I find myself thinking more and more about economic self-sufficiency on the scale of countries or conglomerates.

For a long time, the world stubbornly moved toward an increasingly pervasive globalization. But eventually, the side effects it brought created, first of all, a demand among large segments of the population for some kind of pushback. This, in turn, added fuel to the fire of populism (not just this, of course, but it was clearly a factor). Moreover, it led to an excessive concentration of key manufacturing, technology, and even resources in the hands of a very small number of players, making everyone else vulnerable.

It is worth unpacking what vulnerability means in this context. A single person cannot do everything themselves; specialization is necessary. And the broader and deeper this specialization, the greater the difference in the quality and quantity of what is produced between the specialist and everyone else, and, at the same time, the greater the dependence on them. When there is dependence, any emergency will result in at least a disruption. This is true at the level of a village in the ancient world, and it is just as true at the level of the modern global economy. Overconcentration is usually called a monopoly, but that is not always the case. "Monopoly," as it turns out, is too narrow a term, because there are also oligopolies, cartels, guilds, and, as a new techno-economic phenomenon, aggregators.

Modern technologies are so complex that developing and scaling a critical, sophisticated product or production process often requires years and the best minds from all over the world. And even that is barely enough. Simply put, though the world is massive, we want so many complex things that we are running out of people. There is a genuine shortage of specialists. On top of that, birth rates are falling, which hits this specific demographic hardest. This is further exacerbated by the fact that more and more people are employed in non-productive jobs. As a result, a technological leader emerges, or maybe two or three. It is unrealistic for others to catch up. This is not because the leader is some kind of evil monopolist — competitors simply do not have competent specialists. Training new ones takes years, while the leader will not stand still. In any semi-free market, they will vacuum up every newly trained semi-expert, simply because they can train them further and employ them more effectively.

This is one side of the coin: let's call it chain complexity. The second is fragility. If an accident, a war, a natural disaster, or anything else happens and something breaks on the leader's end, it leaves the entire world hanging. The complexity of these chains means they are incredibly hard to rebuild, repair, or hand over to someone else, even if everyone wants to and all the necessary funds are there.

Then there are the not-so-friendly players. We can debate politics all we want, but we are undeniably in a situation where some countries are now in a position to blackmail others. Authoritarian regimes generally pull this off a bit better: while any blackmail hurts one's own people too, authoritarian states find it exponentially easier to sacrifice the welfare and interests of their citizens and businesses. Unfortunately, the modern world has poorly learned the lesson of the paradox of tolerance.

So, what is the bottom line?

We can try to do more ourselves. This in itself is already highly complex, slow, and expensive. First of all, who exactly is "us"? Dividing the world into the Collective West and the Global South feels like the bare minimum, yet even here, achieving noticeable progress is incredibly difficult. But even if this succeeds completely, there is no unity within either camp. Isolationists are ready to abandon formerly partner countries, and not without reason, as many of those partners do not act partner-like, or fail to behave rationally and responsibly. And we must remember that attempts to redistribute specialization usually lead to a slowdown, though not always. Sometimes, on the contrary, they create competition, which is highly stimulating.

And this brings me (smoothly) to a key point. I still believe that you cannot do everything yourself. It is inefficient, unprofitable, and, at this stage, outright unrealistic. But it is vital to handle the essentials. A simple thought, perhaps, but a crucial one. And whatever you do not make yourself, you need to stockpile. This is easier said than done. During the Cold War, the "second world" (the West being the first, various developing countries the third, and the USSR and its allies the second) tried to be self-sufficient. It was tough. In their case, it was difficult primarily due to an inefficient economic model. During World War II, Germany and its allies were also self-sufficient, and we know how hard that made things for them. More importantly, all of that was a very long time ago. Technology has advanced so much that the self-sufficiency of that era is simply impossible today.

Therefore, alongside attempts to build self-sufficiency, we must establish a proper dialogue that clearly demonstrates to the other side where deglobalization leads. The Collective West is doing a very poor job at this. Yet achieving this is even more critical than full self-sufficiency. Years of comfortable living have led to a complete collapse of political responsibility in the vast majority of developed nations, alongside a decline in the personal responsibility and awareness of ordinary citizens. It is going to be tough.

