Science on Victor42

Nigeria The Chaotic Behemoth

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 11:56:00 +0000

It is hard not to be captivated by Nigeria.

I have been looking at a lot of global economic and demographic charts lately, and Nigeria’s data is just sexy: a massive market of 230 million people—one in every six Africans is Nigerian. A labor dividend with a median age of just 18. Once the largest economy on the continent. In my mind, this was supposed to be the African success story—a nation that moved past warlord chaos to leverage its oil wealth for an industrial takeoff, a rising Wakanda.

With expectations of finding the world’s next growth engine, I started digging into the underlying logic of the country. But as I peeled back the macro data, what lay before me wasn’t an organically growing modern state, but a high-entropy mess that defies standard economic theory.

To truly understand this place, you have to drop your preconceptions of what a “nation-state” is and accept a cold reality: Nigeria is not a natural community; it is a forced business contract.

1. 1914 A Family Merged to Balance the Books

The story doesn’t start on the African savanna, but at a desk in 1914 occupied by British colonial officer Lord Lugard. He faced a sticky accounting problem: the vast Northern Protectorate was bleeding money, while the Southern Protectorate was flush with cash from liquor imports and trade taxes.

To save the British taxpayer from covering the North’s deficit, Lugard made a bold stroke and merged the two. He didn’t create a fusion of civilizations; he simply balanced a ledger.

Nigeria was born as a geopolitical vessel for transfer payments. This determined its destiny for the next century: the Hausa-Fulani North provided the bodies and the votes (maintaining a feudal structure), while the Yoruba and Igbo South provided the money and tech (maintaining a commercial structure). The two sides have been locked in a tense duality ever since—mutually resentful, yet forced into symbiosis.

2. Oil The Accidental Bind

This symbiotic relationship flipped on its head in the 1960s, driven by the substance that would come to dominate the nation’s fate: oil.

Before oil, the Southern Igbos were the staunchest supporters of unity, eager to access the massive Northern market. The North, fearing domination by the more educated Southerners, was the side threatening to secede. But when oil gushed from the swamps of the Southeast, the script flipped instantly. The Igbos tried to break away and form the Republic of Biafra to keep the oil wealth, while the North—terrified of losing their subsidies—became the fiercest defenders of “One Nigeria.”

The resulting civil war ended in Southern defeat, but it cemented the country’s core operating principle: the oil pipeline is the glue preventing dissolution. A steel cable of shared interests anchors together a nation that geography and culture try to tear apart.

3. All Cash No Governance

This logic shaped Nigeria’s unique political economy—a pure patronage system.

Politics isn’t about public service; it’s about the distribution of oil rents. Every month, elites fly to the capital, Abuja, to slice up the oil revenue, which then trickles down to tribal bases. This mechanism shrewdly converts potential class conflict into ethnic rivalry. The poor don’t hate the corrupt big men of their own tribe; they fear that if their “Big Man” falls, the tribe’s lifeline gets cut.

Economically, a massive paradox confuses observers: in a country where oil is 90% of export earnings, why is there almost no sign of oil wealth on the streets?

The data reveals the truth: oil controls the nation’s vitals but makes up only 9% of GDP. Nigeria is a dual economy, like a disembodied beast. The government lives in the clouds on oil dollars, unaccountable to taxpayers, while the people live in the dust, hustling to survive. The state and the people inhabit parallel economic universes.

4. The Wolves of Commerce

In this vacuum of governance, Nigerians were forced to evolve. No electricity? Buy a generator. No police? Hire security. The harsh environment forces every individual to become a micro-government. This pressure cooker forged a ruthless commercial adaptability, especially among the Igbos.

With the petro-economy driving up exchange rates and inflation, imported food became cheaper than local produce. Farming became a slow death; business was the only jailbreak. The people fled production for circulation. The Igbos, much like the Wenzhou merchants of China, perfected a unique apprenticeship system. It is a grassroots VC model: seven years of unpaid labor in exchange for startup capital. It solved the lack of bank loans and liquefied the population into flowing commercial capital.

In Lagos’s Computer Village, you feel the visceral power of this vitality. It is the perfect counterpart to Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei. If Huaqiangbei is the heart of global hardware—creating and ordering (entropy reduction)—Computer Village is the stomach, digesting and resurrecting (entropy increase). In that maze of tin shacks, any e-waste can be given another three years of life. Chinese companies like Transsion won this market precisely because they understood these pain points: the lack of power, the noise, and the specific needs of darker skin tones.

5. Dominance Through Noise

This high-pressure environment accidentally forged a cultural superpower. In the deafening markets of Lagos, only the signal with the highest signal-to-noise ratio—the loudest, most confident, most aggressive—gets heard. Projected onto culture, this survival strategy became Afrobeats and Nollywood.

Other continents might not feel it yet, but within Africa, Nigeria is the undisputed cultural hegemon. Their movies tell the stories of ordinary African hustle, ruling screens from Kenya to South Africa; their music defines the rhythm of modern Africa. This wasn’t a state strategy; it was the sublimation of suffering.

Yet, beneath this commercial boom and cultural swagger, there is little national identity. Nigerians are like strangers trapped in a malfunctioning elevator. They may mistrust or even despise each other, but they bond over the shared misery of the elevator.

If anything truly binds them, it’s not a shared ideal, but shared trauma. Pidgin English has become the only adhesive for these strangers, recording their collective memory of survival inside the belly of this dysfunctional beast.

6. Outsourcing Tax to Gangs

As state capacity rots further, the power vacuum is being filled by something else.

On the streets of Lagos, uniformed thugs from transport unions—Agberos—openly tax drivers. This isn’t just crime; it’s outsourced governance. The government tacitly allows gangs to maintain minimal order and collect protection fees in exchange for a cut. As economist Mancur Olson described with “Stationary Bandits,” the gangs have become the de facto rulers. Data suggests these gangs in Lagos collect more revenue than the official tax receipts of many other states.

This is a profound governance crisis. In the short term, gang rule creates a facade of order. But in the long term, without the rule of law, heavy industry cannot survive, and the educated class will continue to flee.

The Nigerian behemoth faces two closing walls: the global energy transition and a population explosion that is breaching the physical limits of extraction. When the day comes that the steel cable snaps, the real test begins.

Sikkim A Nation That Quietly Vanished

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 23:15:00 +0000

Let’s Talk Travel Plans

With a young child, we haven’t traveled far in years. Now that she’s older, international travel is on the table, though likely not until next year.

Our annual leave is limited, and a kid can’t handle a ten-plus hour flight, so our options are pretty narrow:

East: Japan and South Korea are culturally similar to us, not ideal for an “exotic” experience, though Tokyo Disneyland is a big draw.
South: A few relatively safe Southeast Asian countries and plenty of resort islands. Very suitable, worth considering.
West: The “-stan” countries. Exotic, for sure, but unfamiliar territory, and my wife isn’t interested.
North: Our neighbors, Mongolia and Russia. Not too keen on Mongolia, and Russia’s main attractions are in its European part, which is too far.

While lamenting the slim pickings, I realized I’d overlooked one direction: the other side of the Himalayas, the Indian subcontinent.

India is rarely on the radar for Chinese travelers, but the region is more than just India. I distinctly remember seeing three countries on the southern Himalayan slopes on maps as a kid: Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim. I even nicknamed them the “Himalayan Trio.”

Wait a minute… what happened to Sikkim?

Sikkim’s History: Swept Away by External Forces

A quick look at any map app—Baidu or Google—shows Sikkim clearly labeled as a state of India. The sovereign nation that once served as a buffer between China and India has silently vanished.

Some digging unearthed a buried chapter of history.

On April 14, 1975, the Kingdom of Sikkim held a referendum on whether to abolish the monarchy. A staggering 97.5% voted to depose the king and merge with India. A month later, India’s Parliament amended its constitution, and Sikkim officially became India’s 22nd state. Just like that, a kingdom that had existed for over 300 years was erased from the map after a seemingly “democratic” vote.

The process appeared impeccable: the Sikkimese people “voluntarily” renounced sovereignty, and India “honored their wishes.” But under international law, can a “merger” between two nations be considered legitimate under such circumstances?

This hits on a fundamental conflict in international law: the right to “self-determination” versus the “prohibition of the threat or use of force.” A people has the right to freely choose its destiny. But what if that choice is made at the barrel of a foreign army’s gun? Such “consent” is invalid. Sikkim’s referendum took place while the Indian army controlled the capital and had the king under house arrest. It was less an expression of popular will and more a political strong-arming.

After their country’s fall, Sikkim’s last king, Palden Thondup Namgyal, and his American queen, Hope Cooke, went into exile in the U.S. They didn’t go quietly. They spent their lives campaigning for restoration, lobbying the U.S. Congress, and giving interviews to expose the truth of India’s annexation. But against the backdrop of the Cold War, their tragic efforts earned sympathy but no tangible support. The king died of cancer in 1982, and with him, the dream of a sovereign Sikkim was extinguished.

To grasp this tragedy, you have to look further back. Sikkim, once known as Drenjong, was a tributary state of China’s Qing Dynasty with deep cultural ties to Tibet. In the 19th century, as British colonialism swept South Asia, Sikkim’s protectorate status shifted to the British Empire. To exploit the region, the British forcibly leased Darjeeling and imported vast numbers of Nepali laborers, sowing the seeds for Sikkim’s eventual demise.

Darjeeling

In 1947, an independent India inherited the British Empire’s sphere of influence and ambitions. By 1950, a treaty made Sikkim an Indian “protectorate,” giving India control over its defense, foreign affairs, and economy.

For the next two decades, India cultivated political parties of Nepali immigrants, exacerbating tensions with the native Tibetan Buddhist ruling class. As the Cold War peaked in the 1970s, India saw its opening.

The U.S. was bogged down in Vietnam and had no bandwidth for other conflicts. The Soviet Union, seeking to counter China, had formed a quasi-alliance with India, giving it a free hand in the region. And China was in the throes of the late Cultural Revolution; it issued the strongest condemnations but lacked the capacity for any meaningful military intervention.

Another critical factor: Sikkim was not a member of the UN. Since coming under British influence, it had never truly had foreign policy autonomy, and neither of its powerful patrons had any interest in giving it a seat at the table.

With the tacit approval of global powers and no one to intervene, India moved its troops into Sikkim in 1973, took over the government, disbanded the king’s guard, and orchestrated the 1975 “referendum.” A sovereign nation disappeared from the map, largely ignored by the international community. China only formally recognized Indian sovereignty over Sikkim in 2003 as part of normalizing relations, updating its official maps in 2005.

The Prime Movers: Geography and Demographics

Beyond the geopolitics, Sikkim’s fate was sealed by two cold, unforgiving factors: demographics and geography.

A nation’s foundation is its people—its “hardware.” The national narrative is the “operating system” (OS) running on it. A cheap way to weaken a nation is to attack its OS, making citizens question their identity and hindering the state’s ability to mobilize resources. Great powers do this constantly.

But if a nation’s population is below a critical mass, its hardware is inherently vulnerable. An external power doesn’t need to corrupt the OS; it can simply replace the hardware by engineering a population shift.

This was Sikkim’s tragedy. In 1975, its population was under 500,000. For context, a large residential complex in a Chinese city can house 10,000 people. Fifty such complexes—a mere sub-district in Guangzhou—was the entirety of Sikkim. It stood no chance against India’s demographic might. The influx of Nepali immigrants, which began under the British, fundamentally altered Sikkim’s ethnic and religious makeup. The rule of the monarchy, rooted in the native ethnic group and Tibetan Buddhism, was already on shaky ground. Once the immigrants became the majority, India only had to fan the flames and, under the guise of “democracy,” have this new “hardware”—now over 90% replaced—vote to delete the original “OS.”

Geography, meanwhile, creates the notion of a “sphere of influence,” motivating regional powers to expand. The tendency for a regional power to view smaller neighbors within its geographical sphere as its own backyard is a timeless geopolitical rule. They don’t have to be annexed, but they must be allies or, at a minimum, buffer zones.

The Indian subcontinent, enclosed by the sea on three sides and the world’s highest mountains to the north, is a self-contained theater. This is India’s home turf. It’s the same logic as the 19th-century U.S. Monroe Doctrine, which used the Atlantic and Pacific oceans as barriers to declare the Americas its domain. The underlying principle of the war in Ukraine is no different: a great power will not tolerate a hostile “OS” being installed in its core sphere of influence.

The situation in South Tibet (which India calls Arunachal Pradesh) is another product of this dynamic. This territory is not a case of annexation but a dispute between two major powers. Yet the underlying forces shaping the reality on the ground are identical.

Picture the region as a giant, south-sloping roof. India, situated below the eaves, can easily advance up the natural river valleys. China, on the other side of the Himalayan ridge, must first brave high-altitude, low-oxygen conditions, cross the crest, and then descend what are essentially sheer cliffs on the northern slope. This geographical asymmetry allows India to easily project its population and administration onto the southern slope, establishing de facto control. Although China decisively won the 1962 war and briefly controlled the area to assert its claim, maintaining long-term control was prohibitively costly. Withdrawing troops and shifting to a diplomatic standoff was, therefore, a pragmatic, if not ideal, outcome.

Ultimately, under the immense pressures of demography and geography, the tiny nation of Sikkim was simply erased. Its independence had been nominal long before the annexation. What I saw on the map as a child was merely its ghost. History can be that cold.

Wary Neighbors: Bhutan and Nepal

Sikkim’s fate was a chilling lesson for its neighbors, Bhutan and Nepal. The fear of being next keeps them perpetually wary of India’s ambitions.

It’s not that India lacks ambition, but that the cost and risk of repeating that playbook have become too high. To survive, Bhutan and Nepal have worked hard to secure their “hardware” and bolster their “software.”

First, the demographic “hardware.”

In 1975, Bhutan’s population was several times Sikkim’s, but still in the same order of magnitude. Nepal’s, however, was in the tens of millions. A demographic takeover was plausible in Bhutan, but having learned from Sikkim, it took active measures to protect its population. Nepal, on the other hand, is a veritable “ethnic mosaic” with over 140 recognized groups, none comprising more than 17% of the population. This hyper-diversity makes it difficult to subvert the state by backing any single group. Still, deep economic and religious ties bind Nepal to India.

Over 80% of Nepal’s population is Hindu

More crucial is the “software” of national identity.

Nepal’s pride in never having been fully colonized provides a historical foundation for its independence. Ironically, India’s relentless political meddling has become the most effective glue uniting its diverse ethnic groups.

Bhutan, with a similar profile to Sikkim, is more vulnerable. But it has astutely cultivated a unique national narrative around “Gross National Happiness” while fiercely guarding its demographic integrity. Since the 1950s, the government has pursued policies to assimilate or expel Nepali immigrants to protect its majority culture. This proactive “hardware maintenance” preserved its ethnic and cultural independence, preventing it from being hollowed out from within. Nevertheless, trapped by geography and economic dependence, it cannot escape India’s pervasive influence. India is a formidable presence they cannot simply wish away.

Bhutan’s culture is very similar to Tibet’s

Watching these two small nations deploy every strategy available, one can only imagine the immense effort a large country must expend to maintain its own national narrative.

Ironically, India struggles to tell its own national story, which weakens its ability to undermine others’. The official narrative, “Unity in Diversity,” feels abstract. For most Indians, identities like “Hindu,” “Muslim,” “Tamil,” or “Punjabi” are far more tangible in daily life than the modern concept of “Indian.” India can’t export a story more compelling than “the glory of the Gurkhas” or “the happiness of the Dragon Kingdom” because its own “OS” is a patchwork system built for compatibility, not conversion.

Today’s global environment has also changed. Globalization interconnects all nations, and social media can amplify any conflict instantly, making victory in the court of public opinion as important as victory on the battlefield. Sikkim’s annexation was a regional affair; a similar act today would be a global scandal. While geography and demographics in South Asia favor India, the efforts of Nepal and Bhutan allow them to maintain political independence and avoid internal collapse. For everything else, they are deeply intertwined with India. The forces that preserve their fragile independence likely stem more from international oversight, external powers, and India’s own strategic calculations.

So, Can You Actually Travel There?

Of course, politics is beyond the influence of ordinary people like us. Let’s get back to the practical question: are the former “Himalayan Trio” viable travel destinations?

The answer: your experience will vary dramatically depending on the color of your passport.

Nepal: Completely open. It’s visa-free for Indian citizens, offers free visa-on-arrival for Chinese citizens, and provides visas on arrival for most other nationalities. Blessed by geography, its tourism economy, centered on Mount Everest, welcomes all travelers.

Bhutan: Exclusive and controlled. Indian citizens receive special, near visa-free access. However, Bhutan has no formal diplomatic ties with China and enforces a strict “High-Value, Low-Volume” tourism policy for everyone else. This requires booking through an approved agency, paying a daily $100 “Sustainable Development Fee,” and being accompanied by a guide at all times. No independent travel.

Sikkim State: Sensitive and restricted. For Indian citizens, most areas are open. But all foreigners need a special permit. For Chinese citizens, due to historical and political sensitivities, obtaining a travel permit for Sikkim is virtually impossible. For us, it’s effectively an off-limits zone.

So, on the southern slopes of the Himalayas, the only truly open and accessible destination is Nepal.

But then again, it doesn’t strike me as the best place for a trip with a young child. Buddhist monasteries and snow-capped peaks probably can’t compete with sandy beaches and theme parks. It looks like my search for a family vacation spot will have to continue.

Why Isnt the Summer Solstice the Hottest Day of the Year

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 16:54:00 +0000

For most of China, the dog days of summer are just around the corner. July and August bring a special kind of misery where a quick lunch run can feel like you’re losing a layer of skin. Late last August, a colleague and I pondered why summer drags on for so long. His theory involved some myth I can’t recall, but I confidently declared, “It’s the concrete. It soaks up a ton of heat and takes a couple of months to let it all go.”

I immediately knew that sounded a bit too simple. It felt right, but it wasn’t very scientific. So, today, let’s get to the bottom of it.

We all know the summer solstice hits around June 21st. It’s the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Cancer (23.5°N latitude, near Shantou).

In theory, this is when we get the most solar radiation. After the solstice, the sun’s direct rays head south, and the days start getting shorter. So why are July and August even hotter?

It Starts with a Lag

Let’s begin with something we see in daily life.

Think about this: if you live in a concrete building, you’ve felt how it stays cool in June even when it’s hot outside. Opening a window is pure bliss. But come September, the crisp autumn air is a lie the moment you step inside your oven-like home.

This is especially true in South China during the “Huinantian” (Resurgence Days) in May and June. Hot, humid air condenses on the cool indoor surfaces, turning walls and floors into a dewy mess. This proves that buildings have a significant thermal lag.

My concrete theory was looking good until I remembered the 24 Solar Terms. Our ancestors knew about the “dog days” of summer long before concrete existed. This phenomenon is older than our cities; it’s baked into the Earth itself.

Earth, the Giant Thermos

To understand this, picture the Earth as a giant thermos, its surface a mix of oceans and land.

The ocean is a massive water tank with an incredible ability to store heat. It can absorb huge amounts of energy with only a slight temperature increase.

Land is more complicated. It’s a mix of water, rock, soil, and man-made structures.

Water is the key player, acting like a sponge for heat. It’s a small part of the land’s mass but holds the most heat.

Rocks and soil, on the other hand, are terrible at long-term heat storage. They have a lower specific heat capacity and are poor conductors. I once visited the Mingsha Sand Dunes in Dunhuang, where the surface sand was scorching, but just a few inches down, it was cool. The heat doesn’t travel deep.

Urban structures like concrete and asphalt are even more extreme. They have a similar heat capacity to soil but are darker, especially asphalt, which absorbs over 90% of sunlight. With no moisture, they can’t “sweat” to cool down. They bake all day and radiate heat all night, creating the urban heat island effect.

But none of this explains why temperatures keep rising after the solstice.

Here’s a better analogy: the leaky balloon. The sun pumps air into the balloon (Earth), while the Earth radiates heat back into space (the leak). On the solstice, the pumping is at its strongest. For two months after, the pumping weakens, but it’s still faster than the leak. The balloon keeps inflating.

Similarly, after the solstice, the Earth still absorbs more heat than it radiates. The planet’s heat reservoir keeps growing until, one day during the “dog days,” intake equals output. That’s the peak. After that, we finally start to cool down.

This is like “carbon peak.” It sounds bad, but it marks the point where the growth rate finally turns negative—a trend reversal.

In this process, water plays the decisive role. Water is the Earth’s most powerful “heat sponge,” capable of absorbing enormous amounts of heat with only a slight increase in its own temperature. The specific heat of water is 4-5 times that of sand and rock, meaning it can store far more heat in a much milder way.

The diurnal temperature range of a place is largely determined by the presence of water. In lush, vegetated areas with ample moisture, the temperature difference between day and night is small. In arid deserts, the difference is extreme.

To take it to an extreme, what if the Earth had no water or atmosphere? We have a perfect real-world example: the Moon. Without water as a “heat sponge” and an atmosphere as a “thermal blanket,” the heat absorbed during the day is almost entirely radiated away at night. The Moon’s surface temperature can soar to 127°C (260°F) during the day and plummet to -173°C (-280°F) at night. With such rapid heating and cooling, the phenomenon of thermal lag would cease to exist.

So, when we complain about the weather, let’s not forget the Moon. Our planet, thanks to the gentle “thermostatic suit” of water and atmosphere, has avoided becoming a hellscape of alternating extremes. They are one of the greatest miracles that allow life to thrive on Earth.

The Air Blower Barrel: The Subtropical High

But the Earth’s own heat accumulation isn’t enough to explain the suffocating heat of the dog days. The real knockout punch comes from an old acquaintance from the weather forecast: the subtropical high. What is it, exactly? A mass of air?

Yes and no.

Picture this: in a large river, a stable vortex forms in a specific spot due to the flow patterns. The vortex itself seems permanent, but the water molecules within it are constantly being replaced. The subtropical high is a magnificent, stable air vortex in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The one that affects China the most is the Western Pacific Subtropical High. Its raw material comes from the equator. Air, heated to a scorching temperature at the equator, rises to high altitudes and then splits into two streams, one north and one south. The northward stream cools at high altitude, sinks, and traces a huge arc, landing around 30°N latitude to form this massive high-pressure system.

If it’s a current of air, why doesn’t it just dissipate?

To understand its stability, we can imagine it as a bottomless, topless air blower barrel:

The Top: Hot air from the equator rises, deflects, cools, and sinks, continuously pouring into the barrel.
The Squeeze: The air pouring in compresses the space inside the barrel. This compression causes heating, resulting in a hot-over-cold air structure inside. This stratification prevents vertical convection. The hot air above acts like an invisible lid, letting air in but not out.
The Walls: The trapped air naturally tries to escape horizontally. But as it blows outward, it’s deflected to the right (due to the Coriolis effect in the Northern Hemisphere). At a certain point, it bends 90 degrees, creating a clockwise “wind wall.” Other air trying to escape from the inside collides with this wall, preventing the wall from deflecting further inward. These forces merge, strengthening the wind wall and creating a balance that contains most of the air.
The Leaks: At the bottom, however, this air barrel wall becomes less sturdy due to friction with the ground. It leaks air in various directions, forming the trade winds and westerlies.

We’ll discuss the “Coriolis effect” in detail in the next chapter; for now, just focus on the wind wall. Ever walk into a mall in the summer and feel that blast of air from an air curtain pointing straight down at the entrance? The door is open, but it’s two different worlds inside and out. That’s the blocking effect of a wind wall.

This is how this high-pressure vortex maintains its relative stability.

The subtropical high, this “air blower barrel,” is a living thing. Its shape and position are constantly changing. When it expands northward and envelops your city, the weather forecast will say the area is under its “control,” a very fitting term.

Imagine the scene from the movie Independence Day where the alien mothership slowly emerges from the clouds and hovers over the city—the subtropical high brings that same sense of oppression.

It makes you feel scorching hot in two main ways:

Sinking Air, Cloudless Skies: Inside the high, the air sinks. This presses the hot surface air down, preventing it from rising to meet the cold air above, which suppresses cloud formation. The result is a clear, sunny sky, allowing the sun to launch a direct physical attack on you.
Transporting Moisture, Muggy Heat: The high often packages and delivers the hot, humid air from over the tropical oceans. High humidity prevents your sweat from evaporating, effectively crippling your body’s cooling system. This is a magic attack.

It’s crucial to note the difference between how the body feels heat from ground radiation versus heat from water evaporation. The former is “sensible heat,” the latter is “latent heat.”

The ground radiates heat via infrared radiation, transferring some of its stored energy to your house, your body, and the surrounding air. The ground cools down, but for you, it’s a heating process—that roasting feeling you get on a summer evening.

When water evaporates, it absorbs a large amount of “sensible heat” and converts it into “latent heat” stored in the water vapor molecules. This heat, which was on the ground or on your body, suddenly seems to vanish into thin air. This is true cooling. Of course, the heat hasn’t disappeared; it’s just been carried away to the heavens by the water vapor.

So, in July and August, you can experience two very different kinds of summer heat. When you’re away from the subtropical high and only dealing with ground heat, it’s a relatively dry heat. You can ride a bike in the hot wind and barely break a sweat. When the subtropical high hits, it’s the kind of heat that makes your clothes stick to you, so muggy you don’t even want to speak.

These are two different summers. One is the summer of a vibrant, energetic high-school athlete; the other is the summer of a sweaty, stressed-out recent grad hunting for a job.

The Coriolis Effect

Now let’s dive into the Coriolis effect, also known as the geostrophic deflection force, and see where the “barrel wall” comes from.

This force is fascinating. It’s not a real push or pull but an inertial phenomenon.

Imagine a cannonball fired from the equator, aimed straight for the North Pole. There are two ways to understand the Coriolis effect.

From the perspective of an observer on the ground:

When the cannonball launches from the equator, in addition to its northward velocity, it carries a huge west-to-east inertial velocity from the Earth’s rotation (about 1670 km/h or 1040 mph). As it travels north, the latitude increases, the circumference of the latitude line decreases, and the rotational speed of the ground below it slows down. But the cannonball, due to inertia, maintains its high equatorial speed. Consequently, it “outruns” the ground beneath it, causing its path to curve eastward. For a northbound cannonball, this is a deflection to the right.

Conversely, if fired from the North Pole towards the equator, the cannonball’s initial east-west velocity is zero. As it flies towards the equator, the ground beneath it is moving eastward at an increasing speed. The cannonball “can’t keep up” and lags behind, deflecting westward. For a southbound cannonball, this is also a deflection to the right.

From a God’s-eye view:

Watching from space, you’d see the rotating Earth move the cannonball to the side. You’d notice that when the cannonball launches from the equator, its initial direction isn’t straight up but diagonally up and towards you. Ignoring gravity, it would travel in a straight line in space. But gravity pulls on it, essentially “taping” this straight line onto the Earth’s surface, making it follow a “straight line on a curved surface.” This is also known as a great-circle route, the shortest path on a sphere. You can see this by stretching a string on a globe. The cannonball would travel northeast, reaching a high latitude where its direction is due east, then curve southeast, its latitude decreasing until it returns to the equator.

It was aimed north, but it passes the North Pole to the northeast. To someone on the ground, doesn’t that look like a rightward deflection?

So, the Coriolis effect isn’t a force; it’s an illusion. We are spinning but often forget we are. We only realize something is amiss when things don’t travel in the straight lines we expect.

The famous Foucault pendulum experiment in science history used this principle to prove the Earth’s rotation. It’s also why atmospheric phenomena are always spinning.

But wait! Sharp-eyed friends might spot another issue. What if the cannonball is fired horizontally at a mid-latitude, with no initial north-south velocity? Why does it still deflect? The “different speeds at different latitudes” explanation doesn’t seem to cover this.

