you don't play an instrument or you're not necessarily someone who makes music, but would you say that maybe in just like the process of listening to music or analyzing music, would you say that you approach that a similar way? Because I don't necessarily relate to poetry. I'm not a poet. I don't I don't write poetry. I would like to try. I' I've never done it before, but I would like to try. Um, I definitely approach uh what you just described through music a little bit more than through poetry. So, would you say that you approach music the same way? >> Um, music as well. Yes. And what I committed to doing recently is um not listen to music um passively. So, I used to have music playing on the background. So, what's it called? Like a musical carpet, I think is the expression. But basically, yeah, it's always there. And I stopped doing that because I'm like what am I actually doing here? Am I listening? Am I paying attention or not? I'm doing something else. And this is just for it to stimulate my brain. >> Uh so I will try without that stimulus. That was my idea. And then combined with that >> I will now listen to music purposefully. >> Yeah. >> So I will be like you know what I will just listen and pay attention. And actually there are many Greek songs that I was well aware of for years but I never knew the lyrics of like even if it's >> it's terrible. >> Um so I committed to this interpretations section that I have on my website where I'm like you know what I will write about a song that I enjoy. I will take the lyrics translate them and then say something about them. But in the process I have uh conditioned myself to actually listen and pay attention. >> So yeah, I think that was um a rewarding experience. It's basically an upgrade, an upgrade in mindfulness if that makes sense because it's >> that makes a lot of sense. >> It's like I am now in control of my experience and I operate from a position of initiative. >> Yeah. So one thing I one article that I read on your blog again it's not about the music. I haven't read everything. I've read some of them. Um was the big five test that you did. Um >> ah yeah, of course. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um I guess like I did that pretty recently too and I actually like was looking through your articles just yesterday and that was one of the ones that stood out to me. I also did that pretty recently. Now I don't remember exactly what I got on everything. But um would you say that like stuff like that maybe like taking away from like just what you scored and discussing that? I just mean like uh would you say that stuff like that helps you as well in like um knowing yourself better and like knowing how to uh approach maybe a certain type of feeling that you're doing when you're writing poetry or writing a blog? Or would you say that that stuff just seems like kind of pointless to you? Um it depends on at which point in your life will you be exposed to them. Like they have this thing with the IQ test for example where they take all the kids through the test. >> Yeah. >> And I think that ultimately creates like a cast system as it were where it's like oh you >> IQ test are not >> the IQ tests I don't like because I mean those are more like they give you a number whereas something like a personality test will tell you like oh this is how you are. It's a little bit more >> but what I'm saying is like if you are exposed to that relatively early in life >> um you are at a point where you are still being formed so you are at a point where your character hasn't calcified it's in a state of flood >> and even if there are certain qualities that are there dominant >> we don't know exactly how it will be not withstanding the fact that uh people will try to adapt to their environment. >> Exactly. >> So you have that effect of the chameleon. So you try to blend in. >> Yeah. >> So I think doing it very early in life doesn't help in that regard. >> Or if you do it, you have to have the proviso with it, the asterisk which says, well this is not definitive. I just take it at face value and then I remain open-minded. I might not be exactly this. A future test may reveal something else. >> Yeah, that's fair. >> And just to say this, for example, I am an introverted person on on the introversion side. And I think that's very clear about me. But um >> yeah, >> both when I was a teenager and later in life, >> all the jobs I was doing, all the activities I was doing were that of an extroverted person. So for example, it's very common for introverted people to be doing mostly activities at home or with the computer and such. Uh me I was doing um social activities like sport for example >> and I was in a sense uh always gregarious. I was always with people and because I was involved in different activities like so I was doing sport but I was also working as an apprentice to a motorcycle mechanic. I also had a motorcycle and I had my motorian friends as well. >> And so I would have friends from different uh communities that would not talk to each other, >> but it was like I was uh basically the heart of the party even though it's not who I am. It was just happening >> organically. It's not like I was trying to find the people. >> Yeah. >> Uh with sport for example, uh it's a team game of course in this case soccer. Um, >> I know that I still had the introverted uh part in me where I would be only focusing in the drill. I wasn't actually talking too much when when uh I was uh at the training session. It was dead serious. Like it was like okay enough with nonsense. We don't play here. Like now it's serious. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Which was basically my introversion speaking. It's ultimately like well I am in this social activity but ultimately I am kind of in my own little bubble even though I am >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. H >> so there is that but I think just to uh finish on this is like I think it is um good to think about yourself to reflect on uh different experiences in life and um to try to think of okay who I am what I'm doing and um these kinds of tests can provide insights into um who you are and I think that has um an effect of uh being uh good for you where it's like, "Oh, this is a relief now. I can understand why certain things happened in a certain way." >> Yeah. Yeah. I did notice that you said that like you I didn't notice I don't remember everything that you said, but it it seems like you have a low score on agreeableness, like you're not necessarily a very agreeable person according to that test. Now I don't see that like I see that you try your best to like talk to all people and like you know look for look at all opinions try to like get an idea of how everyone behaves and how everyone thinks and I would actually say that that's the opposite of not agreeable like I guess so >> because here this is an artifact of the test like the kind of questions it asks is along the lines of basically would you say a lie just to appease somebody >> and then my answer is well no of course it's with a caveat again because depends on what we are talking about like what what is at stake >> but generally I would be like no I won't um just um coddle you it won't just be I won't be babying you as it were >> yeah yeah exactly >> so in that regard but there is the other thing of course which a test cannot capture which is like I am also saying this from a position of having thought things through about a lot of things. For example, we discussed politics earlier and I was telling you that at some point I was really opinionated. Then I started thinking in terms of okay, what can you actually do? >> Yeah. And once you have that kind of education, it amilarates, it has an amilarative effect on your personality traits where it's like yes, of course, I have a propensity to ultimately say what I feel like >> but I will also try to understand what the other person is saying like what is their perspective not whether I I won't tell them oh I agree with you and it's fine you're a you are a good person not that but to be like okay why is this person thinking uh this like what are their priorities what are they sensitive about >> yeah that makes a lot of sense uh would you say that like compared to the average person that you interact with would you say that like you tend to have opinions that are more like them or more controversial compared to them >> uh I would say they are more controversial for many things uh in the sense that I will not say something that everybody is saying because uh that will allow me to fit in. So generally I'm not the kind of person that will fit in just for the sake of fitting in or be friendly for the sake of friendliness >> but I will not be antagonistic either like the other extreme where it's like you know what I >> so I think the best way to think of this to frame this is that I am okay to be alone. I am okay to be independent. >> Yeah. Um, and so it's really that >> so again like tying into like you're okay to be independent, okay to be alone. I actually talked about this with Eric for a little bit. He told me that like you about your situation where you decided that you weren't interested in like being part of like the bigger uh society kind of like in a sense. So you decided to like go off and kind of do your own thing like make your build your own house like kind of like live very self-sufficiently not rely on anyone or not rely on institutions rather. Um so what was your process um internal process maybe that led you there kind of like what made you start thinking that you want to maybe isolate a little bit from that institutional side of society and like do your own thing. >> Uh it started out as um a response to the burnout I was feeling from that frenetic pace of political developments. I was like, I'm not in control. Like I feel that the world is moving away from me and I cannot keep up with anything. >> Okay. >> And I felt that I was being overworked >> and there was no way for me to change that. Not because people were overworking me because everybody is overworking themselves in that environment in that millu. >> Yeah. >> So I was like this is not sustainable. I need a pace of uh living that is viable for me. Yeah. >> So my original idea was okay let me go to the countryside. It wasn't like okay let me go there and do my own world as it were. It wasn't like that. It was very simple. Let me go to the countryside and I will uh do manual labor. I will work the fields. I will do construction work. That sort of thing. Uh