There is a famous statistics puzzle called the Monty Hall Problem. The puzzle is quite old, of course, but it has gained popularity in our time because it frequently stumps smart and educated people. There was a mathematician named Steve Selvin who sent it to a journal in 1975. He framed it into a simple and relatable scenario based on a game show hosted by Monty Hall himself.

There are three doors. Behind one of them is a prize, a car, and behind the other two are goats. The player chooses one of the doors, but before they are told if they guessed correctly or not, the host, Monty, opens another door that they did not choose, and there is a goat behind it. And here is the question! At this moment, the host offers you to change your choice. Should you switch?

From a statistical perspective, everything is elementary here. Of course you should. But why does this stump so many people who start arguing that you shouldn't or that it doesn't matter to switch, claiming that the remaining odds are now 50/50 anyway? I think this is a modern problem for smart people. Woe from wit, so to speak. Doubts create so much noise that they interfere with calculations.

First, let me explain why the answer is more or less obvious. When a door is chosen at the beginning, the probability of guessing right is 1/3. So far, so logical. This means the probability that the prize is in the other section, behind the doors you didn't choose, is 2/3.

At this point, you can mentally divide these doors into two groups. In the second group, the probability is twice as high as in the first, and there are twice as many doors there, which seemingly balances the probabilities. But now, when the host opens one of those two doors in the second group, the number of unopened doors there decreases. It turns out we still have two groups, but in the first one, the probability is one-third, and in the second, it is two-thirds. But now we know for sure that there is only one door left in the second group. Therefore, by changing your choice at this moment, you double your probability from one-third to two-thirds. And that is exactly why you need to switch.

But the world is complex. The first doubt that might arise is that the host knows where the prize is and is deliberately tricking you. Life teaches us this. There is always a catch in such games. Why would he offer something good? They clearly want to fool you. The answer to this is that, according to the rules of the problem, the host will offer you to switch doors regardless of whether you guessed correctly or not. If you guessed right, he doesn't care which door to open. But if you guessed wrong, he is strictly obligated to open only the one with the goat. The probability that he doesn't care is one-third. In principle, this is a valid concern, but you can ask a question about it. And they will assure you that it doesn't matter whether you guessed right or not, they will still offer you to switch doors.

It might also seem that since you don't know yet, it doesn't matter which of the remaining two closed doors to choose, claiming the chance is 50/50. And your intuition to be on alert and wary of scammers will push you not to change your choice, since it is 50/50 anyway. But it is not 50/50, because the host did actually open a door and didn't just offer to change your choice. And he didn't open a random door, but the one where he knew there was no prize.

All these doubts stump people, making them hesitate and stop thinking about statistics. This is especially true since most people are already so bad at math that it is socially acceptable to brag about being bad at basic arithmetic, let alone puzzles like this. This is sabotage and a failure of the education and upbringing system. At the same time, humanities-minded people can easily shame you for messing up some grammatical rule that is not logical at all, doesn't really affect the meaning, and simply needs to be memorized.

Overall, this is a puzzle where the simple, correct answer is deliberately hidden behind the bushes of our social fears. But it is only hidden for tech-minded people who can calculate but have issues specifically with this social aspect. For others, it is hidden behind deep ignorance and gaps in basic education. And it is not even clear which is worse.

The ancient Greeks, of course, had a breakthrough in the development of society, one that benefited our entire civilization for thousands of years. And although, naturally, we cannot replicate direct democracy as they had it, and it is not even clear whether it is possible or desirable, those are philosophical questions.

But here is what is interesting, their democracy was destroyed not so much by enemies from the outside, but to a great degree by a disease from within. Namely, sophism.

Sophism is not simply “clever argumentation,” as it is sometimes presented. The real danger of sophism is that it separates language from truth, and then unleashes language techniques to the detriment of ideas. It teaches people not to search for what is real, what is good, what is just, but to win the argument. To dominate the conversation. To make the weaker argument appear stronger. To turn word trickery into a weapon.

At first this looks like intelligence, it even looks like education. A person learns to argue, to deconstruct, to question assumptions, to expose hidden motives. All of this can be useful, of course. But then, at some point, the mechanism becomes detached from reality. Questioning becomes a universal poison. Every moral principle is revealed to be “just a construct.” Every institution is explained as a mask for power or corruption. Every disagreement is interpreted not as a disagreement about truth, but as oppression, privilege, ideology, or bad faith.