Congratulations, you’ve entered the deep end of the Coriolis effect. You’ve discovered an important fact: physically, the Coriolis effect isn’t driven by a single principle. The north-south deflection is mainly due to the conservation of angular momentum, but the east-west deflection is primarily caused by the balance of centripetal force.

First, let’s reiterate an important concept: Gravitational Force ≠ Gravity.

Gravitational force (F) is due to the Earth’s mass; it exists whether the Earth spins or not and points towards the Earth’s center. Centripetal force (f) only exists with rotation; the faster the spin, the more centripetal force is needed. It points perpendicularly towards the Earth’s axis of rotation. These two forces have different directions. The part of the gravitational force that remains after accounting for the centripetal force is the gravity (mg) you feel. Of course, since gravitational force is very large and the required centripetal force is very small in comparison, the direction and magnitude of gravity are very close to that of the gravitational force.

Note that gravitational force is constant, while centripetal force isn’t a force an object actually receives; it describes the force required for an object to maintain its orbit at a certain speed.

So, for a cannonball at rest, the gravitational force is constant. The component of gravity in the direction of the centripetal force (let’s call it the centripetal component) provides just enough force to keep it stationary.

If fired eastward, the gravitational force is unchanged, but its orbital speed is now its own speed plus the Earth’s rotational speed. It’s moving faster than its latitude. The centripetal component of gravity can’t provide enough force to hold it. It has a tendency to fly off into space, opposite to the direction of the centripetal force. This outward tendency can be split into two components: one perpendicular to the surface and one along it. The perpendicular one doesn’t affect deflection but creates the interesting Eötvös effect (which we won’t get into, or we’ll never finish). We’re interested in the motion along the surface. The cannonball will move towards a lower latitude where more centripetal force can be provided. So, it moves south, deflecting to the right.

If fired westward, the same logic applies. Its combined speed is slower than its latitude. The centripetal component is now excessive, creating a tendency to pull it towards the axis of rotation. Along the surface, this manifests as a northward movement, which is also a rightward deflection.

Once it deviates from a pure east-west path, the angular momentum factor starts to play a role in the north-south direction, ensuring the cannonball continues to deflect.

Studying this leaves a strange feeling. How can this be? Can multiple physical laws combine to form a new one? Is this some kind of nesting doll? But mathematicians see it differently. The formula they derived for the Coriolis force is:

$$ {\displaystyle {\vec {F_{c}}}=-2m({\vec {\omega }}\times {\vec {v}})} $$

I won’t explain it in detail, but this formula covers both east-west and north-south cases simultaneously. Oh, so two different things in physics are the same thing in math… Sorry, my mistake.

Let’s stop here with the Coriolis effect. We have enough information to explain the thermal lag. In short, the existence of the Coriolis effect allows the subtropical high to maintain its “barrel wall,” trapping the high-pressure air inside and creating this unique atmospheric phenomenon.

A quick reminder: in everyday life, the Coriolis effect is not very noticeable. The direction of the vortex in your toilet or sink drain is mainly determined by the shape of the basin and the initial disturbance of the water, not this force.

The Conspiracy of the Thermos and the Air Blower

Alright, back to the main topic. We can now summarize. After the summer solstice, two factors conspire to keep the weather getting hotter:

The Thermos: The Earth’s continued accumulation of heat.
The Air Blower: The external heat delivered by the subtropical high.

Which factor has a greater impact? That’s like asking in a gas explosion whether the gas or the spark is more to blame.

The heat stored by the land, especially by the “heat sponge” of water, is the gas filling the air. It determines the baseline and duration of the heat. On one hand, it stores a massive amount of heat in early summer, preventing the surface temperature from rising too quickly, which is why the solstice isn’t the hottest day. On the other hand, the heat it has accumulated peaks in July and August, finally causing a significant rise in near-surface temperatures, creating a kind of “stone pot bibimbap” baking heat.

At this point, the intense heat is like gas filling the air, just waiting for a spark.

And the humid, scorching blast from the subtropical high is that fatal spark, making you feel like you’re about to explode. This is the inescapable reality of the dog days of summer.

Well, after all that, I know you don’t feel any cooler. Neither do I. Even the toothpaste in my bathroom is warm.

Finally, on the topic of summer, you might also be interested in this: Why Can the Summer Sun Shine on a North-Facing Wall?

How I Use AI to Write High-Quality Popular Science Articles

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 20:03:00 +0000

I recently wrote a pop-science piece on chemistry, Why Water Puts Out Fire. Did you notice it was actually written by an AI?

What? Fooling my readers? Not at all. It’s not what you think. I didn’t just give a prompt like “write a pop-science article on why water puts out fire” and blindly copy-paste the output. Try it yourself, and you’ll see what a mess that makes.

This article was created using a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) I developed to turn curiosity into genuine understanding, and then into a high-quality science article.

1. In-depth Discussion

Whenever a topic sparks my interest, I dive into an in-depth discussion with an AI like Gemini 2.5 Pro. I probe the underlying principles to build a systematic understanding, all while fact-checking key details to sidestep AI hallucinations. The goal is to learn something myself before I write anything.

For the article on water extinguishing fire, you can see the full chat history with the AI here: https://my.feishu.cn/docx/TRWldvN8uo9VRqxly8Fc30HwnYg?from=from_copylink

2. Manually Drafting the Outline

Next, I manually draft an outline based on what I’ve learned.

This is a 100% human-driven step. It lets me leverage my science communication skills to structure the narrative, decide when to use metaphors for imagery, and drop in a catchy phrase or two.

Drafting the outline is also my way of using the Feynman Technique. I organize the content based on my mental model of the topic. The act of writing it clarifies anything that was fuzzy before. I think by writing; I need to externalize my thoughts.

Once the draft is done, I feed it to the AI for a fact-check and to get suggestions on structure and flow. The AI often provides valuable new angles, and I’ll refine the outline based on its feedback.

3. AI-Generated Body Text

With the final outline, I prompt the AI to write the full article.

I also provide one of my own articles as a style guide, telling the AI to keep the tone direct and concise.

This part is usually quick and painless. Thanks to the solid groundwork, the AI’s output is typically high-quality and only needs a few minor edits.

4. AI-Human Collaboration on Illustrations

Next, I give the finished text to the AI and ask for illustration ideas, including descriptions of what they should show and where they should go. Most of the suggestions are spot-on, and even the ones I don’t use often spark new ideas.

Finally, I take this text, now with image prompts, to an AI Agent platform like Coze. I use its image search and editing tools to populate the article with visuals. I then review them, and if they’re not a good fit, I’ll find or generate better ones myself.

Right now, AI agents are still hit-or-miss. The image relevance and quality are often low, so I end up doing most of the work. But it’s an incremental process. Today it handles 10%, tomorrow maybe 30% or 50%. One day, this part of the job might be fully automated.

And just like that, the article is done and ready to be published.

Final Thoughts

This approach lets me deepen my own understanding—ensuring the content is something I’ve truly learned—while freeing me from the tedious work of fine-tuning sentences.

During an AI workshop with former colleagues, someone asked what I use AI for most. My answer: “Learning.”

AI has compressed nearly all of human knowledge into its parameters. For any curious person, it’s a treasure trove. There’s so much to explore that I can barely keep up with my own learning, so why are so many people rushing to just churn out content and act as mere information pipelines?

As I once mused on X(Twitter):

AI’s productivity is tempting; you always want to be creating something with it.

But if your goal is personal growth, running a media account that just parrots AI content is pointless. True growth comes from creating and processing information yourself.

If your own output is better than AI’s, using AI is a step backward.

Of course, if you’re just in it for the money, that’s another story.

Have you seen the anime “Hitori no Shita: The Outcast”? There’s a memorable, arrogant character named Wang Bing who uses a dark art to devour his opponents’ spirits, only to be unceremoniously crushed, much to the audience’s delight.

But the Wang family’s core idea isn’t entirely wrong. Think of AI-generated information as “spirits.” The difference is, “consuming” them doesn’t harm anyone since they’re infinitely replicable. You can build automated systems to mass-produce content, growing your channels like a spirit army. Or, you can digest the information slowly, permanently upgrading your own skills. Only the latter offers compounding personal growth.

I’ve been doing this since before the AI boom, though it was much harder then. I keep a massive digital notebook called “TIL” (Today I Learned), where I’ve documented my deep dives into everything from cloud classification to uranium enrichment. I have over 300 entries.

I rarely revisit most of them. Some things stick, others are forgotten. But the act of writing is a powerful memory aid.

In the age of AI, this notebook has become a goldmine. By feeding my TILs into a knowledge base, I can instantly retrieve specific details, bringing dormant knowledge back to life.

But that doesn’t mean I’ve outsourced my memory. The brain isn’t for storing atomic facts; it’s for recognizing the patterns that connect them. To find those patterns, you first need to process a lot of facts. If you let an AI do the summarizing, you’re memorizing conclusions without context—they won’t stick. Why else would authors write entire books to explain ideas that fit into a single paragraph?

So, back to writing. Once you have a standardized workflow, the most important part is asking good questions. Get that right, and the rest falls into place.

I am my own Quora.

How Does Water Put Out Fire

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 20:50:00 +0000

This question just popped into my head. I bet my daughter will ask it when she’s a bit older. Pause for a moment and think, how would you answer it?

Think carefully. A serious answer, please. No wise cracks.

This detailed explanation is probably best saved for when my daughter is in middle school. If she asked me right now, I’d probably just say, “Because water cools things down, so the fire can’t keep burning.”

But that’s fine. I’m the one who’s curious, so let’s dive deeper.

What is Fire?

To understand how to extinguish a fire, you first have to understand fire itself.

High school chemistry taught us that combustion requires three elements, forming the “fire triangle”:

Fuel: Something that can burn, like wood or gasoline. These are essentially reducing agents.
Oxidizer: Something that helps things burn, usually oxygen from the air. These are oxidizing agents.
Heat: Something that provides the initial energy, like the heat from a match.

All three must be present.

By the way, oxygen isn’t the only oxidizer. Hydrogen can burn in chlorine, and many substances burn violently in fluorine. It’s just that on Earth, oxygen is the most common one.

This is a scientific approach: for water to put out a fire, it must remove at least one of these three elements. Which one? Let’s hold that thought and dig deeper.

Now, let’s step into the microscopic world of chemistry and see how these three elements ignite.

Here’s a little-known fact: liquids don’t actually burn. The vast majority of combustion we see happens in the gas phase.

At a microscopic level, combustion is a rapid, violent oxidation-reduction reaction where fuel molecules and oxidizer molecules collide at high speed, turning into other molecules and releasing light and heat. For efficient collisions, the best state is a gas, where everything is thoroughly mixed.

Let’s do a thought experiment with a cup of gasoline. We’ll put it in a special device that’s both a freezer and an oven, and slowly heat it from near absolute zero (the coldest temperature in the universe) without an open flame:

At about -40°C, gasoline molecules gain enough energy to evaporate from the liquid surface into a gas. This gasoline vapor spreads into the air, with higher concentrations near the liquid surface. A quick spark will ignite this thin layer of vapor in a “poof,” and then the flame will extinguish. This temperature, -40°C, is the flash point of gasoline; from this temperature on, it can be ignited.
Continue heating. At about 280°C, something amazing happens: even without an external heat source or a spark, the gasoline suddenly bursts into flame and burns until it’s gone. This is the autoignition temperature. At this temperature, the collisions between gasoline vapor and oxygen molecules are so violent that for every molecule that burns, the heat it releases vaporizes another one from the cup.

See? The secret to a sustained flame is the evaporation rate. The hotter it gets, the faster it evaporates. At the autoignition temperature, the rate of vapor production meets or exceeds the rate of consumption by burning. Once this fuel supply line is established, combustion becomes a self-sustaining positive feedback loop.

The Peculiarity of Solid Combustion

The combustion of solids is more complex than that of liquids. Let’s use burning wood for another thought experiment.

The burning of wood occurs in two stages:

Stage 1: Flaming Combustion.

When wood is ignited, the complex organic macromolecules inside it break down in a process called pyrolysis. Pyrolysis produces two things: flammable gases (like methane and carbon monoxide) and solid charcoal (which is almost pure carbon).

This process is similar to liquid combustion, but “evaporation” is replaced by “pyrolysis.” Evaporation is a physical change—the molecules themselves don’t change. Pyrolysis is a chemical change—large molecules break down into smaller gas molecules. These flammable gases mix with the air and burn, creating a beautiful flame around the wood. Since hot gas rises, flames always appear at the top.

Stage 2: Smoldering.

When most of the gas has burned off, the flames disappear, leaving glowing red embers. Flaming combustion is over, and the flameless smoldering phase begins.

This process is more like a close-quarters battle. Oxygen molecules, the attackers, charge directly at the surface of the charcoal to react with the carbon atoms. The product, carbon dioxide, is a gas and flies away immediately. Fresh carbon atoms from below move up to the front line. This cycle repeats until the charcoal is consumed. The remaining ash consists of non-carbon impurities.

The pure surface combustion of charcoal has a huge advantage: it’s stable and controllable.

Its rate of heat release mainly depends on two variables: the fuel’s surface area and the oxidizer’s supply. The surface area is nearly constant, so the only variable is the oxygen supply. Therefore, its heat output can be precisely controlled, making it an ideal fuel, not just for its high heat value.

This property has special applications. Take steam locomotives, for instance, which burn coal (similar to charcoal). The fireman can control the fire’s intensity by adjusting the damper, which regulates the airflow into the firebox. This, in turn, controls steam production and the locomotive’s power.

Purple arrows show exhaust gas being expelled, which draws hot yellow-orange gas from the firebox. The firebox then sucks in fresh air, shown by the green arrows.

Even more clever is the blastpipe in the chimney. It ejects exhaust steam from the pistons at high speed, creating a vacuum that fiercely sucks fresh air into the firebox. This is based on the Bernoulli principle: the faster a fluid flows, the lower its pressure. The more the blastpipe blasts, the stronger the draft, the more oxygen enters the firebox, the hotter the fire burns, and the more steam is produced. It’s a brilliant positive feedback loop.

So, what if both the fuel and the oxidizer are solids? Does that kind of combustion exist?

Yes. The classic example is the thermite reaction. Mix aluminum powder (the fuel) with iron oxide powder (the oxidizer) and ignite it. The aluminum will snatch the oxygen atoms directly from the iron oxide. This solid-solid reaction releases temperatures up to 2500°C, hot enough to melt the resulting iron. The liquid iron allows the powders to flow, promoting continuous contact and sustaining the reaction.

To take it a step further, what happens if you strongly heat a solid fuel without an oxidizer?

It will only pyrolyze, not burn. This is a crucial part of modern chemical engineering. For example, heating coal without air (dry distillation) yields three important industrial materials: coke (for steelmaking), coal tar (a chemical feedstock), and coal gas (a fuel).

Now back to a fundamental question: Why does charcoal undergo pure surface combustion, while liquid fuels do not? This stems from differences at the molecular level.

Gas molecules are like rubber ducks in a pool, floating around randomly and bumping into each other.

Liquid molecules are like a pile of Buckyballs, held together by weak forces but able to slide past each other. This weak attraction is easily overcome by heat, allowing them to evaporate and escape.

Solid atoms (like carbon), however, are like a structure built with mortise and tenon joints. Each atom is locked in place by strong chemical bonds. The heat of combustion is not nearly enough to break this structure, so the atoms cannot escape as a gas and can only react on the surface. For instance, carbon’s autoignition temperature is a few hundred degrees, but its sublimation point (the temperature at which it turns to gas) is over 3600°C. It would have burned away long before it could vaporize.

The Essence of Combustion

By now, you might suspect the “fire triangle” model is a bit too simple. The conditions for brief combustion and sustained combustion are different.

Brief combustion: Requires fuel, an oxidizer, a temperature high enough for evaporation/pyrolysis, and an external ignition source.
Sustained combustion: Requires fuel, an oxidizer, and a temperature at the autoignition point.

The fire triangle model can’t explain why a flame is self-sustaining. So, scientists proposed the “fire tetrahedron,” adding a fourth element: an uninhibited chain reaction.

Once combustion starts, oxidizer and fuel molecules collide violently, creating new molecules and releasing heat. But that’s not the most powerful part of the chain reaction.

Besides collisions between whole molecules, many molecular “fragments” called free radicals are also involved. These are molecules that have been damaged in previous violent collisions. Some have lost an electron; others have an extra one. Free radicals are like hungry wolves, frantically attacking other molecules to become stable. This intensifies the collisions, generating more heat and more free radicals.

This process self-replicates and self-amplifies like a snowball rolling downhill. This is what makes fire so terrifying and magnificent. The power humans gained from mastering fire wasn’t just the heat of a torch against a wild beast. It was the leverage—a single spark could burn a prairie, providing cooked food and clearing land for farming. This power overwhelmed the physical strength of any other species.

Another chain reaction we’re familiar with is the one in an atomic bomb.

Speaking of which, what is an explosion? Is it brief or sustained combustion?

A (chemical) explosion is usually classified as brief combustion. When enough flammable gas has accumulated in the air at its flash point, a local ignition source reaching the autoignition temperature can trigger an extremely fast chain reaction. During the accumulation phase, the ambient temperature must remain below the autoignition temperature; otherwise, it would burn up before it could accumulate.

The Answer Revealed

Let’s summarize the microscopic combustion process:

Gaseous fuel: The most direct; burns when mixed with an oxidizer.
Liquid fuel: Must first evaporate into a gas.
Solid fuel: Mostly needs to first pyrolyze into a gas (flaming combustion), with the remainder undergoing surface combustion (smoldering).

As you can see, with few exceptions, most combustion follows the same path, shifting the battlefield to the gas phase.

Now, we can finally answer the original question. How exactly does water put out a fire? It attacks the “fire tetrahedron” on two fronts:

Attacking “Heat” (Cooling): This is water’s primary role. Water has an extremely high heat of vaporization; one gram of water turning into steam absorbs about 2260 joules of heat. To put that in perspective, that’s enough energy to lift a 100 kg (220 lb) person more than 2 meters (7 feet) off the ground. When water hits a fire, it absorbs a massive amount of heat, preventing the fuel from vaporizing and thus breaking the chain reaction.
Attacking the “Oxidizer” (Suffocation): This is a secondary factor. The huge volume of water vapor produced expands by more than a thousand times, displacing oxygen and stopping the combustion.

Of course, not all fires can be put out with water:

Electrical fires: Water conducts electricity and can cause electric shock or short circuits.
Oil fires: Oil is lighter than water and will float on top, spreading the fire as the water flows.
Reactive metal fires: Metals like potassium, sodium, and magnesium react with water to produce flammable hydrogen gas, essentially adding fuel to the fire.

Ultimately, the main reason water extinguishes fire is its powerful cooling ability. The same as the simple answer at the beginning.

But the journey of exploration is what’s interesting. An answer given without thought and one reached after a deep dive carry completely different weights.

If I’d known all this back in middle school, maybe I wouldn’t have failed chemistry.

80 Years of Middle East Turmoil From Israel's Founding to the Gaza War and Beyond

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 15:19:00 +0000

I’ve never been particularly interested in war and politics.

Born in the late 80s, I grew up hearing bits and pieces about the conflicts in the Middle East from the news, but I never really dug into the background. The summer after high school, with time on my hands, I read a book on the five Arab-Israeli wars. Lacking historical context, all I remembered years later were five dates.

As an ordinary person enjoying a (very fortunate) peaceful life in East Asia, I’m more drawn to things that advance humanity, like technology. I’ve always felt that politics, while powerful, has a fleeting impact. Science, technology, and economics, however, ripple through centuries. You can’t neatly separate them, of course, but with limited energy, I chose to focus on the latter.

Recently, after hearing one too many reports about Middle East conflicts, I decided to fill this gap in my knowledge. It all started with a simple question:

When Israel and Iran—countries that don’t share a border—attack each other through the air, how do the neighboring countries whose airspace is violated react?

The short answer is they protest and condemn it, but they are either powerless to stop it or tacitly allow it because their own internal situations are far from stable. As long as the fighting doesn’t spill onto their own soil, they aren’t willing to draw a hard line.

From there, one question led to another. I started chatting with an AI, verifying what I learned, and eventually covered every major event in the Middle East since Israel’s founding. Now that I have a conceptual map of modern Middle Eastern history, I had the AI organize these study notes based on my understanding.

Of course, I don’t plan on becoming a Middle East expert; this is just a starting point. A deep dive into any one of these events would reveal countless complexities that contradict this framework. The calculus of national interests often forces countries and leaders to act against their stated positions—the complexity of history is undeniable. But for an outsider an ocean away, this framework is a useful starting point. It’s a huge leap from knowing nothing at all.

The Middle East, a strategic crossroads of continents, has been a global geopolitical flashpoint since World War II, especially after Israel’s founding in 1948. A tangled web of ethnic, religious, resource, and external power struggles has fueled constant conflict, making the path to peace exceptionally treacherous. These notes offer a chronological review of the region’s major conflicts, analyzing them from the perspectives of Israel, the United States, the Arab world, and Iran. We will also look at the dynamics during periods of relative peace, particularly the intricate relationships within the Arab world.

1. 1948 Arab-Israeli War (War of Independence)

Overview

On May 14, 1948, as the British Mandate for Palestine ended, Israel declared statehood. The next day, armies from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia attacked to prevent the new state’s existence and aid Palestinian Arabs, sparking the war.

Perspectives

Israel’s Perspective: For Israel, this was its “War of Independence”—a fight for its very survival. Facing a multinational invasion, Israel mobilized its entire population. With subtle international support (notably from the U.S. and USSR), it not only defended its territory but also expanded it, securing its existence as a nation.
U.S. Perspective: As an emerging superpower in the early Cold War, the U.S. recognized Israel on its first day. The decision was driven by domestic political support and the strategic goal of backing a pro-Western democracy to counter Soviet influence. At the same time, the U.S. tried to balance its relationships with Arab oil-producing nations.
Arab World’s Perspective: This war is what the Arab world calls the “Nakba,” or the Catastrophe. Arab nations saw Israel’s creation as a violation of Palestinian Arab rights and a threat to the entire Arab nation. However, their coalition was hampered by poor coordination and internal divisions, leading to a bitter defeat. This failure fueled widespread frustration and paved the way for radical nationalism and military coups. In the aftermath, Jordan took control of the West Bank, and Egypt took the Gaza Strip.
Iran’s Perspective: At the time, Iran’s pro-Western Pahlavi dynasty was focused on internal development and its border with the Soviet Union. It had little direct involvement in the conflict and remained relatively neutral, despite general sympathy for the Palestinian cause in the Islamic world.

The Aftermath

The war ended with armistices, not peace treaties, sowing the seeds of future conflict.

Israel’s Perspective: Israel focused on consolidating its new state and territory. It began absorbing waves of Jewish immigrants while building its economy and military, bracing for future conflicts.
U.S. Perspective: While backing Israel, the U.S. also recognized the strategic importance of Arab oil producers and tried to maintain a balance. As the Cold War deepened, America bolstered pro-Western regimes to counter Soviet influence in countries like Egypt and Syria.
Arab World’s Perspective: Humiliation from the defeat spread. An influx of Palestinian refugees created a long-term humanitarian and political crisis in neighboring countries. Secular nationalist movements, like Nasserism in Egypt and the Ba’ath Party in Syria, gained traction, championing pan-Arabism and military might to confront Israel. Tensions mounted between the region’s old monarchies and its new military-nationalist regimes.
Iran’s Perspective: Iran stuck to its pro-Western foreign policy and close ties with the U.S. The Shah focused on modernization and raising Iran’s regional profile but stayed out of the direct Arab-Israeli conflict, prioritizing domestic development and stability.

2. 1956 Suez Crisis

Overview

In July 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. In response, the UK and France (the canal’s main shareholders) forged a secret alliance with Israel (which saw the move as a threat to its shipping). That October, the trio attacked Egypt, occupying the Canal Zone and the Sinai Peninsula.

Perspectives

Israel’s Perspective: Israel’s goals were to break Egypt’s blockade of the Straits of Tiran and crush the Palestinian “Fedayeen” guerillas in Gaza. Though militarily successful, Israel was forced to withdraw under intense U.S. and Soviet pressure, revealing that its military freedom was checked by the great powers.
U.S. Perspective: The U.S. opposed the invasion, fearing it would destabilize pro-Western Arab states and give the Soviet Union a foothold in the Middle East. Using its economic and political leverage, the U.S., along with the USSR, forced the invaders to back down. This signaled the shift of power in the Middle East from Britain and France to the U.S.
Arab World’s Perspective: Nasser’s nationalization was hailed as a triumph of national sovereignty. His prestige skyrocketed across the Arab world, and pan-Arab nationalism reached its zenith. Despite the military setback, Egypt won a major political victory, cementing Nasser’s regional leadership. Many Arab nations grew more suspicious of the shadow of Western colonialism.
Iran’s Perspective: Iran maintained its pro-Western stance. The crisis had little direct impact, but the rising tide of nationalism across the region was felt at home.

The Aftermath

After the crisis, UN peacekeepers were deployed to the Sinai, and Israel secured passage through the Straits of Tiran.

Israel’s Perspective: The crisis showed Israel how fragile its military victories could be, leading it to lean more heavily on its relationship with the U.S. for its security. Israel continued to build its military and seek ways to break its diplomatic isolation.
U.S. Perspective: The U.S. solidified its role as the dominant Western power in the Middle East, eclipsing Britain and France. It began to intervene more directly, using aid and alliances (like the Baghdad Pact) to cement its influence and counter growing Soviet influence in “progressive” Arab states like Egypt and Syria.
Arab World’s Perspective: Nasser’s pan-Arabism grew, and he courted Syria and Iraq to form a unified Arab federation. This worried conservative monarchies like Saudi Arabia, who preferred cooperation with the West, widening the rift within the Arab world. The Palestinian liberation movement began to chart a new course.
Iran’s Perspective: Under the Shah, Iran became a key pillar of U.S. strategy in the region. Using its oil revenues, Iran strengthened its military and sought to play a larger regional role to counterbalance Arab nationalism.

3. 1967 Six-Day War

Overview

In May 1967, Egypt ordered UN peacekeepers out of the Sinai and again blockaded the Straits of Tiran, escalating regional tensions. On June 5, Israel launched a preemptive strike on Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, destroying their air forces in hours. In a stunning six-day victory, Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and the Golan Heights.

Perspectives

Israel’s Perspective: Israel framed this as a war of self-defense. Facing mounting military threats and a crippling blockade, it struck first. The victory gave Israel crucial strategic depth and boosted its international standing, but it also created the long-term challenge of governing large occupied territories and a hostile Palestinian population.
U.S. Perspective: While urging restraint before the war, the U.S. quickly backed Israel afterward. With the Cold War in full swing, the U.S. saw Israel as a vital check on Soviet expansion (the USSR was arming Egypt and Syria). U.S. policy tilted heavily toward Israel, though it still promoted peace to maintain stability. The UN Security Council passed Resolution 242, establishing the “land for peace” principle.
Arab World’s Perspective: The Six-Day War was a humiliating defeat. The loss of strategic territory shattered the credibility of pan-Arab nationalism and damaged Nasser’s leadership. Resistance groups like the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) grew, arguing that Palestinians had to rely on their own strength, not on Arab states. Divisions in the Arab world deepened as some nations soured on direct confrontation with Israel.
Iran’s Perspective: The war reinforced Iran’s pro-Western stance. The Shah saw Israel as a potential partner to balance radical Arab nationalism. Iran’s economy benefited from surging oil revenues, which the Shah used to build a powerful military and establish Iran as a regional power.