and I will just live with a modest income and basically that's my life. Um what happened though is that the market changed. So I used to rent a place really cheap like in the mountains it was very quiet. There was nobody here and the place I would rent it wasn't a good place but it was very cheap. It it used to be like um how do you call it like a storage room for animals in the past like they would have a stable. >> Um so it was like that and it was very cheap for me. So I was renting the place and eventually what happened is that the market changed. So all the rent uh went up like many times up and >> oh even for even for your place >> even for my place like uh nowadays it's basically exorbitant rates they are not viable and anyway I couldn't actually live like uh my income was the minimum wage but you cannot actually live with the minimum wage. Uh so what do I do? And um eventually there wasn't a better alternative than what I did here. I was trying to find a job and basically reintegrate >> but that didn't work for a variety of reasons. So eventually I was like you know what this is what it is and um the faith I said earlier a leap of faith I will just do it and see what happens. >> That's actually yeah that's very interesting. So what does your day look like now? like what would you say your your day looks like just >> so uh when I have a work on the computer I will be on the computer for example I will have a meeting or I will be responding to emails or I will be maintaining my packages for Emacs so I will be doing uh that if I don't have any work on the computer I will leave immediately so I never do this kind of okay let me just um look around and spend some time like chill as we were saying >> so I'm like okay finished out so So, I switch off the computer and I am out to do manual labor. And there are all sorts of things here that I'm doing, improving the conditions of my land. Uh, there still is construction work for the house. I call it the hat because it started out as an actual hat idea. Eventually, it's not a hat, >> but it's an endearing term. So, the house here, I still need to improve it. There are many basic things that need to happen, uh, such as insulation, such as warm water. There are all sorts of things um which will happen other things being equal within the next two three years. So there is that. >> Yeah. >> And also infrastructure work that I do around here. So for example to prevent soil erosion and to improve uh like a garden space and the place where I can sit and to have trees and all that. >> Okay. Okay. That's very interesting. Yeah. I I do I do find your like lifestyle very fascinating because I've never spoken to anyone else quite like that before and I'm guessing that many people you've interviewed must have said similar things kind of on that front. Um so um would you say that like you prefer u manual labor like as a as a job or would you say you prefer to like spend your day doing more mental labor? I guess uh how you would like what would you say is your preference as as far as like just your day-to-day? Yeah, I like the balance. I like to diversify because it's another way of uh staying fresh. >> Like if you do too much manual labor, of course you get injured. If you do too much uh mental related work, uh you get uh tired eventually like uh you want a break. >> Mhm. So there is a burnout and also if you do too much uh work on the computer there is the other thing which is that you are sucked into that world where the pace is no longer consistent with your actuality >> so the time space of politics that we were mentioning earlier. So yeah, sacked into that >> and um for me it's like no I have to stay away and basically it's a way for me to have um compartments to my lifestyle where it's like okay now I am in computer mode now I am in non-computer mode >> and basically it's like that >> yeah that's actually very interesting and um it is really cool I do find the the process like very cool so Um, as far as like you you mentioned being an introvert, but as far as like getting your social needs met, like as far as it get comes to like, you know, having friends you see, maybe family. I'm not sure how it how your situation is, but like just as far as like just having that human interaction component from day to day. Uh, how would you say you get that or how often would you say that you get to like maybe interact with people in person or versus online? in online is mostly how I interact with people such as uh with videos like this. Uh so it's mostly online um because of also the work I do but um uh I would like to improve the face to face thing. I would like to have more time for that. I would like to be better at that. Uh but it's also a matter of >> I have to find time for it. It's kind of difficult. >> Yeah. >> H where I am here. I have to maintain the project going. I have to because there is also a timeliness to everything like I have to fix the infrastructure. It cannot just stay there. I have to improve the insulation for example. So there are all these uh priorities. So uh they are taking away from that too much I must say. It's not like I like it or I'm proud of it but it is what it is. >> There is this expression just to say there is this expression the lone wolf and uh people will say