And after that, real conversation becomes impossible. And that, of course, leads to the destruction of society, because there are only two ways to deal with conflicts, either with words or with violence.

It seems to me, actually, that the current extensive prevalence of radical-left ideology in academia and education and, really, the whole rise of neo-Marxism across many societies in the West is pretty much the fruit of sophism specifically. Not because every left-wing idea is false, and not because society has no injustices. Of course it has. But because this whole style of thinking often does not try to understand reality as it is. It tries to interpret everything through a prefabricated moral and political machine. Especially when history has shown us how pure socialist government ideas lead to tyranny, repression, and often even mass starvation, as they tend to fight wealth and make enormous efforts to eliminate first the rich, then everyone who does not want to be poor.

Their conclusion is known in advance. The language only has to produce the justification.

In this sense, sophism is a perfect fertilizer for bad ideas. The seeds may vary from identitarianism, epistemological relativism, social constructivism, and whataboutism to often just plain deception. But sophism gives them the soil in which they grow. It gives them a method. It gives them a language. It gives them the ability to avoid reality while still sounding intelligent, moral, and sophisticated.

The framing is everything there, as these ideas feed on something very real, like the natural human feeling that life is unfair. Because life is unfair. People are born with different talents, different families, different bodies, different luck, different tragedies. Any decent society should try to reduce unnecessary suffering and give people a fairer chance. A rising tide lifts all boats. But that is not the same thing as declaring war on merit, competence, hierarchy, distinction, responsibility, and achievement.

This is why sophism is so dangerous. It does not look like barbarism. It looks refined, educated, moral, even compassionate and empathetic. It comes from universities, from intellectuals, from people with good vocabularies and confident voices. But inside it there is a rot, the refusal to submit words to reality, and the feeling of superiority and knowing it all.

And when a civilization loses that habit, when it no longer demands that arguments correspond to truth, it becomes defenseless. Any absurdity can be made respectable. Any cruelty can be renamed justice. Any failure can be explained away by theory. Any opponent can be declared morally illegitimate instead of being answered.

For me sophism is one of those dangerous mental viruses that can infect an entire civilization. Incurable, like herpes, it never fully disappears. Only prevention, intellectual hygiene, and timely treatment help to contain it.

You gave me a brain, but didn't tell me what to think about.

You gave me hands, but didn't tell me what to do with them.

You gave me legs, but didn't tell me where to go.

In the 16th century, a legend emerged that in Prague, Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel—or simply the Maharal of Prague—created a powerful creature from clay and brought it to life, calling it the Golem. The Golem was strong and could perform heavy labor as well as protect the Jewish community. However, it did not possess a fully realized human soul or its own understanding of the purpose of its existence. And although it usually does not speak at all and is devoid of personality, being merely a servant and protector, it executed orders too literally and became uncontrollable. It, of course, does not actually say these three phrases—this is simply my personification of it.

In 1818, Mary Shelley, perhaps taking this legend as inspiration, writes the novel Frankenstein, which turned this image into the modern meme we all know today. A bit later, in 1920, Čapek forged the term "robot" for his artificial workers, who also, of course, began to question their purpose. Later, Asimov in the 1940s describes the famous laws of robotics and attempts to imbue intelligent beings with goals and constraints. So the topic is not new and, as we can see, highly relevant.

After all, while all indicators show that current AI is arriving like a blind monster-bulldozer, ideologically charged people, confident in their boundless righteousness and often socially vulnerable, possessing in the end a very questionable moral compass, are shouting about what it should crush next, because "it's right," hoping they can jump from under the bucket into the cab and take the wheel in time. But there won't be a wheel.

And while for most of us the problems will begin much earlier, some benefits will bring joy. Therefore, I suggest simply enjoying and using at least that. The singularity awaits us either way.

On Monday (already today), Apple's annual WWDC conference begins, where they set the tone for where everything will head over the next year. They will showcase new versions of their operating systems in early beta, and it's expected that everything will be released in the fall. There are years when they also introduce new hardware on this occasion, but that is rare.

But I want to write again about what I would want from them. And not abstractly, based purely on my desires, but rather choosing from the spectrum of rumors and analytics regarding the potential directions already being discussed.