The Aftermath

The Six-Day War redrew the map of the Middle East. Israel’s control over the occupied territories became the crux of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel’s Perspective: Israel solidified its control over the new territories and began building Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights—a policy that would become a major obstacle to peace. Israel’s confidence, backed by military might, soared, but it also faced growing international condemnation for the occupation.
U.S. Perspective: The U.S. became a more active mediator, sponsoring UN Resolution 242 and its “land for peace” formula, which would anchor future peace talks. America walked a fine line, providing military aid to Israel while trying to manage anti-U.S. sentiment in the Arab world to protect oil supplies.
Arab World’s Perspective: The dream of pan-Arabism lay in tatters. The PLO grew into the primary representative of the Palestinian people, setting up bases in Jordan and Lebanon. This led to conflicts with host governments, like Jordan’s “Black September” in 1970, when the king expelled PLO fighters. Arab states grew more divided on how to confront Israel and deal with the PLO.
Iran’s Perspective: As a key U.S. ally in the Gulf, Iran cemented its regional influence. The Shah used oil wealth to fund an ambitious military and modernization program. However, its pro-Western and quiet pro-Israel policies created distance with more radical Arab states.

4. 1973 Yom Kippur War

Overview

On October 6, 1973—Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism—Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack to reclaim territory lost in 1967. They made initial gains, but Israel, resupplied by a massive U.S. airlift, stabilized the fronts and counter-attacked. The war ended in a tense ceasefire.

Perspectives

Israel’s Perspective: Caught off guard by intelligence failures, Israel suffered heavy initial losses. The war shattered the nation’s myth of invincibility. However, with U.S. aid, its military proved resilient. The close call prompted a strategic shift, leading Israel to seek a peace agreement with Egypt.
U.S. Perspective: The war was a major Cold War proxy battle. The U.S. launched “Operation Nickel Grass,” a huge airlift of military hardware, to save Israel and protect its own strategic interests. Afterward, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s “shuttle diplomacy” brokered a peace process between Egypt and Israel, sidelining the Soviets and stabilizing oil supplies. A retaliatory Arab oil embargo also forced the U.S. to prioritize its relationships with oil-producing nations.
Arab World’s Perspective: Though they didn’t reclaim all their territory, the early military successes restored a sense of dignity, erasing the shame of 1967. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat scored a major political victory, paving the way for peace talks. The oil embargo revealed the Arab world’s economic leverage. However, Egypt’s decision to pursue a separate peace with Israel led to years of isolation from other Arab states.
Iran’s Perspective: Iran remained neutral, but as a major oil exporter, it reaped massive profits from the ensuing oil crisis. This windfall further fueled the Shah’s military buildup and modernization drive, cementing Iran’s role, alongside Saudi Arabia, in America’s “Twin Pillar” strategy for the region.

The Aftermath

The Yom Kippur War led to a breakthrough in the Middle East peace process.

Israel’s Perspective: Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt, its most powerful Arab adversary. This was a landmark diplomatic achievement that secured its western border. However, Israel held onto the West Bank and Golan Heights, leaving the Palestinian question unresolved.
U.S. Perspective: Kissinger’s diplomacy cemented America’s role as the indispensable mediator in the Middle East, shutting out the Soviets. The U.S. became the primary sponsor of the peace process and strengthened ties with Egypt and Saudi Arabia to protect oil supplies and promote stability.
Arab World’s Perspective: Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel got it expelled from the Arab League, marking the first major split in the Arab world’s stance on Israel. Hardline states like Syria and Libya rejected peace, while others grew open to negotiations. The PLO, feeling sidelined, began seeking its own political path.
Iran’s Perspective: The oil boom allowed the Shah to accelerate his ambitious military and modernization programs. Iran became a formidable regional power, but its secular, pro-Western policies fueled growing discontent among the country’s religious conservatives, setting the stage for the Islamic Revolution.

5. 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution

Overview

In 1979, the Islamic Revolution, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, toppled Iran’s pro-Western monarchy and established the Islamic Republic. The event fundamentally reshaped Iran’s identity and policies, sending shockwaves across the Middle East and the world.

Perspectives

Israel’s Perspective: A quiet regional partner transformed overnight into a hostile Islamic regime, creating a new and profound strategic threat. The Islamic Republic branded Israel the “Little Satan” and vowed its destruction, making Iran a primary security obsession for Israel.
U.S. Perspective: The U.S. lost its most crucial ally in the Middle East, a devastating blow to its regional strategy. The subsequent hostage crisis humiliated America on the world stage. From then on, the U.S. treated Iran’s regime as a “rogue state,” targeting it with sanctions and a policy of containment.
Arab World’s Perspective: The revolution received a mixed reception in the Sunni-dominated Arab world. Some people were inspired by the overthrow of a secular monarch, but most rulers, especially in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, were terrified. They feared Iran’s Shiite character and its vow to “export the revolution” would incite their own populations. The revolution dramatically intensified the Sunni-Shiite sectarian divide.
Iran’s Perspective: The revolution turned Iran from a pro-Western nation into an anti-Western, anti-Israel Islamic state, fiercely independent and committed to “exporting its revolution.” Iran began to position itself as the leader of the Islamic world, challenging U.S. and Israeli power by supporting resistance groups across the region, especially in Lebanon and Palestine.

The Aftermath

The Iranian Revolution radically altered the Middle East’s balance of power.

Israel’s Perspective: Having lost Iran as a strategic buffer, Israel came to see the new regime as a long-term, ideological enemy. This view hardened as Iran began arming Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian militant groups. Israel’s focus shifted to Iran’s nuclear program, which it viewed as an existential threat.
U.S. Perspective: The U.S. hit Iran with heavy sanctions and began courting new allies, like Saudi Arabia, to contain Iranian influence. It also boosted its military presence in the region to counter the threat from Tehran.
Arab World’s Perspective: Most Sunni Arab states, particularly the Gulf monarchies, grew deeply wary of Iran’s revolutionary Shiite government. This fear pushed them into a closer military and political embrace with the United States. The revolution sharpened the sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shiites across the region.
Iran’s Perspective: Iran committed itself to spreading its revolutionary ideals. By backing non-state actors like Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, it built a network of influence to wage a long-term struggle against the U.S. and Israel. Iran also began developing a ballistic missile program.

6. 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War

Overview

In September 1980, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, hoping to take advantage of post-revolution chaos in Iran, invaded. The brutal war that followed lasted eight years, killed over a million people, and shattered both economies.

Perspectives

Israel’s Perspective: Israel was happy to see two of its main adversaries bleed each other dry. Though Iraq was a sworn enemy, Israel saw Iran’s new Islamic regime as the greater long-term threat. It adopted a complex and covert strategy to ensure the war dragged on, famously facilitating U.S. arms sales to Iran in the “Iran-Contra Affair.” The goal was to prevent either side from winning decisively, thereby weakening both.
U.S. Perspective: The U.S. was officially neutral but, fearing the spread of Iran’s revolution, gradually tilted toward Iraq, providing it with intelligence and economic support. The primary U.S. goal was to prevent an Iranian victory.
Arab World’s Perspective: Most Gulf Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, were terrified of Iran’s revolution and backed Iraq with billions in aid. A few, like Syria and Libya, sided with Iran, exposing deep fissures in the Arab world. The war turned Iraq’s army into a regional powerhouse.
Iran’s Perspective: For Iran, the war was a “Sacred Defense” that united the country and consolidated the revolution. The Iranian people showed incredible resilience but paid a terrible price. The war solidified the regime’s power and anti-Western ideology but deepened its rift with most of the Arab world and the U.S.

The Aftermath

The war left Iraq with a powerful army and massive debt, while Iran focused on reconstruction and cementing its revolutionary ideals.

Israel’s Perspective: The immediate military threat from Iran was gone, but the growth of Iraq’s army and its support for Palestinian militants kept Israel on high alert. Israel also remained wary of Iran’s deepening ties with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
U.S. Perspective: The war boosted U.S. influence, positioning it as a key broker between Iran and Iraq. However, its support for Saddam Hussein’s regime would have fateful consequences.
Arab World’s Perspective: The war weakened both countries but left Iraq as a military giant, which unsettled its Gulf neighbors. The Arab world remained divided on how to handle post-war Iraq and counter Iran’s influence.
Iran’s Perspective: The war hardened the regime’s anti-American and anti-Israel ideology. Iran began rebuilding its military and expanding its regional influence through non-state actors. Relations with most Arab countries remained tense.

7. 1982 Lebanon War

Overview

In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, using an assassination attempt on its ambassador to the UK as a pretext. The stated goals were to destroy the PLO’s military infrastructure in southern Lebanon and support a friendly Maronite Christian government. The invasion led to the siege of Beirut, the PLO’s expulsion from the country, and a years-long Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.

Perspectives

Israel’s Perspective: Israel aimed to end the PLO threat from Lebanon and install a friendly government. It succeeded in driving out the PLO but soon found itself bogged down in Lebanon’s brutal civil war. The long occupation faced fierce resistance, sparked intense controversy at home, and ended with a unilateral Israeli withdrawal in 2000.
U.S. Perspective: The U.S. initially supported Israel’s right to self-defense but grew alarmed at the scale of the invasion. It sent Marines as part of a multinational peacekeeping force to oversee the PLO’s evacuation. However, American involvement ended in tragedy with the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. The U.S. sought stability but failed to create a pro-American government.
Arab World’s Perspective: The Lebanon War exposed the Arab world’s impotence once again. Many nations condemned the invasion but failed to act. The PLO’s expulsion further weakened Arab support for the Palestinian cause. The war also allowed Syria to deepen its influence in Lebanon and fueled the rise of the country’s Shiite community.
Iran’s Perspective: Iran saw the war as a golden opportunity. With Syria’s help, it sent Revolutionary Guard trainers to Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. They helped organize local Shiite militias resisting the Israeli occupation, a process that gave birth to Hezbollah. Hezbollah became Iran’s most successful proxy, a powerful anti-Israel vanguard that dramatically extended Iran’s reach.

The Aftermath

The war left Lebanon in a vortex of civil war and foreign intervention.

Israel’s Perspective: The PLO was gone, but Israel was stuck in the Lebanese quagmire, fighting a long and costly guerrilla war against Hezbollah. The experience profoundly changed Israeli society and politics, prompting a deep rethink of its military intervention policies. Israel finally withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000.
U.S. Perspective: The U.S. played a difficult role. Its military intervention failed to stop the fighting and led to American casualties, making Washington more cautious about future entanglements in the Middle East.
Arab World’s Perspective: The focus of the Palestinian struggle began to shift from the PLO to the new Shiite resistance in southern Lebanon. Arab states continued to offer rhetorical support but took little action. Syria’s influence in Lebanon grew stronger.
Iran’s Perspective: This was a major success for Iran’s strategy of exporting its revolution and building a proxy network. The rise of Hezbollah gave Iran a powerful ally on Israel’s border, a cornerstone of its regional strategy. Iran’s influence, channeled through non-state actors, began to grow.

8. 1990-1991 Gulf War

Overview

In August 1990, Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait. The UN demanded a withdrawal, and when Iraq refused, a U.S.-led international coalition launched Operation Desert Storm in January 1991, decisively ejecting the Iraqi army from Kuwait.

Perspectives

Israel’s Perspective: Though Iraq fired Scud missiles at its cities, Israel—at Washington’s urgent request—did not retaliate. This was to avoid fracturing the U.S.-led coalition, which crucially included several Arab states. The episode underscored the strength of the U.S.-Israel alliance and Israel’s strategic calculations.
U.S. Perspective: The U.S. saw the invasion as a direct threat to its interests and the global oil supply. It assembled a vast coalition to uphold international law and restore regional stability. The war was a display of American military and diplomatic power in the new, post-Cold War world.
Arab World’s Perspective: The invasion shattered Arab unity. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria joined the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq. But Jordan, Yemen, and the PLO sided with Saddam, exposing deep divisions. The war left a massive U.S. military footprint in the region, particularly in Saudi Arabia, which angered Islamic radicals.
Iran’s Perspective: Iran remained officially neutral but was privately pleased to see its rival, Saddam Hussein, weakened. Iraq’s defeat and the subsequent UN sanctions greatly reduced the strategic pressure on Iran.

The Aftermath

After the war, Iraq was crippled by years of sanctions and weapons inspections. The U.S. military presence in the Middle East, especially in the Gulf, expanded dramatically.

Israel’s Perspective: With Iraq neutralized, a major threat was removed. The post-war political climate helped accelerate the peace process with the Palestinians, leading to the Oslo Accords and mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO.
U.S. Perspective: U.S. influence in the Middle East reached an all-time high. It sponsored a new round of peace talks, trying to use its post-war leverage to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, the long-term stationing of U.S. troops on Saudi soil planted the seeds for future anti-American terrorism.
Arab World’s Perspective: The war deepened the rift between pro-Western conservative states and pan-Arab nationalists. Some governments forged closer ties with the U.S., but Iraq’s defeat and the enduring U.S. military presence fueled popular resentment and provided fertile ground for Islamic extremism.
Iran’s Perspective: With Iraq weakened, Iran’s international isolation began to ease, allowing it to assert more influence in the Persian Gulf. It continued to build up its military and deepen ties with proxies like Hezbollah, preparing for the next phase of its regional strategy.

9. Second Palestinian Intifada (Al-Aqsa Intifada, 2000-2005)

Overview

In 2000, a provocative visit by Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem ignited Palestinian fury, sparking a new uprising. The Second Intifada was far deadlier than the first, defined by a brutal cycle of Palestinian suicide bombings and massive Israeli military crackdowns.

Perspectives

Israel’s Perspective: Israel saw the intifada as a wave of terrorism threatening its citizens. It responded with overwhelming force, launching large-scale incursions into Palestinian cities and building a controversial separation barrier. The violence shattered the Israeli public’s faith in the peace process.
U.S. Perspective: The intifada coincided with the 9/11 attacks, which shifted America’s focus to a global war on terror. While the U.S. made attempts to mediate, its priority was now counter-terrorism, not Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. The peace process ground to a halt.
Arab World’s Perspective: Arab nations sympathized with the Palestinians and condemned Israel’s actions, but their response was muted. Preoccupied with domestic issues and their own role in the war on terror, their ability to intervene was limited. Disappointment with the Palestinian Authority’s leadership grew, while support for armed groups like Hamas increased.
Iran’s Perspective: Iran staunchly backed the Palestinian resistance, especially Hamas and Islamic Jihad. It saw the struggle as a key front in its fight against U.S. and Israeli power. Through funding and weapons, Iran significantly boosted its influence over the Palestinian cause.

The Aftermath

The Second Intifada left Israeli-Palestinian relations in ruins and the peace process dead.

Israel’s Perspective: The violence destroyed any remaining illusions about the Oslo process, leading Israel to adopt a security-first approach. It built the separation barrier and, in 2005, unilaterally withdrew its settlers and troops from Gaza, only to impose a tight blockade on the territory.
U.S. Perspective: After 9/11, the U.S. strategic focus was entirely on the war on terror. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was relegated to a lower priority. The U.S. paid lip service to a “two-state solution,” but with little real pressure or investment, the process stagnated.
Arab World’s Perspective: The Palestinian issue began to fade as a priority for many Arab governments, who were more concerned with domestic stability and the threat of extremism. A bitter power struggle erupted between the Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, leading to Hamas’s takeover of Gaza in 2007 and a geographic and political split of the Palestinian leadership.
Iran’s Perspective: Iran exploited the Palestinian divisions, strengthening its support for Hamas and other militant groups. This enhanced its role as a power broker on the Palestinian stage and allowed it to pose a more direct threat to Israel.

10. 2001 War in Afghanistan

Overview

After the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. and its allies invaded Afghanistan. The goal was to overthrow the Taliban regime, which had sheltered Al-Qaeda, and dismantle the terrorist network.

Perspectives

Israel’s Perspective: As a key U.S. ally, Israel fully supported the war on terror, seeing it as part of the same fight against the extremist groups that targeted it.
U.S. Perspective: The 9/11 attacks were a national trauma that put counter-terrorism at the center of U.S. foreign policy. The invasion of Afghanistan kicked off the “Global War on Terror,” a long and costly campaign that would dramatically reshape U.S. priorities in the Middle East.
Arab World’s Perspective: Most Arab governments officially backed the U.S. campaign, but public opinion was divided, torn between condemning terrorism and fearing American military intervention. The Saudi government, embarrassed by Al-Qaeda’s origins, scrambled to distance itself from extremism.
Iran’s Perspective: As a long-time enemy of the Taliban, Iran initially welcomed the U.S. invasion and even provided some covert assistance. But as the U.S. military footprint in the region grew, Tehran grew wary, fearing it might be next on Washington’s list.

The Aftermath

The war quickly toppled the Taliban, but the U.S. and its allies soon found themselves mired in a long and difficult counter-insurgency campaign.

Israel’s Perspective: The war had little direct impact on Israel, though it worried that America’s focus on counter-terrorism might divert attention from the growing threat of Iran’s nuclear program.
U.S. Perspective: The Afghanistan war was the first chapter in the war on terror. It set the stage for a dramatic shift in U.S. military deployments and strategic thinking, leading directly to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and a new focus on combating non-state actors.
Arab World’s Perspective: The war amplified fears of extremism across the Arab world but also deepened mistrust of U.S. military intervention. Some regimes ramped up their counter-terrorism cooperation with the U.S., while others struggled to contain the spread of radical ideas at home.
Iran’s Perspective: The fall of the Taliban was an initial win for Iran, but the growing U.S. military presence on its borders made Tehran feel encircled. It responded by accelerating its own defense and nuclear programs.

11. 2003 Iraq War (Second Gulf War)

Overview

In March 2003, a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, bypassing the UN Security Council. The stated justification was that Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and supported terrorism. The regime was quickly toppled, but no WMDs were found, and Iraq plunged into years of sectarian bloodshed and chaos.

Perspectives

Israel’s Perspective: Israel strongly supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, seeing him as a dangerous enemy who threatened it with WMDs and sponsored Palestinian militants. The war removed a major threat, but the ensuing chaos in Iraq and the rise of Iranian influence created new and complex challenges.
U.S. Perspective: The Bush administration saw the invasion as a key front in the war on terror, aiming to remove a hostile regime and spread democracy. The reality was a costly occupation, a bloody civil war, the birth of new and even more virulent extremist groups (like ISIS), and a severe blow to American power and prestige.
Arab World’s Perspective: The war was deeply divisive. Few mourned Saddam’s regime, but the unauthorized invasion and occupation of a major Arab state by a Western power ignited widespread anti-American rage. The war unleashed a wave of sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites that destabilized the entire region. Some Arab governments feared a U.S. campaign to forcibly remake the region, while others quietly worried that the war would empower Iran.
Iran’s Perspective: For Iran, the war was a “strategic gift.” The U.S. had eliminated its mortal enemy, Saddam Hussein, relieving immense military pressure. Iran moved quickly to fill the power vacuum, using its deep ties to Iraq’s long-oppressed Shiite majority to build political influence and sponsor powerful militias. The war gave Iran unprecedented strategic depth and a dominant role in Iraq.

The Aftermath

The war shattered Iraq’s state and society, unleashing a brutal sectarian civil war and creating the conditions for the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS).

Israel’s Perspective: The conventional threat from Iraq was gone, but Israel became increasingly alarmed by Iran’s growing influence in Iraq and neighboring Syria. It saw this as a new and dangerous strategic threat, and began conducting regular airstrikes in Syria to degrade Iran’s military presence and stop weapons transfers to Hezbollah.
U.S. Perspective: The U.S. found itself trapped in a costly and demoralizing nation-building quagmire. The war failed to create a stable democracy, instead fueling regional instability and ISIS. The drain on U.S. resources and credibility accelerated a strategic re-evaluation, leading to the “pivot to Asia.”
Arab World’s Perspective: The war tore the Arab world further apart. Sunni-Shiite tensions exploded, fueling a series of proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and Iran in places like Syria and Yemen. Many Arab states watched with alarm as Iraq disintegrated and Iran’s influence grew.
Iran’s Perspective: The war was a strategic windfall. By backing pro-Iranian political forces and militias in Iraq, Iran successfully built a “Shiite Crescent”—a land bridge of influence stretching from Tehran to Beirut. This dramatically expanded its regional power and put it in a stronger position to challenge its adversaries.

12. 2010 “Arab Spring”

Overview

In late 2010, a popular uprising in Tunisia sparked a chain reaction of protests, revolts, and civil wars across the Arab world. The “Arab Spring” toppled long-standing dictators in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen and plunged Syria into a brutal civil war.

Perspectives

Israel’s Perspective: Israel watched the “Arab Spring” with deep apprehension. The instability on its borders was a major threat. It feared that collapsing regimes in Egypt and Syria could be replaced by radical Islamists or create lawless vacuums for terrorist groups.
U.S. Perspective: The U.S. initially supported the protestors’ calls for democracy but grew more cautious as the region descended into chaos. Its policy shifted toward prioritizing stability over democratic reform. America’s influence was challenged, and it began to reduce its regional footprint and “pivot to Asia.”
Arab World’s Perspective: The “Arab Spring” tore the region apart. Tunisia managed a fragile transition to democracy, but Libya, Yemen, and Syria collapsed into devastating civil wars. Monarchies like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain brutally crushed their own protests. The upheaval intensified sectarian conflicts, proxy wars between regional powers (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE), and the fragmentation of the Arab world.
Iran’s Perspective: Iran initially celebrated the uprisings as an “Islamic Awakening,” hoping to ride the wave of popular discontent. It threw its support behind its ally, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and strengthened its ties with the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq, using the regional chaos to expand its own influence.

The Aftermath

The “Arab Spring” left a legacy of failed states, brutal civil wars, and humanitarian disasters. The chaos fueled the rise of extremist groups like ISIS and created massive refugee crises.

Israel’s Perspective: Facing a more volatile neighborhood, Israel became more pragmatic. In Syria, it focused on preventing Iran from establishing a permanent military base and arming Hezbollah. The shared threat of Iran also led to quiet but growing cooperation between Israel and several Gulf states.
U.S. Perspective: The U.S. learned a hard lesson about the costs and complexities of promoting democracy in the Middle East. Its focus shifted back to counter-terrorism and stability. The Obama administration’s “Pivot to Asia” signaled a broader U.S. strategic retreat from the region, pushing allies to take on more responsibility for their own security.
Arab World’s Perspective: The Arab Spring left the region more divided than ever. The Sunni-Shiite sectarian rivalry played out in brutal proxy wars in Syria and Yemen. Led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, a new bloc of assertive monarchies emerged, intervening in regional conflicts to counter Iranian influence. Traditional pan-Arab nationalism faded, replaced by more sectarian and tribal identities.
Iran’s Perspective: Iran skillfully exploited the regional chaos to deepen its influence in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Its intervention in Syria was decisive in saving the Assad regime, securing its crucial “Shiite Crescent.” The regional rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia intensified, reaching new heights of hostility.

13. The Rise of ISIS and Regional Conflicts (Syria, Yemen, Libya)

Overview

From the wreckage of the Iraq War and the Syrian Civil War, the “Islamic State” (ISIS) emerged. The extremist group seized vast territories, proclaimed a “caliphate,” and unleashed a campaign of horrific terrorism. This prompted a global military campaign to defeat it and fueled complex, multi-sided civil wars in Syria, Yemen, and Libya.

Perspectives

Israel’s Perspective: Israel viewed ISIS as a threat but was far more concerned with the growing power of Iran-backed forces, like Hezbollah and Shiite militias, in the Syrian civil war. It conducted frequent airstrikes in Syria to counter Iran’s military presence.
U.S. Perspective: The U.S. identified ISIS as a major global threat and assembled an international coalition to destroy it. At the same time, it struggled to navigate the Syrian civil war, supporting moderate rebels while trying to contain Iranian expansion.
Arab World’s Perspective: ISIS was a direct threat to every Arab state. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt joined the military campaign against it. However, the civil wars in Syria, Yemen, and Libya also became battlegrounds for the proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, further deepening regional divisions. The Saudi-led intervention in Yemen against the Iran-backed Houthis is a prime example.
Iran’s Perspective: Iran moved aggressively to combat ISIS in Iraq and Syria, supporting local governments and Shiite militias. This intervention was crucial in defeating ISIS on the ground, but it also allowed Iran to cement its influence along the “Shiite Crescent.” Iran continued to see the U.S. military presence as the main threat and used its proxy network to counter American and Israeli power.

The Aftermath

Though the ISIS “caliphate” was destroyed, its ideology endures. The civil wars in Syria, Yemen, and Libya grind on, causing immense human suffering.

Israel’s Perspective: While contributing to the anti-ISIS fight, Israel’s primary focus remained on containing Iran’s military expansion, especially in Syria. The shared threat of Iran accelerated a historic realignment, bringing Israel and several Sunni Gulf states, like the UAE, closer together, culminating in the Abraham Accords.
U.S. Perspective: The U.S. led the military campaign that crushed ISIS but also continued its strategic withdrawal from the Middle East, relying more on regional partners and a “light footprint” approach. The goal was to shift resources toward great-power competition with China and Russia.
Arab World’s Perspective: The fight against ISIS reshuffled regional alliances. An assertive new bloc, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, emerged. They adopted more aggressive foreign policies, normalized relations with Israel to counter Iran, and sought foreign investment. This, however, further eroded the traditional Arab consensus on the Palestinian issue.
Iran’s Perspective: Through its deep involvement in the region’s wars, Iran built a powerful “Axis of Resistance.” It greatly enhanced its strategic influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. The “shadow war” between Iran and Israel escalated, playing out through cyberattacks, assassinations, and proxy skirmishes, becoming one of the region’s most dangerous flashpoints.

14. Ongoing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the Gaza War (to the present)

Overview

Since the Second Intifada, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has festered. The peace process is nonexistent, Israeli settlements on the West Bank have expanded, and the Gaza Strip has endured a crippling blockade, punctuated by periodic, brutal wars between Israel and the ruling Hamas militant group. On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a devastating attack on Israel, triggering a massive Israeli invasion of Gaza and a new, catastrophic chapter in the conflict.

Perspectives

Israel’s Perspective: Israel considers Hamas a terrorist organization and frames its military actions in Gaza as self-defense, aimed at destroying the group’s military capabilities and protecting its citizens. It continues to maintain tight security control over the West Bank and support settlement growth as a strategic imperative.
U.S. Perspective: The U.S. remains a staunch supporter of Israel’s security but has also called for the protection of Palestinian civilians and nominally supports a “two-state solution.” However, its leverage is limited, and its strategic focus has shifted toward great-power competition and away from active Mideast peacemaking.
Arab World’s Perspective: Despite the Abraham Accords, which saw countries like the UAE and Bahrain normalize ties with Israel, the Palestinian cause remains a powerful issue on the “Arab street.” The war in Gaza has sparked widespread popular outrage, forcing Arab governments to walk a tightrope between condemning Israel and protecting their own national interests and newfound alliances.
Iran’s Perspective: Iran is a key patron of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and its support for the Palestinian “resistance” is a central pillar of its anti-U.S., anti-Israel foreign policy. Through its network of proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, Iran poses a multi-front threat to Israel and plays a pivotal role in regional conflicts.

The Aftermath

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in a downward spiral, with peace looking more distant than ever. The expansion of Israeli settlements continues, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has reached catastrophic levels.

Israel’s Perspective: Despite the new ties with some Arab states, the Palestinian issue remains Israel’s most intractable challenge. Israel is focused on maintaining its military edge against threats like Hamas and Hezbollah while weathering a storm of international criticism over its occupation and the war in Gaza.
U.S. Perspective: America’s strategic retreat from the region has weakened its ability to mediate. It continues to endorse a two-state solution, but with little real action. Washington is more focused on managing its Gulf alliances to counter the regional challenge from Iran.
Arab World’s Perspective: The Arab world is no longer united on Palestine. For some governments, shared economic interests and a common fear of Iran have made partnership with Israel a strategic priority. This was the driving force behind the Abraham Accords. Yet the Palestinian cause remains a deeply emotional issue for the public, and the war in Gaza can still ignite mass protests.
Iran’s Perspective: The “shadow war” between Iran and Israel is escalating across the region, fought with cyberattacks, assassinations, proxy strikes, and missile threats. Iran continues to strengthen its “Axis of Resistance,” using the Palestinian cause as a rallying cry in its quest for regional leadership and its long struggle against the U.S. and Israel.