that to sound cool. And me I experienced it and I tell you it's not a good experience. It's not a good experience because lone wolf of course means you are a wolf and that sounds like a badass right? >> But you are also alone. So um there is that and >> um that is something that requires a certain level of fortitude to withstand it's not easy. >> Uh so I don't encourage people to take words lightly. >> No that totally makes sense. Uh what at what age did you start this lifestyle as opposed to like just living in like the city? >> About 10 years ago. So I was 26 I think. Uh thereabouts. Yeah. Or 27 maybe. I'm not sure. Yes. I can't >> I'm I'm 25 right now. So it's like you were not that much older than me when you first started. And >> that seems that is definitely a very remarkable and interesting kind of like way of living. Definitely not something I've ever seen before. And I do find that very very fascinating. So, um, yeah, I would love to like know more. I I'm almost done here with your, uh, with your sketch. So, u, I I'm guessing that you would also need to get going soon. >> Yes, let's finish the sketch. And, uh, >> yeah, if there's like a final question or a couple of questions you have for me while I get this done, then uh, now would be. >> Yeah. Yeah, of course. So, you said about the music uh, and the emotional impact of it. Uh, so please elaborate. Tell me what music it is. Uh is it listening? Is it playing? And what is the experience like? >> So I have very recently started to learn how to play instruments because I didn't play instruments. Uh I grew up singing. I've always been singing. Uh but playing instruments is definitely new to me. And uh so I'm learning kind of like as a beginner. Uh both piano and guitar. And I'm learning from friends. I'm not taking formal like lessons yet, but I have some friends who are very good at playing piano and guitar and I'm learning how to play from them. And I've been singing. So, I'm starting to like perform more these days. I'm like I'm starting a band. I've started a band. So, I'm um the singer in the band. And I've been like, you know, doing some shows like just as a hobby, like in my free time. Uh, as far as like work and everything else allows it. Um, I've been doing that. Um, but I will say that like more than like a as far as like what the um mental impact of singing in front of people especially has had on my brain outside of just um the just learning the technique or like the the music knowledge that it's given me has been um how to connect with an audience emotionally and how to maybe get out of your head a little bit and start seeing the singing as a way to touch people emotionally rather than just um you know go up there and do the thing technically accurately and like get it to sound you know correct. Um because there is definitely a level of um you need to like put yourself into it to a degree that just like learning to sing correctly, sing at the the right notes, the right beats, it's not going to like do that for you. And I'm definitely like learning a lot more about how to like think that way, how to channel my own um kind of like emotions that way through the process of singing in front of people. Um and so recently I would say I very recently just last week I had a music lesson like I took a lesson with a very famous or not not necessarily super famous but like in the music community in that city. He's pretty well known as a music teacher and he doesn't teach he he is he is a pianist by trade, but he um doesn't teach just piano. He teaches music. He teaches how to like reach uh an audience. He teaches how to like connect with the song. He teaches how to like make your um make yourself heard in a way that like the average person would not be able to to do. Um, so one thing that he told me is that I try to calculate everything in my performance. Like I try to get it down to like an exact almost formula of like here's what I have to sing, here's when I have to sing it, here's like how it's going to like here's how I can like phrase my mouth or however to make it sound a certain way. And he kind of like told me and it was just it was like one very long lesson. It was like one lesson that lasted like 3 hours. Um, but he kind of like opened my mind to this idea that there's more to music than doing it technically correctly. And also this idea that you need to trust your own intuition a little bit more than you might be. So sometimes even if you don't have a formula for something, even if you don't know this is how you're supposed to do it or this is when you're supposed to do it or however, if you just like rely on your gut feeling, you can still get it right. And that's that's what music or musicians are are mostly doing across the board. It's just that like I come at it from a technical background. Like I'm an engineer. I approach things like an engineer would. And that might not always be the right way to approach everything. I guess that's that's definitely something that I learned in that lesson with him. And also like in general what I've been learning in my experience with music as a whole. So, as far as like a general mindset shift goes with music, that is what I'm trying to like work on. I'm trying to work on >> listening to my gut feeling or maybe