1. First and foremost, the main thing I would really want from them is to allocate enough resources to get rid of bugs. This likely means a decision to tone down the enthusiasm for new features, or even improvements, and purely concentrate most of their efforts on making what already exists work as promised. Everyone has their own list of grievances here, but now LLMs make it possible to open the floodgates for user complaints, sort through this waterfall at an AI level, and verify what are actually bugs, what are interface flaws, and what might be user error—though even that, in a sense, is an interface deficiency. Of course, I don't think this is entirely possible or even necessary, but if they announced that there would be nothing new for a whole year and they would only fix what already exists, the vast majority of people would be thrilled. But from my perspective, it just means they need to allocate more resources to this than they are allocating now. Resources, attention, understanding of importance, prioritization, etc.

2. The second is a straightforward account system to replace or reinvent their current Apple ID System. Right now, it's a complete mess: old accounts, new accounts, they work differently. For some, an Apple email is used for login; for others, it's your third-party email, but they still give you an Apple email that you can't use to log in. On top of that, some services are old and people started using them long ago, so a portion of purchases or apps are tied to them, but they can't be used for new things. In short, this mess needs to be stopped, and a simple, understandable system must be created that can absorb all old accounts.

3. The third is full synchronization. Ideally, I would want it to just be a single unified system. Take a Mac, an iPhone, a watch, and everything else—no matter how many there are or what shape they take—you log in, and it's a single entity. I'm not even banking on that yet, but I just want improved synchronization. As it stands, you get a new computer, and even if you fully restore from a backup, you still have to spend at least a day setting everything up. And if it's without a backup restore, it takes a whole week. During that time, you'll be asked for your password 186 times. I want them to ask thoroughly during the initial login, I confirm everything, and then I don't have to go around making the exact same settings I've already made dozens of times. Starting from how Finder is set up completely, all the way to icons in the Dock, the menu bar, fonts, and dictionaries. Every setting should come with a small option: make it like in the cloud, keep it unique to this device, or update the cloud (i.e., apply to other devices based on this one). That means having a local profile and a cloud profile. Ideally, of course, there could be several cloud profiles—for example: minimalist, work, mobile, etc.

4. I've already accepted that they want to push the new trendy "liquid glass" theme, but I want them to improve its usability. Make the overly rounded corners a bit less rounded. Let the animations stay, but I want an option to significantly speed them up. In general, just let them follow their own ancient HIG (Human Interface Guidelines).

5. I already mentioned that they ask for passwords too much, but it's not just about that. It's that there are too many different prompts, pop-up requests for permissions, and warnings. I am forced to click them many times every single day. It's inefficient, degrades the core purpose of security, and everyone has grown accustomed to it just being a nuisance. Yet at the same time, companies like Google, Adobe, Figma, and Microsoft can install their auto-updaters and agents that constantly sit there and download stuff without my permission, and trying to delete them is useless because they immediately restore themselves. So, where it's not needed, they constantly bother you with confirmations, but where it's actually needed, it's a free-for-all for god-knows-what. Why does Chrome need to update itself when Chrome is closed? If I use it frequently, it's perfectly sufficient for it to do its thing when it's open, and if I use it rarely, it shouldn't be constantly updating itself and eating up memory. Here, I wish they would deal with this inconvenient situation and make it so that devices, and especially the Mac, can be used without these excessive confirmations while still protecting against the unwanted. Perhaps this could be solved with a special mode—for developers or advanced users. Let it be riskier, but without the extra hand-holding.

6. I also want more automation. I want simple ways to automate things that have to be done repeatedly. There is already something in this direction, but it's unintuitive, complicated to use, and doesn't cover a lot. Modern computers should think well and help me with exactly these kinds of recurring routines. This is much better implemented in various developer tools, but much of it would easily suit regular users as well.

7. iPadOS needs to go. Alright, we've experimented with it enough. Here's what I want instead: for the iPad, you should be able to choose a mode. Either it runs iOS, which includes extra features for a larger screen (this will be needed anyway when foldable iPhones eventually arrive), or it's a mode that is essentially macOS. Those who are fine with a basic iPad don't really use the newly introduced features like multi-window management anyway; it only gets in the way for most regular users. In those cases, let everything just be simpler. But for those for whom the iPad is like a computer just in a tablet format, a full operating system would be a much better fit. Where there is full multitasking, proper file management, the ability to install full desktop apps, multi-user support, and everything else that makes a computer a computer.