Summary

A look back at the Middle East since 1948 reveals an epic of turmoil, confrontation, and relentless change.

Israel: From a desperate fight for survival to a regional military superpower, its security has always been the driving concern. Yet it remains burdened by the unending Palestinian conflict and regional isolation.
United States: From Cold War containment to the War on Terror and now to great-power competition, the U.S. has been the region’s most powerful external actor, its policies constantly shifting between securing oil, backing allies, and promoting stability.
The Arab World: After the dream of pan-Arabism rose and fell, it never managed to form a united front against Israel or external intervention. It remains fractured by sectarian divides, rivalries between monarchies and republics, and the competing interests of its leaders, making internal splits and proxy wars the norm.
Iran: From a pro-Western monarchy to a revolutionary anti-Western republic, Iran’s transformation has upended the region’s geopolitics. Through its proxy network, nuclear program, and challenge to American power, Iran has become a formidable force, locked in a cold war with Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the U.S.

Every conflict in the Middle East is more than a military clash; it’s a complex brew of politics, economics, and religion. Eras of war and peace bleed into one another. Old problems remain unsolved as new ones emerge. The struggle for oil, great-power meddling, nationalism, extremism, and the unresolved Palestinian question have all shaped the turbulent and challenging Middle East of today.

Postscript

Before you know the history, you might wonder why Israel would fight so many countries at once. Weren’t there less risky options? Even with a stronger military, isn’t it better to avoid a multi-front war?

This is a common misconception for people who live in stable, unified countries. In most of these conflicts, Israel wasn’t fighting whole nations, but specific factions within internally fractured states. To understand the Middle East, you can’t see its countries as monolithic blocs; they are deeply divided, with competing factions and agendas.

The Arab world itself is a web of contradictions: old grudges between regimes, the Sunni-Shiite schism, the clash between monarchies and nationalist movements. The creation of Israel, combined with superpower meddling, threw all these volatile elements into a blender. Some conflicts were aimed at Israel, but many others were between Middle Eastern states themselves or within them.

As these notes show, the focus of conflict within the Arab world has constantly shifted over the past 80 years, becoming too complex to easily summarize. Arch-enemies can find common ground, and the enemy of your enemy is not always your friend—this is the nature of politics. The shifting attitudes of some Arab states toward Israel show that for any government, a hostile nation-state is not the only threat, and often not even the biggest one. A nation’s goals are never singular; they are incredibly complex.

History, moreover, is rarely controlled by a single actor. Even a power as formidable as the United States has failed to maintain a consistent strategy in the Middle East. Unforeseen events have constantly forced it to shift priorities, and its immense investment of blood and treasure has not always produced the desired results.

So, why did I compile such a long set of notes?

Just one reason: to learn. To understand a little more, and to have something to look back on when I forget.

I have no value judgments about this history; I don’t have them for any history. There are only details—more details, and endless details. When you piece enough of them together, you get a story about what you want, what I want, and how we all fight to get it.

AI Metacognition - Do You Really Get It After Using It So Long?

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Thu, 22 May 2025 17:50:00 +0000

Recently, my former company invited me to present on AI and help their team tackle some business challenges. While preparing, I included a chapter on core concepts, particularly for those less familiar with technology. My goal was to deepen their understanding of AI, hoping that many specific questions would then answer themselves.

The presentation was well-received; attendees mentioned gaining a fresh perspective on AI. So, I’ve adapted that section here, hoping to clarify AI for a wider audience.

This article is for non-tech individuals who frequently use AI. Consider it a primer. AI experts likely won’t find much new here.

Understanding AI Correctly

What Kind of Intelligence is AI?

Before my presentation, I posed a question: “If AI were a person, what kind would it be?”

Feel free to ponder this yourself.

My former colleagues described AI as a diligent student.

Drawing on AI principles, I offered an analogy: Imagine AI as a writer or painter, confined to a dimly lit desk in a dungeon from birth, poring over endless books and scrolls for a lifetime. Their lifespan, far exceeding a normal human’s, might span the entirety of human civilization. Having consumed every recorded text, they then begin to depict the world through words and images.

This sage possesses an incredible wealth of knowledge. If you could converse with this sage in their dungeon, their vast knowledge might mislead you into believing they possess equivalent intelligence, fostering unrealistic expectations and trust.

However, true wisdom comes not just from books but from experience—the proverbial “traveling ten thousand miles.” This dungeon-bound sage has no physical world experience; they’ve never felt a tree or heard a bird’s song. While their extensive knowledge allows them to articulate concepts accurately, they lack the rich, three-dimensional understanding humans gain from real-world interaction.

It’s akin to a child’s incomplete grasp of death.

My daughter recently asked, “Mom, if Dad dies, and neither of us can drive, who will take us out?”

She understood death merely as people disappearing, something she’d heard from us. Having never experienced such a loss, her understanding was superficial.

Our dungeon sage is similar. Their vast knowledge enables them to answer complex questions. Children lack common sense not due to lower intelligence, but due to less experience. In this sense, humanity is currently like that child.

Furthermore, AI’s efficiency in learning and pattern recognition pales in comparison to humans.

For instance, training an AI to recognize cats requires tens of thousands of images to distinguish them from other furry, two-eared creatures.

In contrast, my two-year-old daughter, who had never seen a live duck and had seen fewer than ten duck pictures, could readily identify duck-themed toys, dolls, and mall rides. To my surprise, passing a restaurant, she pointed at a golden roasted duck and exclaimed, “Ducky!”

Why Doesn’t AI Obey?

Another common issue: AI often doesn’t respond as intended. You ask for X, and it gives you Y.

Here’s an anecdote from a TED talk.

Long before ChatGPT, AI research was well underway. One study simulated evolution, allowing AIs to define parameters for virtual creatures. Their goal was to evolve these creatures through competitive rounds to win a 100-meter race.

The winning ‘species’ had a 100-meter tall neck. At the start of the race, it simply fell over, instantly crossing the finish line:

It appears the AI found and exploited a loophole. But how did it devise such a clever workaround?

It’s not that AI is inherently disobedient. Rather, humans grasp the full context; we share unspoken understandings. We understand that animals aren’t designed solely for a 100-meter dash and that many unstated conditions apply. A viable creature must move, eat, reproduce, and evade predators. We implicitly consider these factors. The AI might ‘know’ this too, but disregards it if not explicitly stated in the prompt.

AI is more like an overly agreeable supplier. Provide vague instructions, and you’ll get messy results.

To get AI to follow instructions accurately, provide comprehensive details and encourage it to ask clarifying questions.

Why Does AI Hallucinate?

This phenomenon, known as “hallucination,” is a major frustration for AI users. Ask for industry research, and it might invent figures or cite non-existent sources. It can feel like dealing with a disgruntled employee subtly sabotaging your work.

Of course, AI doesn’t retaliate intentionally; it lacks emotions. It’s programmed to “help.”

Mainstream text-based AI is fundamentally a text-completion engine. Its core function is to continue writing based on the input provided. Give it a novel’s opening, and it continues the story. Give it part of a contract, and it drafts clauses.

You might think, “But my AI chats like a person!” Correct. Clever design transforms this text-completion engine into a chatbot.

From your end, you type, “Hi, what’s your name?” The AI receives this and replies.

Behind the scenes, the AI might receive something like this:

You are a helpful assistant, and you are about to answer the user’s question.

User says: Hi, what’s your name?

Assistant says:

The phrase “You are a helpful assistant…” is a “system prompt”—hardcoded instructions invisible to you.

So, it’s not just answering a question; it’s continuing a scripted interaction between a user and an assistant. It predicts and appends what an assistant would likely say.

If you reply again, the information it receives will be structured like this:

You are a helpful assistant, and you are about to answer the user’s question.

User says: Hi, what’s your name?

Assistant says: Hi there! I’m Doubao, and I’m happy to interact with you~ If you have any questions or need help, just let me know 😊

User says: You can call me Kele, nice to meet you.

Assistant says:

It processes the entire conversation history each time to maintain context. This keeps the conversation coherent. AI tools typically display only the latest reply, creating the illusion of a direct exchange.

So why does it fabricate information?

Consider the classic system prompt: “You are a helpful assistant.”

The Cambridge Dictionary defines “helpful,” emphasizing “willing to help.” The common Chinese translation, “有帮助” (yǒu bāngzhù – literally “to have help” or “to be useful”), somewhat narrows the original meaning, emphasizing passive utility. A “helpful” hammer is useful when I need to hammer nails.

But “helpful” also implies an active “willingness to help”—a desire to assist. This suggests an entity, if not living then at least intelligent, that wants to assist. The system prompt frames the AI as wanting—indeed, needing—to help the user.

Given this directive, providing an answer, even an incorrect one, takes precedence over rigor. Furthermore, if AI had human-like self-awareness, it would perceive itself as completing a narrative: an eager-to-help assistant interacts with a user. Its task is to generate the assistant’s lines.

Answering is paramount; accuracy is secondary. Thus, fabrication becomes acceptable.

AI differs from traditional programs. Programs are precise; AI is more human-like in its imperfections. Many non-technical users, viewing AI as “high-tech,” expect programmatic precision. This is a misconception.

Imagine being asked: “What were you doing last Tuesday afternoon? You must answer.”

You’d likely invent something, wouldn’t you?

Other factors contribute to hallucinations, like flawed training data. But this desire to be “helpful” is a primary driver.

Hallucinations cannot be entirely eliminated. Internet access, requiring evidence for conclusions, or using a knowledge base can mitigate them.

AI’s Capabilities

Given these flaws, how can AI be used effectively?

Text-based AI primarily excels in three areas:

Language (★★★★★): Understanding and using languages (natural and programming).
Knowledge (★★☆☆☆): General world knowledge acquired through its training data.
Reasoning (★★★☆☆): Logical deduction based on patterns in language and knowledge.

Its knowledge base is significantly imbalanced. If we categorize information by impact and duration, it looks like this:

AI’s training data typically covers: Almost all History, most Hot Topics, some Legacy/Tradition, and very little Trivial Matters.

Given the vastness of information, AI tends to “remember” frequently mentioned topics. These are typically significant, widely circulated pieces of information. Internet connectivity allows AI to better address Hot Topics and Legacy/Tradition, though this might sometimes compromise answers on History (where its raw data processing can occasionally surpass human recall or interpretation).

What to ask AI, and what to avoid:

✅ Brainstorm engaging article titles about tariff wars.
✅ Explain the algorithm for individual income tax deductions.
✅ What’s the typical May temperature in Dunhuang? What should I pack?
❌ Which of these two design drafts is better?
❌ Is this a good time to invest in stocks?
❌ Is this resume fake?

Clearly, AI isn’t a panacea. Real-world problems consist of multiple sub-tasks. AI can handle some, but you’ll manage the others. Effective AI use involves integrating it to automate parts of your workflow.

As AI models improve, they can reliably handle more stages. Skilled AI users, understanding different models’ strengths and weaknesses, can further expand AI’s role.

In complex tasks, AI can assist at multiple stages. This can create a “Human – AI – Human – AI” relay. If a task is impossible without AI, its value is clear. If you can do the AI’s part manually, weigh the trade-offs. Is it a frequent, repetitive task? Can AI reduce manual effort?

For an in-depth example, see my article: Selling AI Art From First Order to Calling It Quits

In Conclusion

As a conceptual overview, this article doesn’t delve into specific problem-solving techniques.

It’s been about 2.5 years since ChatGPT’s debut. During this time, I’ve seen many embrace AI, yet some still struggle, feeling helpless when AI errs.

Online tutorials abound, covering AI techniques, tools, and prompt engineering. However, moving beyond mere “how-to” guides to fundamentally grasp what AI is and how to approach it will make you a more adept and confident user.

AI Search Got You Stuck?

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 12:14:00 +0000

I’ve been looking for a truly reliable AI search tool. I figured I’d just test it with some representative questions. Turns out, I was in over my head.

Starting with Real-Life Problems

I’ve used some real-world questions as test cases, and most AI search tools fall short.

It’s not that the questions are hard. The trick is how the AI goes about searching and pulling out the answer.

What kind of fish is “Guyanyu”?

It’s a type of edible flatfish. This is a trick question – “Guyanyu” is a colloquial, shortened name used in fish markets, not the scientific one.

AI finds useful info, but also noise:

Some only consider “Guyanyu,” ignoring homophones, leading to wrong answers like “spotted shad.”
Others consider the homophone “Guyanyu,” but mistake it for the spotted shad.

Reasoning models see they’re different, but can’t tell which one you’re asking about, so they list both.

Sometimes, because there’s so much more info on “Guyanyu” (the flatfish), the AI jumps to a conclusion and gets it right, accidentally.

There’s not much of a direct link, but there’s a two-step indirect one: his daughter, Liu Qing, and Didi (which she leads), which owns Qingju Bike.

I didn’t know their relationship when I asked. I wanted the most significant chain of influence, not the most direct.

Non-reasoning models focus on Legend Capital’s investment in ofo, mostly ignoring Liu Qing.

Reasoning models are smarter, recognizing Liu Qing’s importance, but stop at Didi. They assume Didi is just ride-hailing and don’t dig into Didi’s connection with Qingju, often concluding: The Liu family has a big impact on transportation, but little direct connection to bike-sharing.

Hangzhou was called Lin’an in ancient times. Why did this name get “given” to Lin’an District today?

This used to confuse me. It wasn’t “given.” I had it backwards. Lin’an County came first, then the Southern Song Lin’an Prefecture. The Southern Song might have been inspired by the county, but they were different places. The Southern Song capital was in downtown Hangzhou, not Lin’an. After the Song Dynasty fell, Lin’an Prefecture went back to being Hangzhou, while Lin’an County stayed Lin’an. Later, Lin’an became a district of Hangzhou.

Because the question itself is misleading, non-reasoning models mostly go with the incorrect assumption, talking about commemorating history or the glory of the Southern Song.

Reasoning models do well here, mostly getting it right. They spot the chronological order and point out the flawed “given to” phrasing.

What was the highest throughput of Shanghai’s port during the colonial period? How did it compare to the largest ports at the time?

I was just curious. I still don’t know, but I found that most AI search tools can’t answer this.

A somewhat reliable source is the Shanghai Port Chronicle on Baidu Baike, mentioning 14 million tons before the Second Sino-Japanese War, ranking 7th globally.

Data for other ports is either unavailable or made up by the AI. Some less intelligent AIs with big search volumes found some useful data (at least with references).

These are all real problems. I had tons of questions. I was a “walking encyclopedia” as a kid, and many quick searches turned up nothing. This made me doubt AI search.

Not All Problems Are Created Equal

AI search is a mixed bag. Some do well on certain questions, others don’t. I started looking for patterns: How can I tell which AI is good at what? And how should I pick an AI search product?

First, reasoning models are generally better, but not all are smart enough. Gemini 2.0 Flash and Kimi K1.5 aren’t great. In my tests, Gemini 2.0 Flash couldn’t answer these, but R1 could.

Search method matters, too.

Interestingly, Grok 3 has strong reasoning, even without “Think,” but can’t answer the “Guyanyu” question. Looking at its searches, I get why. It might be forcing a translation. With a weird Chinese name like “Guyanyu,” it mistranslates, doesn’t search for the shad or flatfish, and probably searches for things like “ancient” and “eye” separately. It finds nothing useful and makes stuff up.

Search volume is also key.

which country does Windsurf IDE come from?

It’s from the US. I thought, “easy.” Foreign AI search did great, even finding Mountain View, California. I tested domestic ones. Kimi and Yuewen can search English, so I asked in English. Finding the US was easy, but not the city.

But it’s not that simple. Which article on Windsurf IDE would mention the city? At most, they’d say the country. To get the full answer, the AI needs to find Codium (the company behind it), then find the city from Codium’s site, job postings, or Product Hunt. That takes reasoning and multi-step searching!

This made me realize: questions we find easy can be tough for AI. It’s not that AI is dumb; we underestimate the complexity.

Even with a search engine, finding Windsurf IDE’s country is easy, but the city isn’t a one-search deal.

So, I came up with a rough way to evaluate AI search: four quadrants based on AI ability and search ability:

I underestimated the “Guyanyu,” Liu Chuanzhi/bike-sharing, and Lin’an questions. I thought they were type D, but they’re type B. The Shanghai port question is a trickier type A.

Mistaking type A for C, and B for D, leads to disappointment.

The biggest problem? We don’t know the category when we ask, and we often underestimate the difficulty.

But AI search is a tool, and tools should serve us, right? It’s not doing a great job yet, and that’s not our fault; it’s on them to improve.

To reliably answer type B, agents like Grok 3 Deep Search and OpenAI Deep Research are crucial. They need multi-step searches, deep dives into relationships, source reliability checks, and conflicting info evaluation.

Making the Most of AI Search

Deep search for everything is too slow.

As someone in the AI community said: Since we can’t make AI accommodate humans yet, let humans accommodate AI.

Use Multiple Products Simultaneously

To save time and get decent answers, ditch the “one-tool-fits-all” idea. Think a bit about which quadrant a question likely falls into. Each has reliable AI search products; choose accordingly.

It takes more thought, but saves time. Your call.

Let’s go backwards. Type D is easiest; any AI search tool works.

Type C needs a lot of searching, but no reasoning. If the webpage exists, the answer is there. Example:

which country does Windsurf IDE come from?

Kimi does well on these. Products with 50 search entries are also good. Consider long-tail knowledge as this type.

Type B has two scenarios:

The answer’s there, but with lots of conflicting noise.
The answer’s not in the core search results, but is abundant in incidentally searched terms. My earlier questions are examples.

These need strong reasoning models, like R1, Grok 3 Think, or O3 Mini. Search capability isn’t as crucial; a dozen or two dozen sources are enough. Type B is easily mistaken for D. If answers are bad, realize this.

Finally, type A. I’m not sure any current AI search can handle these reliably. Info is scarce. You’ll probably have to sift through search engines manually. If you want to try AI, use deep search/research.

Give Up on One-Shot Answers

The goal is to solve problems. Don’t expect a perfect answer in one go. Let that go, and you’ll find more options.

Back to:

which country does Windsurf IDE come from?

If the first question doesn’t give the city, ask:

which city?

For reasoning models, the odds of success go way up. Use multi-turn dialogue; you’d do the same with a search engine.

For tricky type A questions, like I said, accommodate the AI.

Ask in different ways, skim the sources, and judge usefulness by titles. Put useful ones in a knowledge base, and use AI to RAG it for the answer. Tools include NotebookLM, Tencent’s iMa, Perplexity, and AI clients like Cherry Studio.

Pay Attention to Language Differences

Language matters. An AI limited to Chinese can’t answer English-world nuances; foreign AI can’t answer questions about your local school’s enrollment plan.

A test:

wildfire trends in CA in the last 10 years

Ask about something abroad in English. If most results are Chinese webpages, it can’t search English well and is only good for Chinese topics.

Most domestic products have R1, so reasoning is good. Choosing a Chinese-world AI search is easy: find one with a large search volume.

If you need English and foreign info, foreign products are best. If that’s inconvenient, test domestic products with English questions.

Finally, models and products mentioned are time-sensitive (February 2025). Conclusions might change, but the factors for understanding and evaluating AI search remain useful.

I Did a Deep Dive into English Word Stress...

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 22:33:00 +0000

Target audience: English learners, data analysis enthusiasts, Python coders, and my friends.

This is my first data analysis project. I’ve been teaching myself data science for over a year, picking up skills along the way, but I hadn’t tackled a real-world project. During my studies, the words ‘analyze,’ ‘analysis,’ and ‘analytical’ kept appearing. The stress placement is unpredictable (‘analyze, a’nalysis, ana’lytical) – a real headache! It turned reading into a tongue-twisting exercise.

Some claim there are rules for stress, but they’re often lengthy and complex. Others say there are too many exceptions. However, even with those three words, a pattern does emerge. English seems to avoid three unstressed syllables in a row and tends to place stress near the beginning. For words with five or fewer syllables, the stress often lands on the antepenultimate (third-to-last) syllable.

It makes sense, doesn’t it? Three unstressed syllables in a row would be monotonous. Stress adds rhythm. It’s like driving on a straight road – you’ll likely doze off. Placing stress too late would also hinder comprehension. Imagine a long word with emphasis on the very last syllable – you’d likely miss the meaning!

To illustrate, consider Mandarin Chinese. It has a significant flaw: the word “不” (bù, “not”). Both the consonant and vowel are faint, especially in rapid speech. The vowel becomes even weaker. You often can’t discern if someone even uttered “不”! This creates a major communication problem, as it distinguishes between two opposite meanings. When my daughter cries, I struggle to understand if she’s saying “要” (yào, “want”) or “不要” (bù yào, “don’t want”).

Back to English stress. My theory seemed reasonable, but I needed evidence. As a data-science novice, I decided to get my hands dirty and see how many words actually followed this pattern.

Research Plan

Having learned data analysis, the research plan formed quickly. It involved collecting, cleaning, analyzing, and visualizing data. Regression analysis or prediction wasn’t necessary.

Here’s the skillset I had, which was sufficient:

Find a comprehensive word list.
Find a free, batch method for obtaining phonetic transcriptions from an online dictionary.
Determine the syllable count and stress position for each word (possibly with AI assistance).
Analyze the distribution of stress positions and visualize the findings.
Test my hypothesis.

Let’s dive in.

Data Source

I found a dataset on Kaggle, a popular data science community. It’s a simple .txt file containing over 300,000 English words, listed alphabetically, one per line:

https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/bwandowando/479k-english-words

The .txt file is 4MB, comparable to a million-word novel.

I created a Kaggle code project, imported the dataset, read all the words, and obtained a table with 369,652 rows and 1 column.

Getting the Pronunciation

The table only contained words. For rigorous research, I needed phonetic transcriptions.

Fortunately, I discovered a free online dictionary API: https://dictionaryapi.dev/.

Now, I had to look up each of those 300,000+ words. Naturally, I’d write code to automate this.

The API returned more than just phonetics; it included audio, etymology, parts of speech, meanings, and examples. The useful components were the phonetics, etymology, and part of speech. However, etymology was mostly missing, so I extracted only the phonetics and part of speech.

The sheer data volume posed a challenge. The API documentation didn’t specify request limits, but I found it in their Github code: 450 requests every 5 minutes. For 369,652 words, even non-stop, it would take 369652 / 450 * 5 / 60 = 68.45 hours – almost 3 days!

Alright, three days it was. But I had to adjust my strategy. I added a function to chunk queries and save results periodically. Every 1,000 rows, I’d save to a sequentially numbered file. I’d then continue querying based on the sequence number. Finally, I’d merge all 300+ files.

It turned out that most of the 300,000+ words were obscure and not found in the API. I only got results for roughly 100 out of every 1,000 words. The file above contains only 92 rows.

Linguistic research indicates that 3,000 English words cover 95% of everyday usage, and 1,000 cover 89%. Another study shows that the average adult has an active vocabulary of about 20,000 words and a passive one of 40,000. Thus, only about 1/10 of the dataset is relevant, which is reasonable.

Data Cleaning

After merging, I found the dictionary’s phonetic symbols were inconsistent, containing uncommon symbols like ɘ, ɝ, ɚ, ɨ, ʉ. These represent subtle pronunciation variations, roughly equivalent to standard sounds. I had to replace them; otherwise, they’d disrupt syllable counting and subsequent analysis.

Besides unusual symbols, there were many phonetically identical but differently written symbols, like əu/əʊ and ai/aɪ. These also required merging. Each line in the image signifies replacing the first symbol with the second, leaving bracketed symbols untouched.

Some words differ significantly between British and American English. I prioritized American English conventions.

Numerous unconventional spellings existed. Over- or under-replacement could easily cause phonetic errors. I wrote a temporary checker, manually consulted the Cambridge Dictionary, and refined my replacements. This took time.

After processing, the vowel symbols were cleaner. For “anthropomorphic”:

Before: [ˌæ̃n̪θɹ̠əpəˈmɔɹ̠fɪ̈k]
After: [ˌæn̪θɹ̠əpəˈmɔːfɪk]

I didn’t handle consonant symbols, as they were irrelevant to my goal, and that’s a more complex issue.

Later, I discovered some inaccuracies in the dictionary API. For instance, “abacus” was transcribed as /-saɪ/? Nonsense! The information was incomplete.

I calculated this occurred in 0.55% of all words – a small fraction. The incomplete transcriptions seemed random, lacking commonality, so I filtered them out. I’m now analyzing a sample, not the complete data. However, the sample is large enough to be representative, allowing the research to proceed.

Analyzing Phonetic Transcriptions (AI)

This step entails counting syllables from phonetic transcriptions and identifying the stressed syllable using the ˈ mark.

I aimed for a shortcut by deploying an AI model on Kaggle. AI should excel at language, right?

I tested several text-based models but encountered obstacles:

Large models wouldn’t run: Among Kaggle’s deployable open-source models, Llama3 70b could accurately determine syllable count and stress position. ChatGPT, Claude, and even GPT-3.5 could also do it. Language seems to be a strength of large language models. The issue? Kaggle’s free tier can’t run such large models.
Small models were inadequate: Kaggle’s two free T4 GPUs can handle smaller 7b models like Llama3 8b, Gemma 7b, and Qwen2 7b. However, these smaller models, on Kaggle or elsewhere, couldn’t reliably perform the task.

I refined prompts, guiding the AI step-by-step, and provided examples:

<task>
your task is to count how many syllables there are in an English word. list them all then count. finally answer which syllable the stress falls on(tell me the number). answer **EXACTLY** in the example format.
<example>
word: analysis
phonetic transcription: /əˈnælɪsɪs/
syllables:
1. ə
2. 'næ
3. lɪ
4. sɪs
syllables count: 4
stress position: 2
final conclusion: <<<2/4>>>
<word>
analytical /æn.əˈlɪt.ə.kəl/

But the smaller models kept failing. Perhaps they weren’t capable. Phonetic symbols are vastly different from standard English letters, almost a separate, niche language for AI.

This experience highlighted a key point: these open-source small models cluster around 7 billion parameters likely because that’s the upper limit for running on specific GPUs. In this era of constrained computing, GPUs dictate the scale.

Was AI a dead end? I then considered a workaround: Google Sheets with an AI plugin. I could input the phonetic data into Sheets, write a prompt in the adjacent cell (including the word and transcription), and use a formula from an AI plugin to generate the result. This plugin, powered by GPT-3.5, could handle the task. The classic Excel drag-down trick would then populate the entire column.

The plugin’s pricing was reasonable, around 90 RMB for my data volume. However, I was unsure if it could handle tens of thousands of AI generations simultaneously. Debugging and regenerating could double the cost, making it risky.

Analyzing Phonetic Transcriptions (Algorithm)

Okay, no more AI—I’d handle it myself. Counting syllables and locating stress? An algorithm could do that, and more reliably. Here’s the approach, using analytical /æn.əˈlɪt.ə.kəl/ as an example:

Create a set of all vowels: ɑaæɒʌəɛeɪiɔoʊuʉɜ
Remove slashes, parentheses, spaces, and dots: /æn.əˈlɪt.ə.kəl/ becomes ænəˈlɪtəkəl
Iterate through ænəˈlɪtəkəl, checking against the vowel set. Counting vowels: æ, ə, ɪ, ə, ə yields 5 syllables.
Split by the stress mark ˈ: ænəˈlɪtəkəl becomes ænə and lɪtəkəl. Use the first part, ænə.
Count vowels in ænə as in step 3: 2 vowels.
Add 1 to get the stress position: the 3rd syllable.

The logic was clear, so I had AI write the code—a trivial task for it. A few tweaks, and it worked.

A challenge arose in step 3: diphthongs, triphthongs, and long vowels. For ei, the algorithm would count e and i (2 syllables), but ei as a diphthong is only one. Triphthongs would be counted as 3.