trusting my intuition a little bit more as opposed to trying to calculate everything. Um, >> yeah. Yeah. And that's why >> you tried improvisation. Um, so improvisation, yeah, improvisation with singing is uh something that I'm a little bit still maybe a little shy to do because you kind of have to be very confident with like the the fact that you'll do it correct. Not correctly necessarily, but like you'll do it in a way that fits the song. Like, you know, if you like you can impro you can go to an improvisational kind of break. And with instruments, I think that it's a little bit more easy to access teaching for that. Like people will teach you how to improvise on piano or improvise on guitar. Improvising with singing, although people do it, I think that most uh people who teach singing or um you know, even sing, it's not considered a requirement that you have to be able to do it. So, I am trying to learn, but I will say that it's something that I'm not good at yet, and it's something I haven't done in front of people yet. But, it is definitely something that I want to get into because again, it it ties back into the same thing, like trusting your gut and listening to what your brain is telling you, like this, this is what seems correct. Do it. Um, and this is what seems like it'll sound nice. this is what seems like you can really groove to or you could really like emote to and you have to just do it and you don't have time to calculate or come up with a formula. So I do think that improvisation is going to be very helpful to me musically. Um so yeah that that's my answer on improvisation. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's good. That's good because because it helps with this idea of getting out of your head. >> Yeah. >> Like you don't have a formula for everything. Of course, you can have a general idea what the structure is and the steps involved, >> but you allow space for the unknown. >> Exactly. Yeah. Um would you say like if if I were to like try to do what you're doing with your blog and like writing or like try to like write on the internet? Um I've actually attempted that more than one or once or twice. Like I've attempted to like write something and put it on the internet and what ends up happening is I'm just never satisfied with what I write. I can't keep mistakes in there. I can't allow it to look less than perfect >> and I stress about it so much that because oh there's this little thing in there that >> probably doesn't sound right. It sounds stupid or something like that >> and >> and eventually it gets to a point where I just take it take the post down. So, how would you say that I >> could maybe like learn from the way that you just like started doing it and learn to like come out of that need for perfection all the time? >> Uh, we already touched on the other side of this which is when people are attached to their opinions and their opinions are their identity. >> So, it's basically the same thing where it's like, oh, there are mistakes there. So, the article is flawed by extension I am flawed. And of course you don't want to tolerate that. You want to be perfect. >> You want to be better or whatever. >> Um what helps is to say that what I am now writing is a snapshot of me in a certain situation. It's not me as such. So I am in the process of becoming I am in the process of learning new things of improving. Uh so I am not fixed like this. And if there are mistakes, um, everybody makes mistakes all the time for everything. And, um, acknowledging them ultimately makes you also more resilient, uh, emotionally and more resilient to what people call criticism where it's like, well, you took down an idea. Thank you for doing that because now I understand that it was wrong and I don't have to live with that falsehood anymore. >> Yeah. or without false as in the false impression of me as me being perfect when in reality I'm not >> for example or also >> part of >> yeah the idea that you are not perfect on something that you thought you were perfect on is as much of like it's an important part of self-improvement also yeah that that actually makes sense um because like I've noticed that one thing you do in your articles is like let's say you have like a little typo in there somewhere you don't take it out you leave it there because you want I think that That's perfect like framing for the snapshot idea. The fact that you're like, "This is who I was in that situation." And in that situation, I made a typo, but I'm not going to take it out because that's um that's like it wouldn't be a true reflection of who I was in that moment if I did kind of if that makes sense. >> Yes. Exactly. Plus, >> yeah. >> Um why are we so sensitive about the typo? Like um if I make a mistake, what will happen? Does the world depend on that uh statement being grammatically correct or not? So I think also not taking ourselves too seriously like I just wrote a blog post so what >> instead of thinking like oh I wrote a blog post oh my goodness there are mistakes there it's the end of the world. >> It's not. >> Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that tends to happen when I start writing blog posts is like I start to find it pointless unless people are going to read it. Like I start to be like now that I have