I know they will significantly improve Siri anyway and do plenty of other things. I don't see any point in wishing for anything there, other than the hope that they do it well. Hardware also needs to be written about separately. My absolute main, overarching, and very long-standing wish is for them not to abandon what they are already doing, but to support everything in a timely manner. As it is, many parts of the OS, or services, or even entire apps don't get updated for years. They have become outdated and interface poorly with the rest. I want all of this to be assigned to some engineer so that it keeps moving forward, even if just bit by bit.

Of course, I still have plenty of other wishes, but I'll limit myself to these. The list turned out long enough as it is.

In our TechLife Podcast (we are working on making it available in English, soon, but not there yet), Vasily and I discussed how the recent wave of public protests against new AI data centers is largely driven by a mix of surface-level environmental anxieties and much deeper economic fears. While critics heavily target the massive water and electricity consumption of these facilities, this outrage is often entirely disproportionate when you compare it to everyday resource drains like growing almonds or filling residential swimming pools. Ultimately, these environmental arguments usually mask a profound fear of the future. People are terrified of losing their livelihoods to automation, echoing the job losses seen during past globalization waves, and they feel powerless against a future potentially controlled by a small tech oligarchy. There is also a very real possibility that these local panics are being deliberately amplified by foreign geopolitical rivals through algorithmic platforms like TikTok to intentionally slow down Western technological dominance.

To overcome this public resistance, tech companies face a few choices, for example they could simply pay local residents a direct stipend to win their approval, or explore extreme alternatives like building data centers in space or in completely different countries. However, the physical location of a data center actually depends entirely on its specific technical purpose. Facilities built for training models require massive, densely packed GPU clusters and enormous power, but they can realistically be built anywhere in the world like Greenland, Australia or somewhere it's not hard from the regulatory point of view, because they don't need to communicate with end users. Conversely, inference centers must be built very close to the people using the models to eliminate latency, operating very much like content delivery networks for streaming video. The biggest challenge ahead will be the third category: facilities dedicated to AI agents communicating autonomously with other AI agents, which will inevitably become the most massive and resource-hungry data centers of all, those can be build anywhere, where it can just reliably powered and accessed electronically.

This is mostly about the US of course, but it will basically affect everyone. The situation is global.

AI development is moving incredibly fast, noticeably faster than other similar technological milestones. And while at first the growth bottlenecks were the technological approaches, research, and model development, it later temporarily hit a wall needing much larger financial investments. That issue was resolved almost instantly against the backdrop of the hype and off-the-charts demand. Now it has all hit growth limits tied to scaling in the physical world.

The situation here is immediately obvious. There's a shortage of various types of electronics themselves, like chips and memory, as well as the physical spaces to install them all, and then the resources they consume. In this massive spectrum of lagging supply chains, data centers are just one of many deficits, but they sit right in the middle.

Here's an interesting aspect. If we assume this is a bubble and this bubble bursts (which isn't a given, but let's assume), bubbles actually have a certain utility. They drive massive investments into infrastructure that will continue to be used long after the bubble pops. In this case, it's things like electricity generation, which is a fundamentally crucial thing. If it weren't for the exaggerated fear of nuclear power plants that started about 40 to 50 years ago, and if nuclear energy had developed as rapidly as other tech sectors, it's hard to even imagine what kind of world we'd have right now. For example, with much cheaper and more accessible electricity, we'd need far less coal and oil. We could desalinate salt water to irrigate massive territories, while transportation, manufacturing, construction, and of course computing would become significantly cheaper. It turns out this fear set humanity's development back by many decades, but now, thanks to the insane demand for energy for data centers, this issue will be resolved across several fronts at once. And even if the bubble bursts, the massive benefits will remain.

However, increasing power generation is just one of many pluses. Creating the models themselves is obviously another huge benefit, and the same logic applies here. Even if everything crashes, even the current models are so heavily underutilized in the global economy that reaping the rewards of implementing them in various ways will last us for decades.

So we can see that having development across all these necessary areas is extremely important for the economy. It brings incredible technological, economic, and consequently military advantages. It's unclear whether the new models will reach a level where old cybersecurity methods are simply powerless against them, though we are getting pretty close to that. If they do, it will simply be the end of the nuclear threat from countries without such capable models. But even without that, we are already seeing how the use of these models brings a significant edge right on the battlefield. Through autonomous drones, electronic warfare, reconnaissance and targeting, or simply by boosting the productivity of the defense industry.