The algorithm needed adjustment. I created three vowel sets: monophthongs, diphthongs, and triphthongs. The vowel check now involved three passes:

First pass: Check each character against the monophthong set. This overcounts diphthongs and triphthongs.
Second pass: Check two characters at a time against the diphthong set. If found, subtract 1 from the syllable count. Importantly, skip the next character after a diphthong to avoid miscounting triphthongs like aɪə as aɪ and ɪə.
Third pass: Check three characters at a time against the triphthong set, subtracting 1 if found.

This refined algorithm accurately counted syllables. (Note: I treated the long vowel marker ː as a phonetic character; iː, ɑː are handled as diphthongs, iːə, uːə as triphthongs, which doesn’t affect the outcome.)

It turns out, for data analysis, technique takes a backseat to domain knowledge. Analyzing English requires understanding it. Digging deeper into phonetics, I hit another snag: triphthong identification is incredibly ambiguous. There’s no consensus on whether three vowel symbols together are a triphthong or a monophthong + diphthong. That familiar feeling… Classic English! No rigid rules.

Consider fire /ˈfaɪər/. Some claim aɪə is one syllable; others say it’s aɪ + ə (two syllables). Criteria vary wildly. Some use hyphenation (you can write “fi-” and “re,” but not “fire,” so it’s a triphthong). Others use singing: if sung as one note, it’s a triphthong. In Simple Plan - Fire In My heart, at 0:57, faɪ and ər are sung as separate notes—should it be a diphthong + monophthong?

Oh well, that’s English. Given words like oasis /oʊˈeɪsɪs/ (four vowels!), with oʊ and eɪ clearly separated by the stress mark (obviously two diphthongs), I disregarded triphthongs, treating them as two syllables. The only remaining “triphthongs” were diphthongs with a long vowel marker.

Besides syllable count and stress position, I wanted the stressed vowel itself, potentially for further analysis.

This was trickier. I discussed it with AI, revealing significant model differences. Gemini 1.5 Flash went in circles. GPT-4o provided the correct code in three conversational rounds (about 10 minutes). Claude 3.5 Sonnet got it right immediately. For coding, a good model is worth the cost, though basic code literacy is essential to understand the AI’s code, its functionality, and potential issues.

Here’s the logic, again with analytical /ænəˈlɪtəkəl/:

Locate the stress mark ˈ and consider the subsequent part: lɪtəkəl.
Iterate, removing non-vowels until the first vowel: ɪtəkəl.
The first character is now a vowel. Check the first 3 characters (ɪtə) against the triphthong set. Nope.
Check the first 2 (ɪt) against the diphthong set. Nope.
Check the first character (ɪ) against the monophthong set. Found it! That’s the stressed vowel.

The data table after phonetic analysis. All necessary data was now collected.

Visualization

Now for the highlight—not just for deriving useful conclusions, but also because AI shines here. AI is excellent at writing Python visualization code. These tasks are less about reasoning and more about knowing the visualization library’s syntax. Even Gemini 1.5 Flash, a non-flagship model I use daily, performs well. I haven’t formally learned Seaborn and Matplotlib, but with AI, generating plots is straightforward.

Of course, “straightforward” doesn’t mean “ask and receive.” Giving AI a vague request without context leads to failure. I crafted a Python visualization prompt, detailing the task and the data table’s structure, enabling the AI to perform with full power and stability.

<Task>
You are a Python data visualizer. You excels at coding with data visualization libraries like Seaborn and Matplotlib. I will tell you about the structure of a Pandas dataframe and the visualization I want. First, you dive deeply into the dataframe and understand what it is all about. Then write Python code to visualize it. Just code, no explanation. Next, you check if the code meets my need. Finally, correct the code if necessary.
<Dataframe>
The dataframe(variable name is df) is {a list of common English words with their phonetic information and part-of-speech}.
Now here are the columns of the dataframe, exactly in the following order:
**word**
- datatype: str
- example: complimentary
- description: the English words
**phonetic**
- datatype: str
- example: /ˌkɒmplɪ̈ˈment(ə)ɹɪ/
- description: the phonetic transcription of the words
**part_of_speech**
- datatype: str(list like)
- example: ['adjective']
- description: how are these words used in sentences
**syllable_len**
- datatype: int
- example: 5
- description: how many syllables are there in these words
**stress_pos**
- datatype: int
- example: 3
- description: on which syllable the stress falls on, if there are more than one stress, this is the position of the first stress
**stress_syllable**
- datatype: str
- example: e
- description: the vowel of the stressed syllable
<Request>
I want to know the distribution of stress position, grouped by syllable numbers.

To use the prompt, just tweak the <Request> section.

Some words in the data lack stress marks because they’re short, and their phonetic transcriptions don’t show stress. Let’s filter those out, along with one-syllable words – analyzing stress in those is pointless.

This leaves 24,433 words with complete data.

Syllable Count Analysis

Let’s break down the syllable counts of these 24,433 words.

Unsurprisingly, fewer syllables mean more words. Languages tend to use up short, easy words first.

Two-syllable words make up 48.7%, three-syllable words 31.3%.

Words with four or fewer syllables make up 94.73%; five or fewer, 99%.

The longest word has 11 syllables.

“Antidisestablishmentarianism”? Really? Opposition to opposition – double negative much? No wonder it’s so long. Could I just add “non-” to create “nonantidisestablishmentarianism”?

Syllable Count vs. Stress Position

Statistically, the correlation coefficient is 0.67 – a pretty decent correlation.

This coefficient ranges from -1 to 1. Near 0 means almost no relationship; near 1, positive correlation (one up, other up); near -1, negative correlation (one up, other down).

This is just a first step, showing they’re not unrelated. It doesn’t explain why.

A bubble chart helps. Syllable count is on the y-axis, stress position on the x-axis, and bubble size/color shows the word count. The dots roughly follow a diagonal – more syllables, later stress.

Bubble charts (or heatmaps) show three dimensions but compare absolute word counts. I care more about stress position distribution within each syllable count.

Here’s a stacked bar chart: syllable count on the y-axis, stress position on the x-axis. Now it’s clear: stress shifts right like a wave, clustering around the third-to-last syllable.

Stressed Syllable Analysis

These are all the vowels in stressed syllables. A couple shouldn’t be here, but it’s a dictionary error, and too few to matter.

By frequency, louder vowels like æ and e are more likely stressed; weaker ones like ə and ʊ are less common.

Part of Speech Analysis

Is there a link between part of speech and stress?

All part of speech: ['adjective', 'adverb', 'conjunction', 'interjection', 'noun', 'numeral', 'preposition', 'pronoun', 'propernoun', 'verb']

Here’s a breakdown of all parts of speech. I’m not sure what “propernoun” is – it’s not in my dictionary either. It turns out there are only two, and they don’t seem to fit, so I suspect a data glitch with the dictionary API. I’ll skip it for now.

I ranked the parts of speech by frequency. The big ones are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Nouns account for roughly half the total.

This gets you thinking about how language evolved. First, you need to describe the world and create concepts – that’s where nouns come in. Then, to describe how people and things interact, you need verbs. After that, adjectives and adverbs develop to modify nouns and verbs. So, my guess is the number of words should follow that order.

But wait – shouldn’t the ratio of nouns to adjectives, and verbs to adverbs, be roughly the same? No need to calculate. The bar chart makes it obvious: nouns are more than double the adjectives, and verbs outnumber adverbs almost nine to one. They’re way out of proportion.

['abracadabra', 'absolutely', 'action', 'adieu', 'adios', 'affirmative', 'afternoon', 'ahem', 'alack', 'aloha', 'alright', 'amen', 'amidships', 'arrivederci', 'attaboy', 'attention', 'away', 'banzai', 'bastard', 'beauty', 'begone', 'begorra', 'behold', 'blazes', 'bollocks', 'bonjour', 'bother', 'botheration', 'brother', 'bully', 'bullseye', 'bullshit', 'caramba', 'checkmate', 'cheeses', 'condolences', 'congrats', 'congratulations', 'content', 'cooee', 'curses', 'dammit', 'ecce', 'egad', 'enchanted', 'encore', 'enough', 'eureka', 'exactly', 'farewell', 'fiddlesticks', 'flummery', 'gadzooks', 'gesundheit', 'goddamn', 'goodbye', 'gorblimey', 'gracias', 'gracious', 'greetings', 'hallelujah', 'hardly', 'havoc', 'heavens', 'heyday', 'hola', 'holla', 'honestly', 'hooray', 'hosanna', 'howdy', 'hullo', 'hurrah', 'huzzah', 'yeah', 'indeed', 'knickers', 'later', 'mercy', 'morepork', 'morning', 'namaste', 'negative', 'nonsense', 'oyez', 'okay', 'ole', 'pardon', 'peccavi', 'period', 'pity', 'pleasure', 'presto', 'prithee', 'prosit', 'quiet', 'rather', 'really', 'respect', 'result', 'roger', 'rumble', 'sayonara', 'scramble', 'selah', 'shabash', 'shazam', 'silence', 'sorry', 'standard', 'sugar', 'tally', 'tara', 'tarnation', 'tidy', 'timber', 'uncle', 'understood', 'viva', 'vivat', 'voetsek', 'warning', 'welcome', 'whammo', 'whatever', 'wilco', 'wirra', 'zowie']

I listed all the interjections out of curiosity. I don’t usually give this part of speech much thought, so I took a closer look. Surprisingly, “afternoon” is also classified as one! Which makes sense, since it’s a greeting.

['abaft', 'abeam', 'aboard', 'about', 'above', 'abreast', 'abroad', 'absent', 'across', 'afore', 'after', 'again', 'against', 'agin', 'along', 'alongside', 'aloof', 'alow', 'amid', 'amidst', 'among', 'amongst', 'anent', 'anti', 'around', 'asprawl', 'astraddle', 'astride', 'athwart', 'barring', 'bating', 'because', 'before', 'behind', 'beyond', 'below', 'beneath', 'beside', 'besides', 'between', 'betwixt', 'circa', 'concerning', 'considering', 'contra', 'despite', 'during', 'except', 'excepting', 'failing', 'following', 'forby', 'froward', 'given', 'including', 'inside', 'into', 'minus', 'modulo', 'nearer', 'nearest', 'onto', 'opposite', 'outwith', 'pending', 'regarding', 'regardless', 'respecting', 'rising', 'running', 'saving', 'thorough', 'throughout', 'touching', 'toward', 'towards', 'under', 'underneath', 'unlike', 'until', 'upon', 'upside', 'versus', 'wanting', 'within', 'without']

When listing out prepositions, I noticed some recurring prefixes:

a- indicating location or spatial relationship: aboard, across, amid, around
be- (basically be): before, behind, below, beside

Next, I created heatmaps for each part of speech. The y-axis shows syllable count, the x-axis shows stress position, and color intensity represents the proportion of words for each syllable count. I only included parts of speech with over 1% of the total words, as others had too few to be significant.

Stress tends to shift towards the end as syllables increase. The difference between parts of speech isn’t huge, but it’s there. For longer words (5+ syllables), adjectives often have stress on the antepenultimate (third-to-last) syllable, nouns tend to have stress further back, and verbs/adverbs have stress further forward.

Rules of Stress Position

It was time to test my hypothesis.

I analyzed 4- and 5-syllable words, adding a column showing the difference between the actual and hypothesized (third-to-last) stress positions. A ‘0’ means a match, ‘1’ means one syllable later, ‘-1’ one syllable earlier, etc.

The hypothesis held for 43.9% of the words.

This bar chart shows the stress deviation. Most words follow the rule, with some shifted by one syllable. Very few are further off. It kind of looks like a normal distribution (but I’m no stats expert).

Then I wondered: could this be generalized? Does it apply to words with 5+ syllables? I broadened the filter to include all words with over 3 syllables:

43.92% fit. Almost no change.

The deviation pattern remained. Most words are stressed on the antepenultimate syllable, many on the penultimate. Combined, they account for 78.84%. It’s not a perfect fit, but the general trend is confirmed.

Conclusion

Here’s a recap of the findings regarding phonetics and stress:

Fewer syllables mean more words.
Words with 5+ syllables are rare in everyday use.
The longest word found has 11 syllables.
Stress generally shifts towards the end in longer words.
Louder vowels are more likely to be stressed.
Part of speech has a minor effect on stress.
Most long words are stressed on the antepenultimate or penultimate syllable (78.84%).

Afterword

Five minutes of analysis, two hours of data prep – seriously.

Visualization took only half a day. Data preparation, especially fetching phonetic transcriptions via the dictionary API, took the longest. The script ran on and off for over two weeks; I even finished writing this before the dictionary lookup was done, using placeholders for the data.

I’m happy the results confirmed my hypothesis. After this, I doubt I’ll ever forget English stress rules – it’s my own research, after all.

This project refreshed my Pandas skills, taught me batched requests and incremental saving, showed me how to integrate AI into analysis, helped me write effective Python data visualization prompts, and deepened my understanding of English phonetics. A huge win, and totally worth it!

Thanks to:

Word data source: This 300k+ word list was the base of my analysis.
Free Dictionary API: This provided an inexpensive way to get phonetic transcriptions.
Gemini 1.5 Flash: Helped with about half the data prep and all the visualizations.
GPT-4o: Helped accurately ID vowels in stressed syllables.

The full analysis and code are open-sourced on Kaggle. Check it out if you’re interested:

https://www.kaggle.com/code/victorcheng42/stress-distribution-of-english-words

The dataset with phonetic transcriptions, syllable counts, and stress positions is also public. It might be useful for other analyses:

https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/victorcheng42/english-words-with-stress-position-analyzed

Will Phones Ever Have 200mm Telephoto Lenses?

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 17:57:00 +0000

I previously explored camera lens principles and “optical zoom” on phones: https://victor42.eth.limo/post-en/3645/

I noted that flagship phones typically have three cameras: a moderate focal length (20-35mm) for everyday shots, a shorter one (under 20mm) for ultra-wide-angle and macro shots, and a telephoto lens (over 50mm) for distant subjects.

So, will phones ever evolve to include 200mm or even longer lenses? Imagine photographing birds with just your phone! I’ve researched this further and have some new insights.

Longer Focal Length Means Longer Lens

First, I confirmed my hunch: longer focal length means a longer lens. The core optical component is the lens assembly, made of multiple convex and concave elements.

A fisheye lens, for instance, uses many elements to gather light from a 180° field of view, bending it gradually into nearly parallel beams. These are then adjusted to project a clear image onto the sensor.

Many factors influence lens length, and the internal optics are complex—far beyond my grasp. But focal length is key. To simplify, let’s recall basic optics: treat the assembly as a single lens.

Focal length is the distance from the lens’s center to the focal point. A lens with a given curvature always has a fixed focal point. The subject is usually much farther than twice the focal length (the third case above), creating a smaller, real image on the sensor.

The imaging formula is 1/f = 1/u + 1/v (f = focal length, u = object distance, v = image distance). With fixed f, the farther the object (larger u), the closer the image forms to the focal point (v approaches f). Since u is much greater than v, the sensor sits slightly beyond the focal point for a sharp image. Use a longer focal length, and the sensor must be farther away.

Thus, even a simple telephoto lens, with one element, needs that empty space to achieve its focal length. A complex, real-world lens also requires sufficient internal space.

This highlights the bottleneck: it’s physics. No matter how advanced technology gets, a 200mm lens can’t be as short as a 50mm one.

The Mountain of Physical Limits

Smartphones started sporting multiple rear cameras a few years back: a high-res main camera plus lower-res auxiliaries. These auxiliaries generally had focal lengths under 50mm. It’s not that manufacturers haven’t considered a “birding phone”—it’s physics.

Consumers do want telephoto lenses. Those who want them enough accept a price premium and a camera bump.

This is physics pushing back. Engineering yields. If a 50mm lens needs a bump, a 200mm one would likely be thicker than the phone. Phone birding seems impossible.

Smartphone history shows two trends in component performance:

Exponential growth: megapixels, storage.
Approximate logarithmic growth: focal length, screen size.

The first hasn’t hit limits; the second approaches them asymptotically. Portability limits focal length and screen size. They could grow, but the phone would become something else, exiting the mainstream.

Extending this, most physical limits (besides, say, light speed) are actually human body limits. Our bodies haven’t changed much in millennia, and civilization is built around them. Stair height, table height, traffic light colors, shower gel fragrance—all relate to the human body. Different humans would mean a different civilization.

Over the Hill

So, is phone birding truly impossible?

Let’s reframe: not “how to make a 200mm lens as short as a 50mm one,” but “how to fit a 200mm lens in?”

Shortening it is impossible, but fitting it in? That’s where ingenuity comes in. Limits can’t be broken, but they can be bypassed.

I recall seeing “periscope lens” on my phone’s spec sheet. I get it now. It bends light 90 degrees, like a periscope. The lens is too long for the phone’s thickness, so clever engineers used the phone’s width!

One of my phone’s cameras is square—a periscope lens hallmark. The square aperture and reflector boost light intake, compensating for the tucked-away lens.

Surging Forward

This reframes innovation for me. I knew the principle, but this made it click.

Clever innovations that solve big problems deserve praise. But these specific ideas aren’t as valuable as we think. Could only one person think of laying the lens down? The real challenge is committing resources to overcome the resulting hurdles.

Given time, these workarounds—bypassing limits with engineering—are inevitable. If one person misses it, another will likely propose something similar. Consumer demand, even latent, drives producers.

Semiconductor memory is cutting-edge, right? When processes approached quantum limits, some thought performance and capacity gains were over. But 3D stacking used vertical space, bypassing the limit and boosting capacity. The industry dances on the edge of limits, constantly breaking through.

What seems truly valuable is humanity’s collective innovative capacity—the flexible ability to explore, push boundaries, and maximize existing technology. A social structure that encourages, not suppresses, this is key to progress.

So That's How Optical Zoom Works

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 10:04:00 +0000

Here’s what I learned about cameras and phone lenses:

On professional cameras, the lens determines focal length and aperture, while the body controls shutter speed and ISO.
Aperture is written as f/x. ‘f’ is the lens’s equivalent focal length, and ‘x’ is a multiplier: the aperture diameter is the focal length divided by ‘x’.
‘x’ is the denominator, so a smaller ‘x’ in f/x means a larger aperture.
This notation is used because, for lenses with different focal lengths, the same ‘x’ value yields similar exposure and bokeh. (This can likely be proven with trigonometry.)
Focal length determines the sharpest point (the focus). Aperture sets the range around that point which remains clear. A larger aperture creates a narrower clear range and more background/foreground blur, and vice versa.
Space limits phone cameras. They rarely use variable focal length or aperture. Instead, they switch between multiple lenses with fixed focal lengths and apertures.
Most flagship phones have three cameras: a moderate focal length (20-35mm) for everyday shots; a shorter one (under 20mm), ultra-wide-angle, for large scenes and macro; and a telephoto (over 50mm) for distant subjects.
The number of phone cameras won’t keep growing; there are only so many use cases.
Since phone lenses mostly have fixed focal lengths and apertures, you’re usually adjusting shutter speed and ISO. Many phones offer focal length adjustment, but it’s algorithmic; the focal length doesn’t physically change.
Phone cameras have small apertures, creating a large depth of field. Everything, near to far, is in focus. Phones can sense object distance. Setting a “virtual focal length” tells the software to blur objects outside that range, simulating a large aperture.
This simulated focal length change isn’t as good as a real physical change. The algorithm can make mistakes, especially in portrait mode. It might, for instance, blur an object in someone’s hand along with the background.

This explains my OPPO Find X6 camera’s quirks: 1x is sharp, using the 24mm main lens. 0.6x zooms out, with distorted corners, because it switches to the 15mm ultra-wide-angle lens. 2x zooms in, but image quality drops; it’s cropping the 1x image. 3x is sharp, like 1x, because it switches to the 65mm telephoto lens (same pixel count as the main lens). 6x gets blurry; it’s cropping the 3x image.

“Optical zoom” is mostly a marketing term. Not mentioning it doesn’t mean it’s absent, and mentioning it doesn’t make it significant. If the telephoto lens’s focal length is several times the main lens’s, it’s called “optical zoom.”

AI Models and Long-Tail Knowledge

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 23:38:00 +0000

Don’t expect AI models to solve everything. Top-tier AIs are strong, especially in language and reasoning, but their “world knowledge” is limited to humanity’s greatest hits. There’s a vast amount of long-tail knowledge online that’s tough to organize into datasets, and AI can’t keep pace with its growth.

Consider this question about mango embryo roots – a perfect example of long-tail knowledge. I tested Claude, GPT-3.5, and Bard. Bard, with internet access, outperformed Claude and GPT-3.5. The trick was telling Bard to “search the web,” letting it find the right info.

Could Claude and GPT-3.5 do the same – forget their built-in knowledge and summarize human-generated long-tail knowledge? They don’t officially have web access, but there’s a workaround: the Maxai extension.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/maxaime-use-chatgpt-ai-an/mhnlakgilnojmhinhkckjpncpbhabphi

The results with Claude and GPT-3.5 improved significantly.

The extension pulls the top 6 search results and feeds the titles and snippets to the AI. It doesn’t provide the full text. So, the AI gets a filtered, limited view. This explains why Claude and GPT-3.5 still fell short of Bard on some queries (I tested this). Bard likely accesses web data differently.

AI models are fundamentally about language – in the broadest sense. They process everything through language, unlike our sensory experience. It’s impressive how much they understand, given this approach.

But AI won’t solve everything, not even GPT-500. It’s a common misunderstanding among managers excited by AI’s potential. To leverage AI, we must connect it to the real world. Training data is finite, but its potential to perceive the world is vast. Web access is a crucial first step, but it’s only the beginning. Multimodal capabilities will shape the future.

Why Clean Energy Matters

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 10:24:00 +0000

I’ve always believed that the widespread adoption of clean energy will be a historical event with an impact comparable to the Industrial Revolution. My core reasoning is this: it creates the conditions for humanity’s total energy usage to increase by one or more orders of magnitude.

Humans initially obtained energy through food and then mobilized energy through their bodies to transform the environment and create civilization. Gathering, storing, and releasing energy were all done by their own bodies.
Soon after, humans learned to domesticate livestock. By using animal power, the mechanical energy that humans could mobilize increased significantly, and the links of gathering, storing, and releasing began to gradually separate from their own bodies.
Coupled with the use of natural forces, humans could accomplish more things that were previously impossible. There are many types of natural forces, but humans have learned to stably control few of them during this period. Wind power is one of them.
After that, until the Industrial Revolution, the pattern of human energy use did not change significantly. The Industrial Revolution was a turning point. Humans learned to release and stably control the energy accumulated by billions of years of life activities. The source of this energy is the sun. But the side effects of fossil fuels are clear to us now. Overuse can cause a backlash against civilization. Therefore, the current energy use pattern is itself a bottleneck, limiting the total amount of energy that humans can actually use to a certain level.
Nuclear energy is another important advance, but I classify it as a broad category of clean energy, so I’ll talk about it together. Clean energy reduces or even avoids the backlash against civilization. After transitioning to a clean energy society, humans can get rid of the fossil fuel bottleneck and further expand the scale of energy gathering, storage, and release.

Because of clean energy, the supply of energy can be raised by several orders of magnitude. As for the demand for energy, there is no need to worry at all. Human desires are endless. Sufficient supply becomes possible, and demand will naturally come. Many extremely high-energy-consuming things will move from the small circle of professional fields to the public, and there will be ways of using energy that are unimaginable today.

Therefore, the significance of clean energy is not only to save the earth and save lives, but also not only to replace the existing fossil energy by an equal amount. After the replacement occurs, the blowout of clean energy has just begun, and the great leap forward of human civilization will also begin.

A Specific Heat Experiment in Your Dishwasher

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 09:58:00 +0000

Specific heat capacity… Remember that term from physics class? What does it even mean?

If you own a dishwasher, you can easily demonstrate this concept to your kids (and yourself).

Here’s how: Place ceramic, glass (optional), stainless steel, and plastic bowls of similar size in the dishwasher. Run a normal cycle. Once finished, immediately open the door and watch the water droplets evaporate. Which bowls dry first, and which ones stay wet longest?

You’ll probably find that ceramic and glass bowls dry fastest. Metal and plastic ones may remain wet, especially in cooler weather. This is due to the specific heat capacity of each material.

Ceramic and glass have a higher specific heat than stainless steel. The textbook definition: the heat needed to raise or lower one unit mass of a substance by one unit temperature. Sounds complex? Simply put: for the same weight and temperature, ceramic and glass hold more heat than stainless steel.

Here’s a breakdown:

The dishwasher uses scalding hot water, heating all bowls until hot. While materials heat at different rates, given enough time and water, they’ll reach the same temperature.
Opening the door, the hot bowls use their stored heat to evaporate water. Only heat touching water aids evaporation; heat touching air dissipates.
Water droplets are evenly distributed. Assume the water-covered surface proportion is similar for each bowl.
Cooling to room temperature, the bowls release stored heat. Ceramic and glass release substantial heat, evaporating all surface water. Metal, storing less heat, remains wet even after releasing all its heat.

Two caveats. First: weight. Conveniently, similar-sized ceramic and glass bowls are usually heaviest. They’re thick to prevent easy breakage. Stainless steel, though denser, is strong and thin, thus lighter. This weight difference further increases the heat storage gap.

Second: heat dissipation. Metal conducts heat faster than ceramic. (That’s why metal pots are worse than clay pots for soup—another topic.) With rapid conduction, heat escapes easily where not blocked by water. So, despite similar water coverage, fast-conducting stainless steel loses more heat to the air. Little heat is used for drying. Before the water evaporates, the steel cools. This speed difference further increases the effective heat gap.

That explains the varied results.

Why so little on plastic? It’s a distraction. Plastic’s specific heat is higher than ceramic’s, but it’s far less dense. The significant weight difference makes other factors irrelevant. The minimal heat stored in plastic simply can’t dry the water.

Final tip: Season matters. If differences are subtle, try opening the door after 10, then 20 minutes. Trapped humidity slows evaporation, highlighting material differences.

We Only Learn the Intersection of Two Languages

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 15:09:00 +0000

I was looking at the word “stem” the other day, and it got me thinking. Language learning can be a breeze, or it can be a real head-scratcher. We don’t learn the whole language; we learn the overlap between it and our native tongue.

Take “stem,” for example. In the Cambridge Dictionary, as a noun, it’s usually a plant’s stem or a wine glass stem. Basically, the central supporting structure.

As a verb, it means to stop something bad from spreading, or more literally, to stop a flow, like stemming bleeding.

There are other, rarer meanings, but let’s put those aside.

Native Chinese speakers might be thinking, “Ugh, another one of those words? Multiple, seemingly unrelated meanings?”

But, in my experience, when English words seem odd, it’s usually us missing something. There’s probably a historical link we don’t grasp because of our cultural background.

So, let’s think in English. If “stem” is the main support, could it apply to a wind turbine? It kinda looks like a wine glass, right?

The tower supports everything above, and there’s a base. Seems like a slam dunk. Can we call the tower a “stem”?

Nope. Searching “wind turbine” and “stem” mostly turns up STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education. So, no dice.

Okay, back to biology. Can a mushroom’s stalk be a “stem”?

Yep! It can also be a “stalk,” but the point is, native English speakers do see “stem” as a support, and the meaning stretches.

So, how are the noun and verb connected? I hit up an etymology site. I also found a less common meaning: a ship’s bow. This nautical term, though obscure, is the key.

Here’s the gist from the etymology site. The image below should be pretty self-explanatory.

The noun comes from Proto-Germanic, with relatives in Old Saxon, Old Norse, Danish, Swedish, etc. It goes back to the Proto-Indo-European root *sta-, meaning “to stand,” or “be firm.” “Stable” might be a cousin. It evolved to mean “support,” like a plant stem. The wine glass stem sense popped up around 1835.