a blog, I need to like focus on promoting it, which um >> which I guess like you don't do that from what you don't even have social media. You don't try to promote it. You just write and you let whoever reads it read it kind of. Yeah. >> You are good at not gamifying the process. you're good at not making it into something that needs to have a goal like you said earlier. um what would you say is like the way you think to put yourself in that mindset as opposed to this needs to have productive output or >> so um if you write for an audience um do you know the audience the answer is no or of course you do market research and then of course you are doing marketing you're not doing blogging but if you're writing for an imaginary audience you actually don't know them >> so what you are actually writing for is a projection of the people you would like to be addressing or the people who have the kind of critical eye that you have about yourself. >> So ultimately it's a little bit like your fears talking >> or your aspirations your hopes but you don't know any of that. It's not factual. You you cannot actually say that I know my audience >> and more generally I don't know who will read what. In the same way that I don't control who will watch this and what they will make of it. Like I cannot operate with the assumption that I have to please this imaginary person because it's impossible to flesh out this person. >> Yeah. You just don't even know who you're trying to please. >> Exactly. So ultimately what happens is if you are doing that you don't have a fixed point. uh you will uh be chasing uh trends until something sticks. But uh that something that sticks there is an expression in Greek which is um the translation of it is wind gatherings, wind scatterings. So if you do something that >> uh you have gified and now it attracts a lot of people that's a little bit like the leaves that the wind gathers around and you're like oh there are so many leaves here, right? It's amazing. But then of course what comes easy goes easy. So wind scatterings again the leaves will scatter at the wind. >> So if you are invested in that then ultimately you will be feeling bad about yourself >> because there will be a point where you are not popular anymore like you are not the hottest topic now like we have moved on. And this also ties into what we were saying earlier like the pace of the news cycle is such where okay one day we are talking about this the next day it's irrelevant. So we talk about something else. So if you have a a certain niche there ultimately you won't always be uh having your moment of glory. So >> you have to ground yourself in that which always always gives you comfort which always um you enjoy doing. And what would that be? uh ultimately talking or writing about what ultimately you care about. >> Yeah, that's fair. So yeah, I mean I'm actually like definitely feeling inspired after this conversation to like start writing something on my own because again like maybe you didn't feel like you were talking about what you've written, but I do think that indirectly you are talking about like some you were talking >> the same kind of like philosophy that you apply to talking or the way you apply to like approaching a certain topic. It seems to me that it's the same philosophy that you're applying to writing. And I'm definitely like inspired to like try that for myself because writing for people is not something I've ever done. It's not something I've ever been comfortable doing. I've tried, but I've never like kept posts up for more than a couple days because I've always been uh so afraid that it's not good enough and I'll end up taking it down and I'll or I'll end up going back in and editing the same stuff a million times because I'm like, "Oh, I just came up with an idea that fits like that explains what I was trying to say better and then I'll just go in and I'll edit it." >> Even though like that wasn't the point in the first place. The point is just like you said to create a snapshot of yourself, a personality snapshot almost and put it out there on a any topic that is relevant to you in that moment. And I think that that's definitely a new approach to writing at least the word snapshot is kind of key for me. I think there um because it's not a way that I've ever thought about it before, at least on my own. >> Yeah. >> And it's an accountability structure. It keeps you honest. >> Oh yeah. It also >> Yeah, exactly. It keeps you um >> doing something that writing something that's like only authentic to your true self, not something that's >> that you're doing to get views or to get >> like gify and get like results out of it. >> Yeah. But also in the sense of if you write something informative and we can close with this by the way if you finish that. H if you write something informative which is like >> I want to communicate something. I want to teach people something >> but then of course this reflects my current level of knowledge my current level of communication skills. >> Yeah. Mhm. >> So there is that. >> Exactly. Yep. So I did kind of finish it. I think I might put >> might make some slight edits to this. Um >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. >> And but >> wow amazing. It's >> Thank you. That's very cool. >> It needs a little bit of >> No, no, it's very I me I like >> if you can uh of course you will have to put your signature. >> Um but if you can send me a picture and then I can post it on my website as well. >> That would be Yeah, I definitely do that for you. Let me just like get in my final edits to this because >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever you feel like. >> I think that maybe it's a little bit a little bit wonky when it's flipped. I can already see that in the camera. 