As the capability gap widens, countries that will start losing their traditional forms of deterrence (actually, even those two countries that aren't losing them yet) will be thinking very hard about how to destroy these capabilities in others. You can bomb chip manufacturing plants, but that's a strike against the future. Bombing data centers — that is a strike against realized capabilities.

That's why the idea of launching data centers into space, and maybe chip manufacturing too, is completely justified. They won't just be flying around up there as a few large, vulnerable targets. They will be distributed across a massive number of units placed quite far apart, and shooting them down piece by piece would be very difficult. Another direction that I think will inevitably follow is mass underground construction. This also offers huge advantages. First, it's hard to destroy. Second, digging deep takes up less surface area and is less of an eyesore, which means fewer protests. It's more expensive, but ultimately it will become necessary. The main advantage of space compared to underground options is communication and energy supply. Both are much more convenient in space. On the other hand, underground gives you better radiation protection and easier maintenance, and with the development of nuclear energy, even power won't be an issue.

But the fear of AI keeps popping up again. I think the main mistake right now is our tendency to anthropomorphize AI.

It's similar to how people 200 years ago might have been scared by "some kind of technical progress" or "electrification" or even industrialization, treating them as if they were villains with a face, united in their intentions, and so on. AI is an entire stratum of various things, and within this stratum there are plenty of separate risks with a wide spectrum of ways to mitigate them. And the main thing is that we still have to get to that point, and the need for massive development stands in the way.

A long time ago, when I was still a fresh-faced immigrant and didn't know the many subtleties of how even the most standard things can actually differ, I walked into my classroom at the Art Institute of Boston and told all my classmates, "Happy first day of spring, everyone!" But they reacted weirdly. That was the moment I found out that spring doesn't start on March 1st everywhere. It certainly helped that back in my high school astronomy classes, I had learned about the concept of astronomical seasons, and it turns out that here in the States, seasons are defined exactly that way.

This seemed terribly inconvenient and crooked to me, much like the imperial system with its feet, pounds, and Fahrenheit. Although in this case, it's actually somewhat closer to Kelvin. So, spring starts not on March 1st, but on the vernal equinox, and summer on the summer solstice, and so on. But it's not that simple. Because these astronomical events don't happen on the same calendar day every year. Some years it's March 20th, and some it's the 21st. And autumn, for example, isn't September 20th or 21st, no. Autumn is the 22nd or 23rd. Yeah, science!

But everything has an explanation, of course. America, as an heir to Europe, calculates seasons exactly this way, and over there in Europe, it's actually more convenient to count them like this not because of astronomy, but mostly because of the Gulf Stream, which delays all the seasons. And the dates jump around because of the so-called tropical year. The Earth makes a full orbit around the Sun in 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds—that is the tropical year. Meanwhile, our calendar year is 365 days, with a leap year every four years, except once every 100 years when the leap year is skipped, except once every 400 years when it isn't. Not everyone caught onto these subtleties at the same time, which is why Russia has the Old New Year, and the October Revolution actually happened in November.

But the reality on the ground is even more complicated.

So, there are countries where seasons are defined astronomically. And then there are those where they go by full months starting on the 1st—this is called the meteorological (or sometimes calendar) system. Turns out, it's not just used in the post-Soviet space, but also in places like Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. And it's also the standard among climatologists and various other scientists whose work has anything to do with seasons, because it's simply more convenient and precise.

But wait, there's more. Seasons can be divided not only by the calendar or astronomy. There is also a third system. In East Asian countries, like China, Korea, and Japan, they use a system of solar seasons, where an astronomical event like the vernal equinox falls exactly in the middle of the season. Because of this, their spring actually begins in early February, and their summer is already underway by early May.

Long story short, it's a bit of a mess. And by the way, the Earth actually completes a full rotation on its axis not in 24 hours, but in 23 hours and 56 minutes. The extra four minutes are spent turning to face the Sun with the exact same spot as the day before.

But I also really love the six-season system that Kurt Vonnegut described in his essay collection Palm Sunday:

"Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June. What could be springier than May and June? Summer is July and August. Really hot, right? Autumn is September and October. See the pumpkins? Smell those burning leaves? Next comes the season called Locking. November and December aren't winter. They're Locking. Next comes winter, January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold!