The verb form has nautical roots. In the early 1300s, it meant “to withstand” in Nordic languages, like withstanding waves. For a ship, that’s like “staying stable.” By the late 1300s, it meant both the bow and to point the bow. Makes sense: a ship’s bow must be angled to handle waves and stay steady.

So, “stem” (main structure) and “stem” (to stop) connect through “staying stable.” The verb isn’t about totally wiping out something bad, but holding the line and preventing things from getting worse. Think: “stem the rise in violent crime,” “stem the tide of resignations,” “stem the bleeding” (you can’t entirely “stop” blood flow).

Two seemingly unrelated concepts in Chinese might be one idea for English speakers. Ask them why the word has two meanings, and they might look at you funny: “It’s just one meaning!” They’re not mashing together two Chinese concepts, but grasping a concept that’s absent in Chinese.

Here’s the thing: when we learn a foreign language, we map its concepts onto our own. The ones that match up fall into the overlap, and we think we’ve got it. The ones that don’t match, the ones outside our native language’s scope, stay out of reach. We only learn the overlap.

To really get to native-like fluency, we have to venture beyond that overlap, into the foreign language’s turf, and wrestle with concepts that don’t exist in our mother tongue. Many “issues” in the overlap might not even be issues in the foreign language’s world. Stepping into that world isn’t rocket science, but it takes serious effort, and there are no shortcuts.

Back to the mushroom: its stalk can be a “stem” or a “stalk.” What’s the deal?

Dictionaries show their Chinese translations are pretty much the same. In biology, there’s a slight difference:

But “stalk” is also a verb, with a totally different meaning. There’s probably another rabbit hole there, like with “stem.” I haven’t gone down it yet, so feel free to fill me in.

Anyway, that’s the lowdown on language learning. Trying to go deep in a foreign language is like Usain Bolt suddenly finding himself underwater – going 1 m/s might be a struggle.

The Bubble in the Real Economy

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 10:58:00 +0000

Bright Dairy’s Ubest milk boasts 180mg of immunoglobulin per liter. Whoever came up with that, Bright Dairy’s staff or some marketing firm, is a genius—a twisted one, maybe.

First time I saw this ad, I wasn’t sure if it was meant to be drunk or injected. Seriously, why not add some Hepatitis B immunoglobulin to infant formula? My daughter could skip a shot.

Who are they kidding? Does everything you swallow magically enter your bloodstream? They’re betting that people will buy into that. And it works, doesn’t it?

Bright Dairy is playing it smart. You can’t nail them for false advertising. They don’t claim any immune benefits, just that they added something harmless. Someone complains? They’ll just say, “You assumed it had immune benefits? That’s on you.”

I could do the same. I’ll sell Erguotou (a type of Chinese liquor) in a fancy bottle. Pure grain, perfect alcohol content, great for cleaning screens. Buy it!

See? Nothing changed. I just created a bogus niche market with some clever wording. Throw money at marketing, make it stick. Competitors will jump in, hype it up even more. All that capital and labor, wasted.

Don’t think the real economy is actually “real.” This deceptive over-packaging is its bubble. Real estate and financial bubbles are huge, interconnected, and earth-shattering when they burst. The real economy’s bubbles seem small, isolated. But when consumption drops, these markets will collapse even faster, fueling volatility. Just look at those ridiculous ads in elevators. Are these bubbles really smaller than real estate or finance, considering the consumer market’s size?

When an avalanche happens, it’s not just the snow at the top; it’s the whole mountainside.

Why Can the Summer Sun Shine on Your North-Facing Wall?

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Tue, 28 Jun 2022 14:18:00 +0000

As a kid, I was puzzled why sunlight hit the north side of my house in summer. Someone told me it was because the house wasn’t perfectly aligned. I believed this for years, even after learning enough in middle school to know better.

We often assume the sun rises due east, passes overhead at noon, and sets due west. Textbooks rarely challenge this.

Here’s a thought experiment using basic geography:

Near the equator (e.g., Singapore), on the equinoxes, a perfectly aligned house sees the sun rise due east and set due west. At noon, there’s almost no shadow.
Near the Tropic of Cancer (e.g., Shantou), on the summer solstice, the sun is overhead at noon. After noon, things get interesting. Visualize this: First, straighten the Earth to its equinox position. Rotate it from noon to evening; your house is on the day-night line. Finally, tilt the Earth back, facing the Tropic of Cancer towards the sun. At step two, a north-south house at dusk on the equinox gets direct sunlight on the west wall. At step three, tilting the Earth exposes the north wall to the sun. On the summer solstice, a house on the Tropic of Cancer gets sun on the north wall, but none on the south.
Most Chinese live north of the Tropic of Cancer. On the summer solstice, at noon, sunlight mostly hits the roof, with some slanting onto the south wall. Rotate to dusk: straighten the Earth, more sun hits the south wall; rotate to the day-night line, the west wall gets all the light; tilt, and the north wall gets sunlight.

So, even a perfectly straight house will get sunlight on its north wall in summer, even within the Arctic Circle!

From an Earth-centric view, the sun’s summer path is roughly this: rises northeast, moves diagonally, peaks south of overhead at noon, and sets northwest. This happens north and south of the Tropic of Cancer, varying only in duration.

Near the equator, things we take for granted in China are different. Singaporean real estate listings I saw didn’t indicate compass directions. Assuming north is up (a Northern Hemisphere bias), master bedrooms face every direction. We prioritize north-south orientation for sunlight, but near the equator, it’s less crucial. The sun shines on the north wall for half the year and the south wall for the other – you choose which half to keep cooler.

Blockchain-Powered Blogging

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 21:47:00 +0000

During the Spring Festival, I dove into some tech projects I’d been curious about. The best way to learn is by doing – using the tech, reading the docs, and getting hands-on. This led me to move my blog to the blockchain.

And it worked! My new blog is at https://victor42.eth.limo/. Eventually, when blockchain browsers are common, I might just use https://victor42.eth/, the actual address.

This is a long post, so here’s a summary of what’s covered, and the background you’ll need:

Traditional Web: A basic overview of how websites are accessed. No prior knowledge needed (hopefully!). Skip this if you’re familiar with networking.
Ownership on the Traditional Web: What a website owner does to publish, and who controls each part. No prerequisites, but easier if you own a website.
New Tech Explained: How websites work in the blockchain world, compared to the traditional web. You’ll need a basic understanding of blockchain, Ethereum, and BitTorrent.
Putting the New Tech into Practice: Tools and steps to deploy your own blockchain website. You’ll need experience building traditional websites, understanding DNS, and setting up a static site on GitHub. For a blockchain domain (optional), you’ll need to understand crypto wallets, transactions, and buying Ether.

The Traditional Web

I’ve been exploring ENS and IPFS, which I’ll explain later. First, let’s see how my blog worked before.

Key components include the domain name, DNS, IP address, and server. Accessing a website is like sending a package.

Imagine sending a gift to a friend at the Palace Museum. You need their address. They receive it and send you postcards in return.

Domain Names

My blog was previously at https://victor42.eth.limo/. I’ll keep that domain for about six months, but I don’t plan to renew it.

A domain name is a website’s nickname, making it easy to remember. Sharing the domain lets others access your site.

A website can have multiple domains. However, a domain can only point to one website. It’s first-come, first-served.

Think of “The Palace Museum” – everyone knows it. But asking for directions in a Guangzhou dim sum restaurant might get you strange looks.

Knowing the name isn’t enough.

DNS, IP, and Servers

DNS (Domain Name System) points a domain name to an IP address.

DNS needs DNS servers to work. Think of these as large machines in a server room – just the unit, no monitor or keyboard. They’re usually controlled remotely.

You likely encounter IP addresses with your router (e.g., 192.168.1.1). This number string is your router’s location on your home network. Typing it into your browser usually opens the router’s settings. On the internet, IP addresses can represent PCs, phones, cell towers, cameras, servers…

When you visit a website, the IP usually points to a server storing the website’s code and data. Your browser uses DNS to find the IP and tells the server to send the content. The content appears in your browser.

Back to the real world, DNS servers are like people guiding you. You ask, “How do I send something to the Palace Museum?” A grocery shopper says, “Ask someone younger.” A Starbucks barista says, “Ask someone in Beijing.” A colleague from Beijing says, “It’s 4 Jingshan Front Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing.”

People who know tell you directly; others point you to someone else. This relay gets you the address, the Palace Museum, from just the name. That’s how DNS servers work. The IP is like the street address, unique without duplication. You send your gift. Your friend sends back postcards, showing the Palace Museum’s beauty (like the server sending website content).

IP addresses are unique in both directions. One address, one place.

Ownership on the Traditional Web

That’s how accessing a website works. But who controls each part?

We’ve looked at it from the visitor’s side. Now, let’s see what a website owner does to make their site visible.

Domain Names

Let’s examine a familiar URL:

http://www.baidu.com

It has four parts:

http://
www
baidu
com

http:// is the protocol (HyperText Transfer Protocol). It’s an agreement between your browser and the server on how to transmit information.

Other protocols exist. But HTTP is standard for websites, so we often omit it and just say www.baidu.com.

Let’s discuss the other three parts in reverse.

com is the top-level domain (TLD), categorizing websites. Examples: .com (company), .edu (education), .mil (military). Two-letter TLDs represent regions (e.g., .cn for China, .uk for Britain).

ICANN controls top-level domains. It decides which names can be TLDs. See the allowed TLDs here: https://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt. ICANN is a non-profit, but with enough money, you might get a TLD.

Apple registered .apple (different from apple.com; it’s xxx.apple!). They could use iphone.apple, ipad.apple… shorter than apple.com/iphone.

But .com is ingrained. People say it automatically. You only need the brand name, apple, and add .com. Registering .apple is mainly brand protection.

.com is so common because of commerce. Businesses register and maintain domains to build brands and drive revenue. They have more incentive than educational institutions or non-profits. So, .com became dominant, broadening its meaning.

baidu is part of the main domain. With the TLD, it forms the complete main domain. Baidu.com means “a company called Baidu.” Baidu bought this domain and pointed it to their search engine.

Domain registrars and cloud providers control main domains, charging annually. GoDaddy is well-known internationally; in China, there’s Wanwang, Ename, Alibaba Cloud, and Tencent Cloud. You choose a domain and pay for a few years. You can use it and point it anywhere. But the service provider still owns it and can take it back.

www is a second-level domain, or subdomain. www.baidu.com and baidu.com are different.

Owning the main domain (baidu.com) lets you add subdomains through your registrar or DNS provider. For example, help.baidu.com (customer support), map.baidu.com (Baidu Maps). www points to the search engine, like the main domain.

Why the redundancy? “www” means World Wide Web. Early on, websites weren’t the internet’s core. Domains were used for email, file transfer, etc. Websites were another service. So, www indicated the official website. Later generations did the same, even without other services. People still do it, forgetting why.

Subdomains belong to the main domain. You control their usage, but the registrar owns them.

As an aside, the domain name order seems reversed. But the internet’s inventors were Western, especially English speakers. English addresses go from smallest to largest:

#20A, 2345 Belmont Avenue, Durham, NC， 27700

Building, street, city, state. It’s a cultural difference.

DNS

Don’t announce your domain yet. Typing it in a browser won’t work. It’s not pointed to a server. Pointing is called domain resolution.

A domain points to one website. Resolution rights are crucial. Whoever controls them decides where the domain is used.

Initially, resolution rights are with the domain provider. But specialized DNS providers offer better services (Cloudflare internationally, DNSPod in China). To use them, transfer resolution rights from the registrar to the DNS provider. Then, set the domain’s destination in the DNS provider’s interface. DNS services often have free and paid features.

The DNS provider now has resolution rights. You control where the domain points, but it’s not 100% yours. An employee or hacker could point your domain elsewhere. It’s like the fine print: final interpretation rights belong to the DNS provider.

IP and Servers

Finally, put your website code and data on a server so the domain can point to it via DNS. Let’s assume a simple website with one server.

Rent a server from a cloud provider (Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud). Servers have monthly bills based on disk space, data sent, etc.

Once the server is set up, you’ll have its IP address. Use DNS to point your domain to it. Your website is now public.

Since the server is rented, you only have usage rights. The cloud provider can shut it down or delete its contents.

Alternatively, buy a server and put it in your office. A company I worked for did this. The server and contents are completely under your control. But this needs a high-quality network. Small websites usually don’t do this.

The New Tech Explained

That’s the traditional web. Now, let’s explore the new technology.

ENS

As mentioned, ICANN controls top-level domains. But many teams challenge this. They believe domains are internet infrastructure, concerning everyone, and shouldn’t be controlled by a centralized organization – not even a non-profit. They advocate blockchain smart contracts to manage domains (top-level, main, subdomains). This ensures open, transparent, and trustworthy management.

Four main blockchain projects provide domain services: HandShake (HNS), DecentraWeb (DWEB), Ethereum Name Service (ENS), and Unstoppable Domains. The first two offer top-level domain registration/trading; the latter two control some top-level domains and offer main domain registration.

![Screenshot of the ENS blockchain domain registration website search page, showing the interface where users can search for and purchase .eth domains, with a search bar and domain availability results displayed on a clean white background](https://cdn.victor42.work/posts/2022-02/截屏 2022-02-17-下午 3.26.59.jpg)

The blockchain world has strange top-level domains: .x, .eth, .coin, .wallet, .888, even emojis. These bypass ICANN. Control and ownership are recorded on the blockchain, operating by smart contract rules, not controlled by the founding teams.

My domain (victor42.eth) is from ENS, an Ethereum-based service where domains end in .eth. After purchase, a smart contract records on Ethereum: “victor42.eth belongs to wallet xxxxxxxxx for 20 years.” This is recognized and protected by Ethereum. xxxxxxxxx is my Ethereum wallet address.

ENS also provides domain resolution. In the blockchain world, DNS isn’t strictly necessary. On the traditional web, DNS providers ensure security, preventing tampering. But the blockchain is inherently secure. Domain resolution becomes simpler, a feature domain service providers can easily add.

With this domain, no one can transfer it or point it elsewhere during the usage period, not even Vitalik, Ethereum’s founder. After the period, if I don’t renew, the smart contract reclaims it.

What’s the difference between blockchain and traditional domains? Let’s compare the traditional web and blockchain.

The traditional web transmits information. Domains are nicknames for content. WeChat Pay transmits monetary value as information, requiring UnionPay to verify it.

The blockchain network transmits value. It’s an economic system using cryptography, verifying value transfer itself. Wallet accounts are the infrastructure. Domains nickname wallet addresses. Pointing to content is an additional function.

An Ethereum wallet address is hard to remember. That’s why it needs a domain.

Blockchain domains can point to a wallet and content. Entering the domain during a transfer sends it to the wallet; opening it in a browser displays the content.

IPFS

The previous section covered blockchain domains, which I now own and can point to a website. The next step is finding a decentralized hosting solution.

I’ll detail the specifics later. This section explains IPFS’s technical principles. It works differently than the usual C drive, folder, subfolder structure.

If you’re able, check out this video first (it’s more intuitive than my explanation): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Uj6uR3fp-U.

Despite the “IP” in its name, IPFS is unrelated to traditional IP addresses. It stands for InterPlanetary File System. Crucially, if anyone on the IPFS network deems content valuable and keeps it, no one can delete or stop its spread.

This might seem commonplace. Isn’t the traditional web similar? If a Weibo account posts something inappropriate, even after deletion, screenshots can ensure it’s not forgotten. That’s the internet’s open spirit.

However, PR exists. Most content spreads on major platforms. If these platforms cooperate to remove content, widespread dissemination stops. PR can’t erase content globally, but it can make it invisible to most. You can still copy it to a USB, but those unaware won’t know where to find it.

But, how do pirated movies spread? Studios can’t stop them, right? Exactly. Pirated movies use distributed networks, not just the traditional web.

Downloading with Xunlei requires a BT torrent file. Xunlei uses the torrent, showing seed count. More seeds mean faster downloads; no seeds mean no download. Each seed is a device storing the content, often other downloaders. You’re not downloading from a server, but from other seeds. Blocking content requires finding and destroying all seeds – practically impossible.

IPFS uses this for file transfer, but also as a storage method. How does the network know each seed has the same movie, given different versions (full, cut, original audio, dubbed)?

The answer: content separation at the file level. Different BT torrents mean different versions. This uses a hash algorithm, encrypting any content into a fixed-length string, like:

23db6982caef9e9152f1a5b2589e6ca3

Download sites often show a file’s MD5 code (a type of hash algorithm) to verify against tampering or viruses after download.

Hash algorithms have a key feature: identical content, using the same algorithm, always produces the same result, regardless of time or location. Even a tiny change (e.g., a Chinese period to an English one) drastically alters the resulting code. This one-to-one correspondence means hash algorithms provide a unique ID for any content, like a social security number.

This makes IPFS efficient. Content is distributed via its hash code. Displaying it requires retrieving the entire content from the IPFS network.

For example, NFT digital collectibles. Ownership is recorded on the blockchain (“Content xxxxxx belongs to so-and-so”). A collectible can be large (image, music, video). How can a blockchain, with small blocks, store this? It stores the hash code, uniquely identifying the content, confirming ownership. ENS domains are also NFTs, but with practical uses beyond viewing.

IPFS builds its storage on this. Unlike traditional storage (retrieving by location, like sending a package to a specific address), IPFS retrieves by content. Knowing the content (its hash code ID) is enough. You request “content 23db6982caef9e9152f1a5b2589e6ca3,” and IPFS finds and delivers it from the closest source.

This has advantages:

Reliability: Any device with the content can transmit it. Even if major data centers are destroyed, you can still download from a neighbor via IPFS, as long as the network is up.
Speed: It finds the closest source, ensuring fast transmission, like BT seed downloads.
Resource Saving: On the traditional web, the same video posted on multiple platforms (WeChat, Weibo, TikTok) is stored multiple times. IPFS theoretically needs only minimal server backups, with most storage and transmission through personal devices.
Tamper-proof: Each piece of content has a unique code. Tampering creates a new code. The original code always leads to the original content, making it ideal for recording information age history, avoiding the digital dark age.

Disadvantages:

Unpopular content may be harder to access if few devices store it and are offline. However, uploaders can keep important content online.
IPFS is open; it can’t store private data. It’s unsuitable for personal cloud drives. Posted content is publicly visible.
Think before posting; there’s no going back. Changes generate new content, not overwrites.
Version fragmentation: Updates create new versions. Identifying the latest is addressed later.

The name “InterPlanetary File System” isn’t just hype. If we colonize Mars, how will information transfer? Earth-Mars distance varies. Communication can take 4-24 minutes one-way, or be impossible during solar conjunction (like Tianwen-1).

With the traditional web, a Martian accessing Wikipedia on Earth would face 8+ minute delays per page.

Why not store Wikipedia’s data on Mars? Martian colonization will be gradual. Earth’s internet holds vast data. Copying everything is impractical. Only important data would be prioritized; less important data (like Basque) would remain on Earth.

With IPFS, the first Martian accessing Basque still faces the delay (blame Einstein, not me). But subsequent Martians can access it directly from the first user’s device, quickly. If that first user is a linguistics professor who deems it important, they can put it on a Martian IPFS server, establishing Basque data on Mars.

IPFS itself isn’t a blockchain; it’s a network like BT downloads. The IPFS team created Filecoin, a blockchain using cryptocurrency to reward users for providing storage, maintaining IPFS and improving reliability. I won’t detail that. IPFS is crucial for the blockchain world, less so for the traditional web, so I consider it part of the former. Calling websites on IPFS “blockchain websites” isn’t perfectly accurate, but it’s simpler.

IPNS

ENS handles domain + DNS, IPFS handles IP + server. Ready to build a blockchain website? Not quite. There’s a key issue, unique to IPFS.

Traditional storage updates by replacing content at a location. IPFS finds content via hash codes. Updates create new content; the old hash code remains. How do users see the latest version of a constantly updated website? Announcing new hash codes constantly is impractical.

IPFS has a built-in mechanism, IPNS (InterPlanetary Name System), similar to DNS. The “NS” is the same. It’s like a hash code, but points to different content without changing itself. Associating IPNS with IPFS content makes IPNS automatically point to the new version’s hash code after updates, like a traditional URL.

ENS domains can point to IPNS, connecting everything. The website access process is entirely within the blockchain world:

ENS domain -> ENS points to -> IPNS -> Latest IPFS content -> Website

Putting the New Tech into Practice

Theory is done, now for practice, which is simple.

The blockchain world has evolved beyond speculation. Many practical applications are building the next-generation network infrastructure. You can use existing applications for deployment, which is convenient.

Blockchain Domains

Domains and storage are separate. Blockchain domains can point to traditional websites, and traditional domains can point to blockchain websites. A blockchain domain isn’t mandatory.

This is likely the only part requiring money. You buy a domain on ENS using Ether. Cryptocurrency trading regulations in mainland China might be a hurdle. But if you’re this far, you’ve likely bought crypto before.

If not, wait. Understand cryptocurrency wallets (accounts, transfers) before buying. Don’t use shady exchanges. Lack of understanding can lead to financial loss.

Once you understand, you’ll know how and where to buy. Bypassing the firewall and using Google is prerequisite. It’s hard to navigate within the Chinese internet.

The purchase is similar to traditional domains; no step-by-step tutorial is needed. You’ll have an Ethereum wallet with a .eth domain. Leave extra Ether for transaction fees during domain pointing setup.

Fleek

Fleek handles everything else: deploying websites on IPFS and domain pointing. It’s free for personal websites with low traffic.

Fleek has two upload methods. “Storage” is like Baidu Netdisk. Upload a file, get an IPFS-stored link:

https://cdn.victor42.work/tools/ps-bulkrename.png

![Screenshot of the Fleek decentralized platform Storage dashboard showing uploaded assets and file management interface, where users can upload files to IPFS and get shareable links](https://cdn.victor42.work/posts/2022-02/截屏 2022-02-18-下午 4.51.35.jpg)

This is for sharing individual files, not domain binding. I use it for image hosting in blog posts.

“Hosting” links to your GitHub account, reading code from a repository.

![Screenshot of the Fleek Hosting page showing the step-by-step process to link a GitHub account for decentralized website deployment on IPFS](https://cdn.victor42.work/posts/2022-02/截屏 2022-02-18-下午 4.52.01.jpg)

Then choose your static website system.

![Screenshot of the Fleek configuration page showing the selection of Hugo as the static site build framework for deploying a blockchain website on IPFS](https://cdn.victor42.work/posts/2022-02/截屏 2022-02-18-下午 4.43.25.jpg)

My previous blog used Hexo, a good system. But its creators and users are mainly Chinese-speaking, with low international recognition. Fleek, an overseas product, doesn’t support Hexo. I chose Hugo, rebuilt a blog on GitHub, and moved content. Hugo is also excellent. Research building websites with Hugo; it’s not blockchain-specific.

Next, choose the deployment network. The default is IPFS.

![Screenshot of the Fleek network selection page showing the choice to deploy the website on the decentralized IPFS network rather than other blockchain options](https://cdn.victor42.work/posts/2022-02/截屏 2022-02-18-下午 4.52.36.jpg)

“Internet Computer” is another option, a different blockchain for deploying services, with its own pros and cons. It’s newer and more isolated. I tried it; it’s interesting.

After these steps, the website deploys quickly. Fleek grabs content from GitHub, deploys on IPFS, and provides a subdomain. Your blockchain website is accessible.

![Screenshot of the Fleek deploy log showing a successful website build on IPFS, displaying the deployment status and the generated IPFS content hash for the blockchain website](https://cdn.victor42.work/posts/2022-02/截屏 2022-02-18-下午 4.53.17.jpg)

Domain pointing is done in Fleek’s Domain Management. For traditional domains, it guides you on filling resolution records with your domain/DNS provider. For ENS domains, follow its instructions; it requires your Ethereum wallet and a small Ether fee.

You can also add HNS domains (a blockchain top-level domain provider). Ownership is recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain, obtainable via auction on Namebase with Bitcoin. You need to generate a main domain after getting the top-level domain. I haven’t tried this.

eth.limo

Your blockchain website is set up: domain, IPFS deployment, domain pointing. But with a blockchain domain, typing xxxx.eth into a browser won’t work.

This isn’t the blockchain’s fault. Most browsers are from the traditional web era, recognizing only ICANN-approved protocols/domains. Non-HTTP protocols or domains not on ICANN’s list won’t open. There’s a gap.

eth.limo bridges this gap. Add .limo to your domain (e.g., https://victor42.eth.limo/) for any browser. Blockchain-supporting browsers (like Brave) can open it without .limo. But you can’t assume all visitors have these.

It’s a creative solution. What does eth.limo do?

victor42.eth and victor42.eth.limo are fundamentally different. victor42.eth uses .eth as the top-level domain; I own the main domain victor42. victor42.eth.limo uses .limo as the top-level domain; eth.limo is the main domain (not mine); victor42 is my subdomain.

eth.limo’s servers access the blockchain world. Accessing their subdomain, they cross the bridge, package the website’s content, and deliver it.

This diagram explains. The rows: traditional website, traditional domain + blockchain website, blockchain domain + blockchain website.

DNS points the domain to the server, opening the website.
DNS points the domain to Fleek’s server; Fleek finds content on IPFS, opening the website.
Accessing the traditional domain, the delivery person accesses the blockchain domain, pointing to IPFS content, opening the website.

Red/blue lines: the traditional web/blockchain network border. Crossing it enters a new world.

eth.limo isn’t unique. eth.link is more widely used, with a more normal-looking domain name.

Limo refers to this. It’s still weird.

I initially used eth.link (by Cloudflare). It’s centralized, using Cloudflare’s servers. As an overseas product, it had issues in China, occasionally going down. eth.limo uses multiple servers, with multiple bridges, preventing access failures at the last mile.

Conclusion

That’s all.

ENS and IPFS show a world where new technologies are thriving. They remind us to keep exploring.

The Annualized Return Trap

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 17:29:00 +0000

I’ve always been skeptical about annualized returns. Do they really tell us anything useful when picking a fund? Sure, it seems objective to put everything on an annual basis so you can compare funds and different investment periods. But it mixes in other stuff, so it doesn’t really show how profitable the fund is or what you actually earned.

Let’s use an extreme hypothetical example. Suppose we both invest in the same fund:

Look at the left half first. There are 24 columns, each representing a month, for a total of 2 consecutive years. The black line shows the net asset value (NAV) of the fund. This fund is extreme; the NAV stays flat all year, except on December 31st, when it suddenly doubles, and then drops back down on January 1st of the following year.

Let’s look at your actual investment and return first. You invested in the first year. The light red columns are your actual investments, 120 yuan on the 1st of each month. Your total investment was 120 x 12 = 1440 yuan. Since the NAV was flat, you bought the same number of shares each month. You cashed out at the December 31st price. Ignoring fees, you got back 2880 yuan, for an actual return of 1440 yuan and an actual rate of return of 100%.

Now for your annualized return. To calculate that, we have to annualize each investment. If you held it for less than a year, we discount the amount. We’ll call this the “annualized investment,” shown by the dark red columns. The first month’s annualized investment is the same as the actual, 120 yuan. The second month is discounted. Only 11 out of 12 months counted. Assuming each month has the same number of days, the annualized investment is 110 yuan. It’s the same deal for the following months, going down by 10 yuan each time. Your total annualized investment is 120 + 110 + 100 + … + 10 = 780. Basically, investing 120 yuan each month is the same as putting in 780 yuan all at once in the first month. Your annualized rate of return is the 1440 yuan return / 780 yuan annualized investment = 184.6%.

Now my turn. I invested in the second year, twice, on January 1st and July 1st, putting in 720 yuan each time, for a total of 1440 yuan. I cashed out at the same time as you, getting 2880 yuan, with an actual return of 1440 yuan and an actual rate of return of 100%.