's looking a little >> to me. It looks great. No problem. >> Well, thank you so much. And >> you're welcome, Ro. >> Yeah, of course. And yeah, I'll be I would love to like do a part two if you do that maybe at some point. Just like keep me in the loop and um let me know. We we definitely touched on a lot of very interesting topics today and I would like further on a lot of them. >> So, I would say yeah, why not? That sounds great. >> Of course. Yeah, it was great talking to you. I will send you a picture of this and you can I would love it if you'd put it on your website. That would be great. >> And once again, thank you so much for having me on here. >> You're welcome. You're welcome. That's great. So, I will uh stop the recording and then we can call it a day. So uh let me stop

**UPDATE 2026-02-23 08:34 +0200:** The portrait is available here: https://protesilaos.com/selfies/2026-02-23-prot-portrait-by-ro/ * * * In this ~3-hour video I talk with Ro about a wide variety of topics that cover programming, politics, lifestyle, and art. We start by learning about Ro's work as a software engineer for military projects. Ro studied electrical engineering and then transitioned to programming. I learn that Ro has an interest in politics and art. In terms of the latter, Ro draws a portrait of me during our discussion. We talk until the drawing is done, which you can check out towards the end of the video. On the politics front, we discuss my current thinking about political issues, where I am interested in the implementation of any given opinion. This is where I introduce the notion of "programmatic thinking". The idea is to frame your opinions in terms of how you could implement them, given the prevailing conditions. Doing so helps filter out opinions that are not feasible. We also comment on the quality of political discourse. Part of this is informed by the current technology, which reduces the spacetime of current affairs: everything happens instantly and feels proximate. Ro suggests how people need to be getting together to discuss politics. If people are open to talk, instead of shouting at each other, then common sense can prevail. Ro points out that discussions tend to avoid any kind of disagreement, which Ro explains is not constructive: the realisation of disagreements can still bring people closer, as they can appreciate the others better and the diversity among us. Part of why this is happening, I explain, is because people adopt an expanded conception of identity, which includes their specific opinions. Then I go on to comment how criticism can be constructive: it helps people grow by better understanding what they are doing and why they do it. The next topic is about the quality one has as a person. I comment on how those who are influential have responsibility towards those they influence. This is because they hold power. We explore this theme further. I argue that if we decouple power from responsibility, then we end up with egregious or abusive power. The last big issue we cover is art. Specifically, how we can have a better sense of our self through the pursuit of recreational activities. Ro asks me about my writings. There are different sections on my website, which cover distinct areas of interest I have. This gives me the impetus to elaborate on the notion of being mindful of our emotional state and how we can stay fresh. The point is to commit to something that expresses a side of you. Ro comments how art is not about the result, but rather that you enjoy doing it. This is relevant also in light of Artificial Intelligence, which we consider in further depth. I bring up the myth of Prometheus, which reminds us how all technological innovations comes with pros and cons. There are problems that come from the technology itself but also others that are the result of how people use the technology. We close with questions about me, such as my personality, way of living, and the experience of blogging. This also connects to the point about how people are attached to their opinions as an extension of their identity. I explain how to think of our works as snapshots of who we are. Mistakes are a part of it. If we acknowledge them, we are more resilient, as we can change our views and/or face criticism without fearing that we lose who we are. I say that we ultimately do not need to take ourselves too seriously, in the sense that if we make a mistake it will not be the end of the world. ## Add Ro on Instagram Here: https://www.instagram.com/aldebaran.alpha.tauri/ ## About "Prot Asks" In this video series, I talk to anybody who is interested to have a video call with me (so do contact me if you want!). The topics cover anything related to Emacs, technology, and life in general. More here: https://protesilaos.com/prot-asks.