What comes next? Not spring. 'Unlocking' comes next. What else could cruel March and only slightly less cruel April be? March and April are not spring. They're Unlocking."

He nailed it perfectly. I couldn't agree more. Happy middle of spring, everyone! ))

I was out walking the other day, just wandering around. And somehow, my thoughts led me to an idea. Hear me out. Every person has parents who gifted them their share of genetic material. Then, there are external circumstances, including the world around us, how these parents, or maybe not even these parents raise them, how a given personality navigates all sorts of hardships and challenges, dreams, infatuation, disappointments, etc.

But also, in religious circles, it's customary to talk about the soul. Whether it exists or not, we don't know for sure. Even some stubborn materialists sometimes have doubts about this. Well, let's say there is a certain virtual, emergent prototype that combines a person's inner world, shaped by this genetic heritage and environmental influence, which anthropomorphically represents the consciousness of this individual. Throughout my life, I've encountered many different models of abstraction, starting with ones from higher mathematics, and later as a designer working with user personas and their groups, as an IT professional working with virtual machines, and so on. It's easy for me to imagine that what people commonly call the "soul" is just a collective abstract "something" that a person feels but doesn't quite know how to describe properly.

So, the idea is that this anthropomorphic soul also has a parent of its own. Something like grand collective, like ancestral memory, epigenetic cues, and cultural codes embedded deep in the subconscious. "It" — this parent of the soul — teaches and nurtures our soul. Apparently, it takes the form of "talking" conscience.

What's the right name for it: archetypes, Super-Ego, the collective unconscious, egregore, daimonion, Anima Mundi, epigenetic memory, memetics — I don't know. There is no established term for this. So, I'd call it Atmajanaka (Sanskrit for "sourse of the soul").

Over time we accumulate a better understanding of what is happening. And this happens mostly through the combination of three directions:

1. New knowledge,
2. deeper and more detailed grasp of already mastered knowledge,
3. and the third, a new level of abstraction, that is, conclusions drawn from the awareness of everything, very often from several different segments of our knowledge at once, conclusions that overall lead us to these emergent insights.

It can also be pictured as expansion, deepening, and synthesis (which is precisely what I consider the new level of abstraction, i.e., discoveries).

In essence humanity already knows quite a lot. And when we as a civilization develop, we mostly draw on the accumulated knowledge and there is an enormous amount of it. Life experience, wisdom, practice certainly give depth, but that alone is still not enough for creating genuinely new knowledge. New knowledge becomes possible only through a new level, thanks to emergence and in no other way.

The real question of creating AGI is exactly this: teaching models to draw new conclusions by aggregating and analyzing already known information. So far it's proceeding slowly and laboriously, yet examples already exist, just very modest and insignificant ones. And for many people it remains an open question whether models will ever be able to achieve this.

Because this is the best way to understand whether there is some form of mind in there, or whether it's only algorithms. After all, consciousness and reason are exactly what is required for the synthesis of information, one could say for making scientific discoveries and rolling out new technologies.

And as soon as models learn to give explanations of accumulated knowledge at these new levels of abstraction, they will immediately become incomparably, by orders of magnitude, more efficient. Because then it will no longer be necessary to memorize gazilobytes of trivial facts; instead it will be possible to rely simply on general principles, logic, and a handful of examples.

I was just trying to tend my garden and not ruin the beautiful view and a lovely metaphor drifted in from the internet:

The secret is not to chase butterflies… it's to tend to your garden, and they will come to you. And even if they don't, you'll still have a beautiful garden.

It's a modern meme, pieced together from a supposedly German proverb (whether that's true or not is unclear): "Das Glück ist ein Schmetterling. Jag ihm nach, und er entwischt dir. Setz dich hin, und er lässt sich auf deiner Schulter nieder." (Happiness is a butterfly. Chase it, and it eludes you. Sit down quietly, and it settles on your shoulder.)

It also seems to be frequently misattributed to the Englishman Nathaniel Hawthorne, likely because it appeared in an 1891 book of quotations where his name was printed right next to the phrase.

But later, it was rephrased more beautifully by the Brazilian poet Mário Quintana (1906–1994):

"O segredo é não correr atrás das borboletas... É cuidar do jardim para que elas venham até você." (The secret is not to chase the butterflies... It's to tend the garden so that they come to you.)