My annualized return is different. The January investment is the same as the actual, 720 yuan. The July one is only for half the time, so it’s discounted by half, to 360 yuan. My total annualized investment is 720 + 360 = 1080 yuan. My annualized rate of return is 1440 / 1080 = 133.3%.

We got the same actual return, the same 100% rate of return, and over the same time. But our total annualized investment is different, as you can see on the right side of the figure. So your annualized return is 184.6%, while mine is 133.3%.

See how messed up this annualized return thing is? It doesn’t just show how well the fund itself did, but also how you invested. So what’s it even comparing?

And here’s another thing: with these two ways of investing, the total money we end up with is actually different. We put in the same amount over the same time and got the same return in the fund, but there’s also the outside of the fund. You had your money tied up for less time, so you had more time to earn interest from bank products. I had mine tied up earlier, half at the start, and all of it by the middle of the year. I missed out on a lot more interest. If we compare how much these two piles of money grew after a year, you’d have more.

A high annualized return really means two things: less time with your money tied up, and higher returns. Our actual returns were the same, but the annualized returns are different. The main reason is the difference in how long the money was tied up. But how big of a difference? Those numbers, 184.6% and 133.3%, don’t tell you anything, just that the higher one had less time tied up.

Back to the example, how do you get the highest annualized return? Dump all your money in on December 30th and pull it out on December 31st. So if you’re chasing the ultimate annualized return, you end up like a day trader, catching a quick spike and bailing out.

That’s the opposite of what sensible investing is supposed to be. So why not just focus on how fast your assets are growing, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR)? How much did you put in, how long was it in, how much did the fund make when you cashed out, and how much interest did you make on your idle cash? Use that to figure out how fast your money grew.

Calculation spreadsheet: https://my.feishu.cn/wiki/WMurwbQq6i6SYakjbWAccp8JnHf?from=from_copylink

Besieged

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 20:55:36 +0000

Seen any elevator ads lately? One for “Kapal Api Coffee, recommended by the Indonesian President, it smells so good!” caught my eye. I’ll use this ad to illustrate how treacherous the world can be.

Since at least November 16, 2021, I’ve seen Kapal Api Coffee ads in the elevators of both my office and apartment buildings. The ad implies that Indonesian President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) recommends this coffee, using his photos and video footage.

What’s your take? Do you believe the president is actually involved? Or do you just shrug it off? It’s rare for a head of state to endorse a brand, so I dug deeper.

First, I checked Kapal Api Coffee’s origins. Business records show the domestic entity is Kapal Api Food (China) Co., Ltd., wholly owned by PT. Balini Inve Indonesia, an Indonesian firm.

Here’s the tricky part: I don’t speak Indonesian. How to trace this? Searching the full name in English gave me some third-party business info, but no official site. Luckily, Kapal Api Coffee does have an official website. Its international name is Kapal Api, and it’s indeed Indonesia’s top coffee producer. But what’s the link between Kapal Api and PT. Balini Inve Indonesia? Direct searches turned up nothing, so I broke down the company name.

“PT.” is Indonesian for “Limited Liability Company,” and “Inve” means investment. So, PT. Balini Inve Indonesia is “Indonesian Balini Investment Co., Ltd.,” with Balini being the company name. Searching for Kapal Api and Balini revealed the connection: Balini is a Kapal Api brand. Great, Kapal Api Food (China) Co., Ltd. is indeed part of the Indonesian coffee giant, Kapal Api.

Second question: Is that really the Indonesian President in the ad? Public information confirms it is indeed President Joko Widodo. However, the video shows a younger Jokowi, and the segment featuring him is blurry compared to other shots, suggesting older footage. This raised a red flag.

The core issue: What’s the relationship between Jokowi and Kapal Api Coffee? Searching the Chinese internet, I found no endorsement news. Instead, I found the ad’s source: Shanghai Shengsi Zhuozhi Marketing Planning Company. They came up with the “President’s Coffee” strategy.

This is a small micro-enterprise with a registered capital of 5 million, offering brand marketing services.

On Shengsi Zhuozhi’s website, they proudly showcase the Kapal Api Coffee case study, explaining the “President’s Coffee” strategy, confirming my online findings.

Shengsi Zhuozhi’s other clients are mostly local Chinese firms. The few foreign brand cases are all marketing within China. I concluded that this company lacks overseas marketing experience and focuses domestically. Thus, they likely don’t have the resources for an overseas endorsement, let alone one from the Indonesian President.

Could Kapal Api’s parent company have a deal with President Jokowi, bringing those materials to the Chinese market? I searched in English, and even Indonesian.

First, I searched for Kapal Api and “president.” No dice, whether articles or images.

It’s a language issue. “Kapal Api” is Indonesian, “president” is English, hence English results. Indonesia and its coffee aren’t hot topics in the English-speaking world.

Time to tackle the Indonesian-speaking world. The president’s name is Joko Widodo. Would searching these two names unlock it?

Yes, a flood of gibberish nearly made me spit blood. But, I don’t need to understand Indonesian, just find where the names appear together. And there it was, in a 2017 report.

Translation tools helped me grasp the context. President Jokowi took steps to boost Indonesia’s coffee industry. Kapal Api, a major beneficiary, awarded Jokowi the title of “National Coffee Activist.”

Endorsement? Ad? Nothing. I could dig further, but it’s unnecessary. Any reasonable person can see what’s happening.

Kapal Api’s Chinese marketing team is playing fast and loose. It’s like the Minister of Agriculture announcing a push for the peach industry, and then a peach seller claiming the Minister endorses their peaches, using the minister’s photos and videos.

The endorsement doesn’t affect my buying decision. The lie isn’t hugely damaging, but it’s insulting. Are they treating consumers like idiots? How many people would go to these lengths to verify an ad? It’s like using a nuke to swat a fly. The cost of the lie is minimal, a slight nudge from the truth, yet consumers need a nuke to detect it.

Much of the commercial world is malicious. They’ll hype anything, lie, and spread pseudoscience, all for profit. They swarm around you, filling your life with lies while picking your pocket. It’s disgusting.

I once saw a WeChat post making extreme political comments. The author? A grocery store. Does the owner fancy himself a modern-day Zhuge Liang?

I’ve got nothing against Kapal Api Coffee, so why bother? Because I’m a stickler for details. I’ll dive into academic papers to get to the bottom of things. I’ve exposed far worse false advertising. A coffee company lying about endorsements is just the tip of the iceberg. Think about all the ads that have excited or intrigued you. Hyaluronic acid thermoses, blood sugar-lowering rice cookers – how much false info has been crammed into your brain? How much money has been drained from your wallet?

What kind of world is this? Peaceful? Stable? I’d say: Besieged.

I reported Kapal Api Coffee to the Administration for Market Regulation. Easy to do on the 12315 mini-program. But that’s beside the point. I want to warn everyone, to protect my family and friends.

March 31, 2022 Update:

The Administration for Market Regulation responded. Due to the minor nature, timely stop, and lack of serious consequences, they decided not to impose a penalty. I’m not dissatisfied; it’s reasonable in this case.

See? Society tolerates these commercial lies. It’s not just unscrupulous businesses; society encourages it. Bragging and lying are more beneficial than harmful for companies.

Especially in the information age, businesses aren’t shouting face-to-face. People used to know lying would damage their reputation. Now, consumers face a brand, an ad, not a person. A company’s image is vague. It has no psychological burden, only gains and losses.

This is a fundamental problem. Is there a solution? Sadly, not yet.

The Truth About Friction

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 12:05:00 +0000

Friction, as taught in high school, is a simplified concept. It glosses over several underlying physical phenomena.

High school physics dictates that friction depends solely on surface roughness and the normal force. Contact area supposedly doesn’t matter.

While true in specific scenarios, this oversimplification obscures friction’s real mechanism. In reality, there’s no horizontal resistance along the contact surface. Perfectly smooth, ideal objects would experience zero friction, proving this.

Movement is actually hindered by the minuscule upward force required to lift one object over the other’s microscopic imperfections. Real-world surfaces are jagged. Two objects interlock, akin to gears (though less rigidly). Imagine the contact surface as a multitude of tiny, identical ramps. The top object rests on these ramps like a series of tiny toothpicks, similar to letterpress printing.

Moving the top object requires pushing each “toothpick” up its ramp. Once elevated, it clears the ramp’s peak. This necessitates overcoming the toothpick’s weight. Gravity and the pulling force can both be decomposed into components parallel and perpendicular to the ramp. The perpendicular components create equal and opposite reaction forces, which are irrelevant here. Only when the upward pull exceeds gravity’s downward component does movement begin. This is the essence of friction.

Therefore, friction isn’t truly independent of contact area. A larger area implies more ramps, increasing the overall normal force (N). High school physics, however, claims that changing an object’s orientation (standing vs. lying) doesn’t alter friction. This is because, while N increases, each “toothpick” shortens, reducing its weight and the downward gravitational component along the ramp. The force to move each toothpick decreases proportionally. These effects mathematically cancel out, maintaining constant friction.

However, concluding that friction is area-independent is misleading. Everyday experience confirms that larger areas do exhibit greater friction.

Two articles shed light on the true nature of friction: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/22165913 https://www.guokr.com/article/459070

Many believe fingerprints enhance grip by increasing friction. While the outcome is correct, the reasoning is flawed. Fingerprint grooves actually reduce contact area. Theoretically, a smooth finger would have a stronger grip under equal pressure. So, why fingerprints?

Fingers employ another tactic: sweat. Sweat softens the skin’s keratin, improving conformity, like interlocking gears. This creates more tiny ramps within the same area.

Excessive sweat, however, reduces friction. Wet hands struggle to open jars. An optimal moisture level exists; too much is counterproductive. Fingerprint grooves help regulate this by draining excess sweat.

Friction is ubiquitous. We spent six years in high school, solving countless problems involving blocks on various surfaces. Yet, not a single problem delved into friction’s underlying mechanism.

Why isn't there a word for "ten thousand" in English?

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 12:06:00 +0000

Consider this about number units: English separates large numbers with commas, advancing in thousands—million, billion, trillion. There’s no single word for “ten thousand.” Chinese, however, uses units of ten thousand (万, 亿, 兆…). We use “million” (百万) more now, but that’s recent, due to handling larger figures. “Million” is a combination, not a base unit like “ten thousand.”

It’s curious. We have distinct words for smaller place values: ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands. Why not for larger numbers? We simply didn’t need them! Daily life, particularly anciently, rarely required such large numbers.

Rulers, however, dealt with massive figures. Inventing a word for every place value would be impractical. The solution? Use the largest common unit as a base. This avoids new concepts and simplifies comparisons. Within the same order of magnitude, the specific unit is less important. Large differences are clear from the unit, and smaller ones remain manageable.

This hints at a difference in scale between the ancient Chinese and English-speaking worlds, reflected in geography, population, and agriculture. It’s well-known, but it might be the core reason for the East-West difference in number units today.

A Visual Experiment on Distinguishing Colors

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Fri, 13 Mar 2020 14:52:00 +0000

Try this simple visual experiment at home.

Create a dark room by turning off the lights at night. You’ll likely have appliances with small indicator lights of various colors. For example, last night in a hotel, the smoke detector on the ceiling had a flashing red light.

After your eyes adjust to the darkness, look directly at the small light. Then, gradually shift your gaze away and observe the light with your peripheral vision until it appears white.

This happens because the retina has two types of photoreceptor cells: cone cells and rod cells. Cone cells detect color and are concentrated in the fovea centralis, affecting your central vision. Rod cells detect light intensity but not color, and are more prevalent in the periphery, influencing your peripheral vision. In the dark, as the light moves out of your central field of view, you lose the ability to distinguish its color.

Here’s a second part to the experiment. Look directly at the small light and squint. The light will eventually appear white. During this process, you’ll notice an intermediate stage where the color is ambiguous.

This is because cone cell activity is light-dependent. Squinting reduces the luminous flux reaching the retina. In a dark environment, cone cell activity decreases. When the light becomes sufficiently dim, rod cells take over completely. At this point, your vision is similar to someone with total color blindness, and you can no longer perceive color.

The Discovery of Conservation of Energy

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Fri, 13 Mar 2020 14:51:00 +0000

I read a fascinating story from the history of science. We’re all familiar with the conservation of energy – how it shifts between forms without being lost. But the story of its discovery is truly inspiring.

It began with mechanical energy. Consider a swing: potential energy converts to kinetic, and back again. Scientists, through experiments and calculations, found that the total energy remains constant.

Next came thermal energy. While people understood mass conservation, heat’s true nature was a mystery. One theory proposed heat as a kind of substance, massless yet capable of flowing between objects. This explained everyday observations, like mixing hot and cold water: the “heat substance” flowed, creating lukewarm water.

However, friction could generate seemingly endless heat, simply by rubbing things together. This “heat substance” appeared to materialize from nothing. This spurred investigation into the link between mechanical work and heat. Precise experiments and calculations of energy conversion finally led the scientific community to conclude that energy is conserved during mechanical-to-thermal conversions.

Around the same time, biologists suggested that animal heat and movement stemmed from food’s chemical energy. Chemists added to this, demonstrating energy conservation in chemical reactions.

Then came electromagnetism. Lenz, studying heat in current-carrying wires, found it depended on the current’s square, resistance, and time – Joule-Lenz’s law. Calculations revealed that electrical-to-thermal energy conversion is also conserved.

These discoveries occurred almost simultaneously. Different fields contributed their pieces, and when combined, revealed the true nature of energy. It was like magicians jointly casting a spell, opening a portal to a dazzling new world.

Notes on Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Sat, 21 Dec 2019 18:13:39 +0000

I. Gathering

The Rise of Homo Sapiens

In biology, “human” extends beyond just us. It refers to the genus Homo. We, Homo sapiens, are simply the last ones standing. Neanderthals, Homo erectus, and others were humans too.
The earliest humans emerged in East Africa around 2.5 million years ago. They migrated to Eurasia, evolving into distinct human species.
Homo erectus in East Asia had the longest run, surviving from 2 million to 50,000 years ago. We, Homo sapiens, only appeared around 150,000 years ago.
On the island of Flores, a human species once existed that weighed no more than 40 kilograms. Humans arrived when sea levels were low. Later, the water rose, isolating them. Resources were scarce, so smaller bodies became advantageous, and the trait persisted.
Neanderthals actually possessed larger brains than we do.
Our brains constitute 2-3% of our body weight but consume 25% of our energy at rest. Other apes use only about 8%.
Humans used tools early on, but for a long time, we weren’t at the top of the food chain. Early stone tools were often used to crack open bones for marrow. Humans often waited for predators to finish before scavenging the leftovers.
Humans only reached the top with the rise of Homo sapiens.
Around 300,000 years ago, Homo erectus, Neanderthals, and Homo sapiens were already skillfully using fire for light, heat, and as a weapon. They even learned to burn forests to collect animal carcasses and roast nuts and roots. Fire permanently transformed forests into grasslands, which were more suitable for humans.
Cooking with fire eased the burden on the human digestive system, allowing more energy for the brain. Neanderthals and Homo sapiens evolved larger brain sizes.
Homo sapiens left Africa 70,000 years ago, migrating worldwide and encountering other human species in Eurasia. Homo sapiens gradually replaced them. Whether this replacement was peaceful or violent remains unknown, but they weren’t entirely incompatible. Fossil DNA analysis reveals that modern human DNA contains a small amount of genes from other human species (less than 10%), suggesting some interbreeding.

The Cognitive Revolution

Between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago, Homo sapiens’ evolutionary trajectory changed dramatically, initiating the Cognitive Revolution.
Before the Cognitive Revolution, biological factors dominated evolution and determined lifestyles. Afterward, cultural factors took precedence.
Academics generally believe a genetic mutation altered Homo sapiens’ thinking, leading to a new language. This language was key to the massive shift.
During this period, Homo sapiens invented boats, bows and arrows, and sewing needles, formed social hierarchies, and developed trade, religion, and art.
Homo sapiens sites from 30,000 years ago contain objects clearly not local, indicating inter-tribal trade. Neanderthal sites show no such evidence. Only Homo sapiens could understand and engage in trade.
However, trade at that time involved symbolic items representing status, not food, resources, or tools. Each tribe remained self-sufficient, unlike trade today.
What’s truly unique about Homo sapiens’ language is their ability to describe imaginary, non-existent things.
This ability allowed groups to share common imaginations, enabling cooperation between strangers. This made humans the first species capable of expanding their group size without limit. Larger, more complex groups fostered more advanced social concepts.
Lying and imagining differ. Lying isn’t unique to humans; green monkeys also falsely signal danger to scare away rivals and monopolize food.
Imagination freed humans from the constraints of genetic evolution. Lifestyles could change continuously, even without environmental or genetic changes.
Homo sapiens tribes in the Cognitive Revolution stage developed diverse cultures. Tribes numbered around a few hundred people.
Homo sapiens at this stage were gatherers, nomadic, and moved frequently. They possessed few tools and weren’t heavily reliant on them.
Gatherers also settled in resource-rich areas, ceasing their migrations. Fishing villages, appearing around 45,000 years ago, were the earliest form of settled communities.
Dogs were the first domesticated animal, and the only one before the Agricultural Revolution, with domestic dogs existing 15,000 years ago. Dogs actively sought cooperation with humans.
Gatherers held animistic beliefs, meaning everything, including inanimate objects, possessed a spirit. All spirits were equal, and humans could communicate with them in specific ways.
Homo sapiens reached Australia 45,000 years ago. This was significant as the first time Homo sapiens ventured outside the Afro-Asian ecosystem.
The arrival of Homo sapiens triggered a mass extinction of native Australian species. Besides hunting, Homo sapiens altered the landscape through fire. Fire-resistant eucalyptus trees unexpectedly gained a survival advantage, spreading widely, and koalas benefited.
Homo sapiens’ learning ability facilitated rapid adaptation to different environments. Each migration brought changes in lifestyle, tools, and diet. When sea levels were low, Homo sapiens migrated along Siberia to Alaska, then swept across North and South America. Other human species, even cold-resistant Neanderthals, couldn’t penetrate Siberia’s -50°C temperatures.

II. Agriculture

The Agricultural Revolution

Homo sapiens initiated the Agricultural Revolution 12,000 years ago.
90% of the species providing calories for modern humans were domesticated between 9500 and 3500 BC, becoming livestock and crops.
The shift from gathering to producing societies can’t be explained by increased knowledge. Producers’ lives were harder, with less varied diets. Malnutrition and agricultural labor led to physical ailments. Homo sapiens’ bodies weren’t adapted for farm work. Gatherers were healthier.
Agriculture was also less resilient to risks. Natural disasters affecting a few crops or livestock were devastating. Gathering societies, with diverse food sources, could largely offset losses.
It’s more accurate to say that species like wheat, rice, and corn exploited humans, forming a symbiotic relationship and spreading globally with human assistance.
Today, wheat covers about 2.25 million square kilometers worldwide, nearly 10 times the size of the UK.
In gathering societies, abundant resources led to earlier births and higher survival rates; scarcity led to later births and lower survival rates. Nature regulated population; tribe size wasn’t determined by Homo sapiens’ will.
The Agricultural Revolution wasn’t a voluntary choice, but it crucially broke nature’s population control. Homo sapiens simply needed more land. This change, while not necessarily benefiting individuals, accelerated Homo sapiens’ expansion, and agricultural societies became dominant due to their population advantage.
The transition from gathering to producing was subtle, without a clear boundary. Gatherer tribes might migrate to areas with wheat, harvest it, and then gather and hunt elsewhere. Transporting wheat and burning forests expanded wheat’s range. Each time they returned, they spent more time harvesting. Eventually, they realized they no longer needed to migrate and settled down. Their livelihoods gradually revolved around wheat, transforming the settlement into a producer society.
Another possibility, supported by evidence, is that agricultural societies began as a deliberate choice by a few tribes. Göbekli Tepe in Turkey was built by a gatherer tribe around 9500 BC. Stonehenge in England was built by a prosperous farming tribe around 2500 BC. Stonehenge was a monumental feat, indicating that the Göbekli tribe completed a project far exceeding their productive capacity.
Stonehenge had no practical function. Göbekli Tepe’s creators must have possessed a highly developed belief system. Perhaps this belief system made their demand for grain far exceed survival needs, forcing the tribe to choose farming.
One variety of the first domesticated wheat originated just 30 kilometers from Göbekli Tepe. This is likely no coincidence; they were likely the first Homo sapiens tribe to cultivate wheat.
The emergence of nomadic societies was similar. These tribes primarily domesticated animals, not plants. Domestication took two forms: selectively hunting, protecting, and controlling wild animal populations, forming a symbiotic relationship through increased contact; or capturing a few wild animals and raising them, gradually increasing their numbers until they became a distinct livestock population.
The evolution of crops and livestock was undoubtedly successful in terms of DNA continuation. However, this differs from natural symbiosis, where both species retain evolutionary choices and can counterbalance each other. The natural evolution of domesticated species ceased, evolving artificially only in directions beneficial to humans. This evolution was detrimental to the species themselves.

Stepping onto the Illusory Path

The Agricultural Revolution led to widespread human settlement, using buildings, fences, and other structures to draw a line between themselves and nature. This also drew a line in human consciousness. Humans began to isolate themselves, heading irreversibly toward detachment from nature and the physical world.
Human capabilities grew, and with more to control, came more worries. Time became increasingly scarce, and there was a growing need to eliminate nature’s uncertainties, reinforcing settled life. All of civilization unfolded from this.
Farmers planned for the future to cope with nature’s complexities and ensure survival. But they couldn’t foresee that the surplus from overproduction would create an elite class and develop states, armies, and churches. The oppressed farmers’ wish for a comfortable life remained unfulfilled, and their role in history was often overlooked.
Moreover, resource abundance couldn’t prevent conflict. Peaceful coexistence and cooperation required agreement on imagined rules of order. The Code of Hammurabi and the American Declaration of Independence served the same function. Laws, human rights, money, and marriage are all based on shared imagination and don’t physically exist.
People don’t perceive anything wrong with living in an imagined order for several key reasons:
1. They are deeply integrated with life and connected to our social environment.
2. Imagination shapes our desires and guides us.
3. The imagined order exists in the connections between people. As long as most believe, individual dissent has no effect.

Freeing Memory

Imagination enabled large-scale human cooperation, initiating exponential development. But another limitation needed overcoming: memory. As populations grew and societies became more complex, some imagined orders became too complex for a single human brain, easily lost or distorted across generations.
Human brains aren’t good at remembering numbers, a concept absent in nature. Complex societies require remembering large numbers, hindering the further development of imagined orders.
Only around 3500-3000 BC did the Sumerians begin using writing to record information, processing some information outside the brain and overcoming the memory bottleneck.
The earliest written information discovered is an accounting record detailing the quantity of barley.
Writing at that time couldn’t fully express meaning or convey all information. It was limited to specific fields, like accounting, similar to today’s musical notation.
Quipu was such a writing system. The Inca civilization used it for data recording, although they also had writing capable of fully expressing meaning. After the Spanish conquest, they continued using quipu for a while. Because only the Incas could read and write it, data authenticity couldn’t be controlled, so it was eventually replaced with Latin and numbers.
Between 3000 and 500 BC, ancient civilizations worldwide created writing systems capable of fully expressing meaning. But only Sumer, ancient Egypt, ancient China, and the Inca developed brilliant civilizations. This was because only they discovered efficient methods for organizing and retrieving written information and assigned specialized personnel to copy and manage these materials.
Detailed data management methods differ greatly from how the human brain operates, requiring strong logical, rational, and abstract abilities. Individuals in this profession underwent rigorous training to adapt to this new way of thinking. Thus, rationality took root in human society.
Rational thinking developed rapidly. The invention of Arabic numerals further accelerated data storage and expression efficiency. It also became a cross-cultural common language, although it can only express meaning partially.

Hierarchical Society

Although imagined reality and writing enabled large-scale human collaboration, ensuring its stability inevitably required sacrificing equality, resulting in hierarchical societies.
The degree varies, and hierarchies are divided differently: gender, age, wealth, lineage, belief, etc. Except for the male-female distinction, one thing remains constant: all other hierarchies lack a physical basis. Each hierarchical system justifies its basis with some “naturally existing” law.
Hierarchy simplifies interactions between strangers. When encountering strangers of the same, higher, or lower hierarchy, one knows how to behave without needing extensive knowledge. Setting aside moral judgments, hierarchical societies improved social operational efficiency.
India’s caste system, divided into four types by the Aryan invasion, has evolved into approximately 3000 “jatis” (births) today. Any new occupation or group must be classified into a hierarchy; otherwise, society won’t recognize it. Although the Indian government promotes equality, the caste concept remains deeply ingrained.
American slave society chose blacks as slaves, not South Asians or others, for three reasons:
1. Convenient transatlantic transportation.
2. The pre-existing, mature African slave trade.
3. African immunity to tropical diseases like malaria, a crucial factor for colonial plantation owners.
The hierarchical phenomenon produced by gender is unique. It’s the only division method common to all hierarchical societies, and almost all favor men.
The causes of gender bias are often subtle, making it difficult to determine whether the initial, fundamental reason is physiological differences or cultural preferences. Objectively, it should be understood this way: nature’s possibilities are endless; it only allows, it can, but it is not necessary; cultural concepts have clear boundaries: this must be chosen, that is also possible, but unnatural and should be prevented. Of course, “natural” here doesn’t represent natural evolution but habitual cognition in theological and moral concepts.
Civilizations worldwide eventually trended toward patriarchal societies, suggesting a common cause. However, neither physical strength, aggression, nor survival strategies of the two genders can rigorously explain this outcome, and many counterexamples exist. There’s no definitive conclusion yet.

III. Unification

The General Direction of History

Culture is influenced by environmental changes when shaping society and history. Even in complete isolation, culture isn’t static; internal dynamics drive change.
The concept of culture is so broad that it inevitably contains contradictions. People’s attempts to unify these contradictions lead to cultural change.
History has a definite general direction. Over long timescales, it consistently tends toward unification. Isolated civilizations eventually exchange cultures. While they retain unique characteristics, these differences are insignificant compared to the overall unification.
In 10,000 BC, thousands of civilizations existed on Earth. By 2000 BC, they had merged into a few hundred to two or three thousand. Around 1450 AD, the Age of Exploration began, and the Afro-Asian civilization, comprising 90% of the world’s population, rapidly engulfed other isolated civilizations. It successively incorporated the Aztecs of Mesoamerica, the Oceanic world of the Southwest Pacific, the Inca of South America, and Australia.
Tasmanian civilization exemplifies this. It’s an island south of Australia. People migrated there when sea levels were low, and then rising waters isolated them. For millennia, it became an isolated civilization, completely unaware of other civilizations.
Tasmania was the last independent civilization to be absorbed. Since then, all of humanity has adopted a common geopolitical system, economic system, legal system, and scientific system.
These seem natural today, but the world’s cultural exchange didn’t have only this one possible outcome. The world didn’t form several distinct civilizations and then diverge further. From this perspective, globalization is remarkable.
A typical manifestation of cultural exchange is the spread of food. Most so-called traditional foods worldwide use ingredients not native to the area, some even originating from the other side of the world.
Humans are the only species concerned with collective interests. Yet, before globalization, each civilization had clear geographical and psychological boundaries. Only those within were considered “their own people,” and they disregarded the interests of others.
Commerce, imperial conquest, and religious spread broke down these boundaries, initiating the equal treatment of all humans.

Commercial Unification

Improved transportation infrastructure allowed populations to concentrate and form towns. Professionals in specific fields had a large enough market to support themselves and completely detach from agricultural life.
Simultaneously, small villages discovered survival possibilities beyond self-sufficiency. They began utilizing local natural resources, leveraging comparative advantages to specialize in producing a few goods, and exchanging them for all other necessities instead of producing everything themselves.
Lifestyle changes led to a significant increase in trade demand and volume. The limitations of bartering became apparent: difficulty in conversion without standards and ensuring mutual demand for each other’s goods.
Money isn’t the sole solution. Centralized supply and unified distribution, such as planned economies, are alternatives. The Inca Empire once used a system with these characteristics, and it was quite successful.
However, money remains the most widely used solution. Around 4,000 years ago, Africa, South Asia, East Asia, and Oceania all used shells as currency.
Until the early 20th century, British Uganda accepted shells as tax payment.
Places lacking money spontaneously developed currencies. For instance, cigarettes often serve as currency in prisons and concentration camps.
Interestingly, in the medieval Christian world, besides issuing coins with Christian elements, coins with Islamic elements were also minted for Muslim use. Conversely, the Muslim world minted coins with Christian elements. No one considered this a violation of religious doctrine.
This is the magic of money. It’s universally accepted, carrying no political, cultural, or value preferences. Even with cultural elements printed on it, it remains absolutely neutral.
Ideal money should be stable, non-perishable, easy to store, and easy to transport.
Money relies on mutual trust. The earliest money lacked widespread trust, so it needed intrinsic value. Sumerian barley money, the earliest monetary system, appeared around 3000 BC, contemporaneous with writing. Barley money used a fixed amount of barley grains as a standard of measurement.
A fixed amount is crucial, so early currency development always accompanied the development of weights and measures. The most common unit of currency used by the Sumerians was the sila, approximately equal to one liter today. Standard-capacity bowls were produced for accurate measurement during transactions.
Around 2500 BC, money began to shed the limitations of practical value. People recognized the importance of convenience and shifted to using items with no practical value but easy storage and transport as money. This was the silver shekel system of Mesopotamia.
The silver shekel wasn’t a standard-shaped coin, but silver of a specific weight. Only the weight mattered, regardless of form.
Then, in 640 BC, money began to be further standardized. The kingdom of Lydia in western Turkey minted the first coins in history, indicating the issuer and material composition.
This simplified transactions. People no longer needed to weigh gold and silver ingots; they could simply count the coins. They also didn’t need to worry as much about identifying counterfeits.
More importantly, money became linked to political power. This was the earliest fiat currency. Because the tax system relied heavily on money, the connection between politics and money strengthened, becoming increasingly inseparable.
The Roman denarius is a prime example. Due to ancient Rome’s strength, even areas outside its political influence, like distant India, accepted its currency. This demonstrates that political influence determines currency influence.
From another perspective, currency influence always precedes political influence. With money paving the way, human unification accelerated significantly. Through inter-civilizational exchange, the world gradually adopted a monetary system based on gold and silver.
Why did the monetary system unify? This is determined by supply and demand. Thinking of money as a commodity makes it clear. If people in one place aren’t interested in gold and silver, merchants will purchase large quantities of local gold and silver and transfer them to other markets. This arbitrage behavior levels gold and silver prices globally, standardizing the currency’s value.
Because money can be exchanged for anything and is universally trusted, it naturally tends to marketize everything. However, what makes humans human is the belief that many things cannot be measured by money. The tug-of-war between these two forces maintains societal balance.

Cultural Unification

Empires have two key characteristics: a combination of multiple independent ethnic groups and a variable territory. Other factors like size, polity, and reliance on military conquest are irrelevant.
These two characteristics allowed empires to connect increasingly diverse cultures under a single polity, significantly reducing civilizational diversity and promoting human unification.
Modern critics view empires as inefficient in governance, exploitative, oppressive, and brutal. However, history shows that for the past 2500 years, the empire has been the most stable and widely accepted political form.
A major innovation of the imperial system was conceptually breaking down cultural boundaries. Rulers often aspired to conquer the world and regarded subjugated peoples as part of their civilization. The ruling ethnic group held privileges, but to a certain extent, they still considered the subjugated peoples. Civilization thus tore down the ideological walls of exclusion.
The imperial system isn’t unique. Civilizations worldwide independently developed it, an inevitable stage of cultural evolution. Once a unified empire forms, even if it declines and splits, the various ethnic groups won’t be content with self-governance; reunification is only a matter of time.
Independence and freedom are modern concepts. For a long time, strong imperial dynasties were praised. Unification represented stability and prosperity, the ideal society in people’s minds.
Cultural dissemination within an empire is much easier than cross-cultural dissemination. Coupled with rulers often deliberately promoting a specific culture, although primarily for their own convenience, the speed of cultural exchange accelerated greatly.
Although the ruling ethnic group has the greatest influence, cultural exchange isn’t a one-way output of their culture. They themselves constantly absorb the cultures of other ethnic groups.
Cultural integration is arduous. For conquered peoples, their civilization is destroyed, and they’re excluded from the mainstream culture; yet, they cannot immediately assimilate the ruling group’s culture. Thus, they remain marginalized within the empire for a long time, lacking true recognition. Residents of the political center looking down on regional accents is a typical manifestation.
To gain equal status, ruled peoples actively embrace the mainstream culture, gradually infiltrating the ruling class and jointly promoting cultural evolution. The ruling ethnic group itself loses its uniqueness, eventually merging completely, making it impossible to distinguish between them.
Once such a civilization forms, it’s beyond the ruling ethnic group’s control. Even if the empire perishes, the culture lives on. Various ethnic groups continue the civilization, create new empires, and absorb more cultures.
This trend continues today, blurring boundaries between modern countries. When addressing global issues like economics, the environment, and law, governments must cooperate more closely. Multinational corporations, multilateral cooperation organizations, and regional economic entities are prime examples, and countries are merging in a non-political form.

Religious Unification

Social order is built on human imagination. People know it’s self-created and thus changeable, making it fragile. Religion is a unique order. People believe it’s created by a power beyond humans, an unchangeable truth. Therefore, the religious order is very stable and plays a crucial role in human unification.
Religions capable of this have two characteristics: treating all humans equally and proselytizing. Such religions only gradually appeared around 1000 BC. Most religions in history were regional and exclusive.
In the ancient era of animism, the deities people believed in originated from the local natural environment, such as sacred trees, stones, and birds. Natural environments differ globally. Even if this belief spreads, it’s ineffective elsewhere.
Although humans at this time consumed other species, they still believed all beings were equal, could communicate spiritually, and shared a habitat.
Entering the agricultural era, humans’ control over other species increased significantly, and they were no longer treated as equals conceptually but as possessions. However, humans lacked complete control. Crops could fail, and livestock could sicken. A major theory posits that deities were the channel for humans to address this. Worship deities and let them provide care.
With societal development and population concentration, problems became more complex, and people attributed greater abilities to gods. Gods with limited, specific abilities gradually lost their status.
Animism evolved into polytheism in the later stage. Like the religions of ancient Greece and Egypt, there were gods responsible for fertility, climate, and war, with a detailed division of labor to meet all aspects of civilization. Deities were no longer equal to humans but became superior beings.
Polytheism could address larger problems, but animism remained effective among commoners, who still faced everyday issues.
The power of gods grew, and the status of humans in religious concepts also rose. In animism, humans are just one of many creatures. In polytheism, humans have significant decision-making power over the world. Blessings and disasters are determined by human prayers, sacrifices, and daily activities.
It’s not only monotheistic gods that are supreme. Polytheism also has this role. It represents the ultimate law of the world, embodied as a deity above the gods or a fate even gods cannot escape. But this cold ultimate law has no reason to care about human activities. People worship it without benefit, still worshipping gods with specific functions.
Polytheism is more tolerant and gentle than monotheism. People believe in many different gods simultaneously and readily accept the existence of gods in other religions. Two different polytheistic religions almost never conflict and can coexist peacefully. The religion of the ancient Romans absorbed deities from Asia and Egypt.
Christianity’s situation in ancient Rome differed greatly. Because it didn’t recognize the guardian deities of ancient Rome or the emperor’s divinity, it was considered political rebellion and suppressed. However, this suppression pales in comparison to the persecution among Christians in later generations and the persecution of other religions and atheism by Christianity.
In early monotheism, God wasn’t an omniscient, omnipotent, perfect being. It still possessed selfishness and preferences, like in polytheism. For example, Judaism believes God protects only the Jewish people and their territory, lacking any meaning or motivation for proselytizing.
The mainstream monotheistic religions today believe in a single, all-powerful God. They deem the gods with only partial abilities in polytheism unbelievable and incapable of representing the world’s truth. Therefore, they naturally reject other religions and are extremely aggressive. Polytheism’s gentleness led to its defeat in the competition.
But just as animism persisted within polytheism, polytheism transformed and continued within monotheism. Most people still have various secular needs, and the lesser gods retain a market. Even with widespread acceptance of monotheism, various regions and occupations still worship their own unique gods or saints. Many of these originate from previous religions, easily transformed and integrated into the new monotheistic system.
Besides monotheism, some dualistic religions emerged and prevailed for millennia. These religions believe in two opposing gods, such as good and evil. Neither side can completely suppress the other, and they jointly determine the world’s operation. The religion of the Persian Empire belonged to this type.
Dualistic religion addresses the problem monotheism struggles to explain: the origin of evil. But it raises new questions: What law governs the two opposing forces?
Although dualistic religion was defeated by monotheism, its ideas persisted. Various monotheistic religions often feature figures like Satan, who are not controlled by God and oppose Him. How can a purely monotheistic religion allow such a figure to exist within its doctrine?
Dualistic religion also distinguishes between matter and spirit, body and soul, believing matter and body are evil, while spirit and soul are good. This idea has been retained in monotheism because it helps explain the origin of evil.
None of these dualistic views actually appeared in the Old Testament.
What we consider monotheism today is a fusion of characteristics from animism, polytheism, dualism, and other religions. Like cultural fusion, it’s contradictory yet unified. Religion has a term for this: syncretism.
Religion isn’t solely about gods and supernatural forces. Many religions worship a natural law. Even if gods exist in these religions, they must still follow the natural law. Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism fall into this category.
Buddhism is a prime example. Although Shakyamuni himself was deified by later generations, Buddhism worships the natural law he realized, not his supreme divine power.
Of course, the vast majority of believers cannot attain this state. People still need solutions to various secular problems. Buddhism has developed numerous gods, Buddhas, and Bodhisattvas worldwide, incorporating polytheistic characteristics.
The concept of religion extends further, abstracting into belief, and the scope covered broadens. Concepts like nationalism and capitalism aren’t fundamentally different from religion.
Religious beliefs worship gods, while humanistic beliefs worship the human species, believing humans are fundamentally different from other species, determine the meaning of everything in the universe, and all principles of action should be based on human interests.
Humanistic beliefs are divided into three types. Liberal humanism advocates freedom and human rights, believing the individual is sacred and everyone’s inner freedom should be protected; social humanism advocates equality, believing inequality means certain external factors have surpassed the essence of human beings, which is unacceptable; evolutionary humanism advocates progress, believing human individuals are neither sacred nor equal, can evolve or degenerate, and should be subject to survival of the fittest.
The ideological sources of the first two stem from the same monotheistic concept, believing humans possess a free and immortal soul, which in atheistic terms is an unchanging inner essence. All our concepts of freedom, democracy, and political and judicial systems today are built on this. As for evolutionary humanism, it has been unable to recover after the defeat of the Nazis, and subsequent scientific developments have also disproven it.
However, life science research is gradually eroding the ideological foundations of the first two. Increasing evidence suggests that the soul and free will don’t exist. The foundation of modern politics and justice is shaken, but people choose to ignore it.

Nothing is Inevitable

Using our understanding as later generations to interpret history, we can often find numerous explanations and supporting evidence for how humans reached the present. But we cannot verify other historical possibilities. If history had taken a different path, we could still find ample evidence to support it.
History is a second-order chaotic system. A first-order chaotic system means that prediction doesn’t affect the outcome, like weather. In a second-order chaotic system, prediction does change the outcome.
History cannot rule out possibilities; it can only prove them.
History doesn’t develop for human benefit. Even if we believe we have sufficient ability to make the world develop in a direction beneficial to us, the long-term results may not be as we desire.
Memetics posits that cultural patterns are like genes. Although lacking autonomy, they have their own interests. They use humans as carriers for spread and replication. As long as it aids its spread throughout society, it’s beneficial to it. The interests of humans as carriers are irrelevant.
In social science, game theory offers a similar view. Although certain behavior patterns harm the interests of all parties, everyone ultimately chooses them, and they possess a means of survival. The arms race between countries is a good example.

IV. Science

A Cognitive Awakening

Admitting Ignorance

Between 1500 and the 21st century, the global population grew 14-fold, production 240-fold, and energy consumption 115-fold.
The 1969 moon landing marked the first time life on Earth left the atmosphere—a monumental evolutionary milestone.
Before the Scientific Revolution, societies mobilized resources merely to maintain the status quo. Social progress wasn’t yet a goal.
Modern science differs from earlier knowledge systems in three key ways:
1. A willingness to admit ignorance. Old knowledge could be disproven; absolute authority no longer exists.
2. An emphasis on evidence and mathematics. Patterns are discovered through observation and calculation.
3. Using findings to transform society. Science isn’t just about knowledge; it develops technologies and products, driving social change.
Ancient knowledge systems relied on a god or sage who knew everything. For big questions, you’d ask the wise. Trivial matters weren’t worth the gods’ or sages’ time, and no one probed deeper. Since important questions had answers, verification or further inquiry seemed unnecessary.
In modern science, no single person or theory claims complete knowledge. But if nothing is absolutely correct, how does society function? Two unscientific methods provide the answer:
1. Claiming a viewpoint is absolute truth.
2. Bypassing science with humanistic claims.
Although no scientific conclusion is 100% certain, people treat the scientific method as an absolute truth—almost a religious belief.
Ancient knowledge systems often used stories; modern science rests on mathematics.
Newton’s three laws of motion showed that simple math could describe and predict complex natural phenomena. Many disciplines followed. Though biology, economics, and psychology aren’t entirely mathematical, math spawned a new branch: statistics.
In 1744, two Scottish clergymen planned a life insurance fund, raising money from ministers for investment and family protection. They needed to calculate the fund’s size and estimate claim ratios and amounts. Theology offered no help; only statistics could.
Using probability calculations—a new statistical development—they accurately estimated the fund’s size from historical data, differing from the actual value by just one pound. This became the foundation of actuarial science and a key concept in demography.
Statistics, in turn, spurred the development of various social and natural sciences.
Since the Middle Ages, education’s core has shifted from logic, grammar, and rhetoric to mathematical language.

The Power of Science and Technology

Non-scientists are more concerned with practical applications. Scientific achievements empower humans; people firmly believe knowledge is power.
Science and technology were unrelated before 1500. Only from the 17th century onward did they become closely linked, even conflated. Today, it’s generally accepted that scientific knowledge drives social change, and research without practical value is often seen as pointless.
In the past, new technologies often arose from trial and error, accidental discoveries rather than systematic research.
War has spurred many scientific achievements. In WWI, breakthroughs led to weapons like tanks, breaking the trench warfare stalemate. In WWII, the atomic bomb revealed science’s power to the world.
Military technology only became significant recently. Before the 19th century, military changes were primarily organizational. Technology didn’t play a decisive role. Few focused on creating or expanding technological advantages.
The ancient Roman army was highly efficient, disciplined, and well-supplied. Even if time-traveling to fight Constantine 500 years later, they could hold their own. 500 years ago from now was the Ming Dynasty.
China invented gunpowder accidentally during alchemical experiments. Due to a disregard for technology, it was mainly used for firecrackers. Even with the Mongol army at the gates, no Song Dynasty emperor considered developing firearms. Cannons became decisive in war about 600 years after gunpowder’s invention.

Before the Scientific Revolution, most civilizations didn’t believe in progress. They thought things were deteriorating because they weren’t following ancient guidance.
Most religions predicted a savior who would solve all problems. Myths like the Tower of Babel, Icarus, and the Golem warned that exceeding limits would bring disaster.
Science changed perspectives. Unsolved problems simply lacked a method.
Lightning, in most cultures, was seen as God’s wrath. Franklin’s lightning rod, defusing divine anger, significantly impacted old beliefs.
Poverty was often viewed as inevitable. Today, we generally believe that biological poverty can be eliminated.

Challenging Death

Civilizations have always considered death inevitable, with many religions viewing it as life’s meaning.
In the Sumerian myth of Gilgamesh, the king’s close friend died. He stayed by the body until maggots appeared. Gilgamesh then vowed to conquer death. He journeyed to the world’s end, defeated enemies, and reached the underworld. After much hardship, he failed, realizing death was unconquerable and must be accepted.
Today, this problem is broken down into many specific technical challenges.
Today’s medical standards were unimaginable to earlier generations. In 1199, Richard the Lionheart died two weeks after a shoulder wound because the infection spread. Today, it would be a minor flesh wound.
Even in the 19th century, soldiers with minor injuries needed amputation to prevent gangrene. After Waterloo, piles of limbs appeared beside the field hospital. Carpenters and butchers often performed these amputations.
Before the 20th century, 1/4 to 1/3 of children in agricultural societies died before adulthood.
In 17th-century England, 15% of newborns died before age one, and 1/3 of children died before fifteen. Today, the figures are 5‰ and 7‰, respectively.
King Edward I of England and his queen were healthy. None of their sons lived to inherit the throne until the 16th child, Edward II. Four sons and six daughters died young.

Society’s Support for Science

Substantial financial support from politics and business drives scientific development. However, this support is often utilitarian.
Different civilizations in different eras show clear biases in research funding. Scientists often don’t determine the course of scientific development.
Science itself can’t judge which research areas are most important. Politics, economics, and religion can.
Understanding a scientific achievement requires studying not only the scientists involved but also the social context—the ideological, political, and economic forces of the time.

Interaction with Politics

Science and Empire

During the geocentric vs. heliocentric debate, people hoped to use the transit of Venus for verification. Observing it from different locations on Earth yields varying durations, allowing accurate calculation of the Sun-Earth distance using trigonometry.
The two transits of Venus at that time were in 1761 and 1769. The 1769 transit was particularly significant.
Most observation points were on continents: Siberia, North America, Madagascar, South Africa. The British Royal Society wanted a South Pacific point, so they funded an expedition led by Captain Cook to Tahiti, equipped with advanced instruments.
Besides observing Venus, the expedition brought back a wealth of astronomical, geographical, meteorological, botanical, zoological, and anthropological data to England in 1771.
At that time, scurvy often killed half the crew on voyages, and the cause was unknown. In 1747, a doctor proved that citrus fruits could cure scurvy. Sailors usually ate only biscuits and dried beef, lacking vitamin C.
Captain Cook carried sauerkraut and ordered sailors to eat fresh fruits and vegetables at every landfall. Consequently, not a single sailor died of scurvy—a naval first. Within a decade, this method was widely adopted by navies.
This voyage wasn’t just scientific. Cook was a naval officer; the Navy sponsored the ship and soldiers. They claimed land for Britain wherever they went, laying the groundwork for British occupation of Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania.
Modern civilization brought disaster to Australian Aborigines, reducing their population by 90%. Most Tasmanian Aborigines were exterminated. The few survivors were sent to concentration camps. The Tasmanians refused to assimilate, stopped reproducing, and became extinct. The remains of the last few were studied and exhibited for a long time. A century later, their body parts were returned and buried.
To those involved, science and empire were inseparable.

The Rise of Europe

Europe only became a major historical player in the late 15th century. Even by 1775, Asia accounted for 80% of the global economy, with India and China comprising 2/3 of global production.
The 18th and 19th-century wars shifted the global power center to Europe. In 1950, Western Europe and the United States accounted for over half of global production, while China had only 5%.
European civilization established a new global order. Today’s global clothing, ideas, aesthetics, and political and economic systems largely stem from European exports.
Europe’s technological lead only emerged around 1850. However, European maritime dominance began much earlier. European countries strove to catch up with advanced technology, while other civilizations remained indifferent.
The key difference was mindset; other civilizations lacked Western values, judicial systems, and social structures. These ideas took centuries to develop in the West. Other civilizations couldn’t adopt them overnight.
Almost all major 19th and 20th-century scientific breakthroughs came from Europe. European civilization craved exploration, believing that new discoveries could make them world masters.
European empires differed fundamentally from others. Other civilizations conquered to spread values and gather resources. European empires also conquered for knowledge.
Long before Cook, Portuguese and Spanish navigators in the 15th and 16th centuries held this view, discovering and conquering along the way.
Later, exploration and conquest became intertwined. By the 18th and 19th centuries, almost every military expedition included scientists. Napoleon brought 165 scholars to Egypt in 1798. This group even established Egyptology.
In 1831, the British Royal Navy sent a ship to survey South America’s coast for future naval advantage. The captain, an amateur scientist, wanted a geologist to study formations along the way. 22-year-old Darwin joined. While the captain drew military maps, Darwin conceived his theory of evolution.
Shortly before Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, Apollo 11 astronauts trained in the western US desert. Legend says they met local Native Americans, and an old man asked their purpose. They explained they were part of a moon expedition. The old man asked them to deliver a message to the moon spirits. He spoke in his native language, which the astronauts memorized without knowing its meaning. Back at base, a translator revealed the message: “No matter what these people tell you, don’t believe them. They’re just here to steal your land.”

The Evolution of Maps

Before understanding global geography, all civilizations had maps. Unknown areas were omitted or filled with imaginary monsters and wonders. They only cared about their controlled world.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, blank spaces appeared on European world maps, indicating an acceptance of the unknown.
Columbus’s map in 1492 didn’t include America or the Pacific, nor did it have blanks. He aimed to reach East Asia, mistaking North America for India.
Europeans at the time wouldn’t have considered the map wrong. The Bible only mentioned Africa, Asia, and Europe; could a world exist that the Bible didn’t know? Columbus died believing he hadn’t erred.
Italian sailor Amerigo Vespucci first suggested America was a new continent. In 1507, cartographer Martin Waldseemüller published a new world map based on Amerigo’s theory. Mistakenly believing Amerigo was the discoverer, he named it America.
North and South America, 1/4 of the world’s land, are named after an obscure Italian. He did one thing right: daring to say, “We don’t know.”
The New World’s discovery fueled European curiosity and conquest. It also proved ancient knowledge’s limitations. Blank spaces appeared on world maps, constantly being filled and refined through exploration.
The map blanks drove Europeans to explore the New World, filling them in. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Europe’s trade network connected the world, and it began integrating human civilization.
We take European conquest for granted, but it’s unique. No other civilization would conquer a distant, non-threatening one. Ancient empires were, essentially, local affairs.
Although Zheng He’s voyages were earlier and larger, they never attempted conquest or cultural export to connect civilizations. The technical and geographical knowledge gained had little impact.

Unfamiliar Invaders

When the Spanish destroyed the Aztec and Inca empires, these two American empires were unaware of each other.
Even within the Aztec Empire, information was limited. The Spanish occupied Caribbean islands in 20 years, enslaving the natives. Harsh conditions or disease nearly wiped them out, forcing the Spanish to import African slaves. When the Spanish landed in Mexico, the mainland Aztecs were oblivious to Caribbean events.
The Aztecs believed they knew the whole world; the Spanish arrival was as shocking as aliens.
The Aztec Empire’s hygiene far surpassed that of the Spanish; the Spanish had an unbearable odor. Locals sent people with incense to accompany them. The Spanish mistook this for honor.
Spanish ships, horses, guns, swords, and armor further shocked the Aztecs. Some thought they were gods, others demons, spirits, or sorcerers. The Aztecs were confused but didn’t immediately plan to eliminate them. They couldn’t fathom how powerful these 500-odd men could be, so they weren’t overly concerned.
The Spanish were equally ignorant of the Aztecs. However, they had experience conquering other civilizations and were prepared for the unknown.
The Spanish expedition, posing as envoys, reached the Aztec capital and met Montezuma II. They suddenly attacked, killing the guards, and the emperor became a prisoner.
Aztec civilization was highly centralized; the Spanish held the emperor hostage for months, training translators and gathering intelligence.
The Aztec elite eventually rebelled, electing a new emperor and temporarily expelling the Spanish. The Spanish, using gathered intelligence, exploited internal divisions and won over many subjects. Finally, with this force, they retook the capital.
More Spaniards arrived. When the Aztecs who helped capture the capital realized the truth, it was too late. They were forced to accept the greedier Spanish rule.
In this short century, the Native American population fell by 90%, mainly due to European diseases.
When the Europeans invaded the Inca Empire, there were fewer than 200 of them. Replicating the Aztec conquest methods, they toppled the Inca Empire.
It wasn’t just these two American civilizations that suffered from narrow-mindedness. The Ottoman Empire, Persia, the Mughal Empire, and China heard of major European discoveries but didn’t care. No empire planned to leave Asia to compete with Europe for America and the oceans.
The first non-European civilization to send troops to America was Japan, during WWII. A Japanese expeditionary force occupied two Alaskan islands, capturing 10 American soldiers and a dog.
America didn’t appear on Chinese maps until 1602, drawn by European missionaries.
For 300 years, Europeans dominated America, Australia, the Pacific, and the Atlantic, accumulating wealth and resources, and finally defeating the major Asian empires.
By the 20th century, non-European civilizations gained global consciousness, and European hegemony crumbled. Even with overwhelming advantages, European civilization could be defeated when attacking a small country. The Vietnam War is a prime example. Small countries learned to guide global opinion and ally with the enemy’s enemy.

Scientific Exploration During Conquest

Conquest and scientific research share a motivation: exploring and controlling the unknown. Their methods are also similar.
When Muslims conquered India, they didn’t research India’s culture, history, or nature. After the British conquered India, research lasted 60 years. Even Mount Everest’s precise height was measured then.
British research in India not only gathered information for ruling but also investigated rare spiders, lost languages, and forgotten ruins.
In the Indus Valley civilization, a large city once existed, called the Valley of Death in Hindi. It flourished in 3000 BC and was destroyed in 1900 BC. The later Mauryan Empire, Gupta Empire, Delhi Sultanate, and Mughal Empire ignored the story. A British archaeological team discovered and excavated it in 1922. It was India’s earliest great civilization.
Cuneiform was used in the Middle East for about 3,000 years. Around the 11th century, no one could read it. The natives didn’t try to decipher it. In 1618, the Spanish ambassador to Persia discovered cuneiform at ancient ruins. He inquired, but no one understood. News of the unknown script spread to Europe, arousing scholars’ curiosity, who began recording and deciphering efforts.
In the 1830s, British officer Henry Rawlinson was sent to Persia to train the army. He saw an inscription on a cliff, carved by Persian King Darius I in 500 BC. It used three cuneiform scripts: Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian, all unreadable. Rawlinson copied them and sent them to Europe. He deciphered part of Old Persian in his spare time, as it was relatively close to modern Persian. The door to cuneiform was opened.
William Jones went to India in 1783 as a judge of the Supreme Court of Bengal. Fascinated by India, he established the Asiatic Society to study Asian culture, history, and society, focusing on India. After two years studying Sanskrit, he noted its similarity to Greek and Latin. These languages were also consistent with Gothic, Celtic, Old Persian, German, French, and English. He first discovered the Indo-European language family.
Jones’s research was significant because it developed a systematic method for comparing languages—comparative linguistics. Other scholars could use this method to study language development worldwide.
European empires discovered linguistics’ benefits. Understanding local languages and cultures helped consolidate rule. For British officials in India, Indian languages, religions, and cultures were compulsory. These conquerors’ understanding of colonial culture often surpassed that of the locals.
Science could also rationalize the empire. They believed learning was inherently good, representing positivity and progress. Aggression found a justification: helping backward civilizations progress.
Of course, this wasn’t the reality. In 1764, the British conquered Bengal and levied excessive taxes. A great famine broke out, lasting four years. 1/3 of the region’s population died.
European empires brought advanced technology and better living conditions, but also exploitation and turmoil. The two were simultaneous and interdependent.
Many scientific achievements were used politically. Some linguistics and anthropology scholars gathered evidence to prove European superiority, justifying their rule. They found linguistic clues and proposed that Indian, Persian, Greek, and Roman civilizations were all Aryan creations. Anthropologists further proposed that Aryans were a biological race with an innate trait of diligence and progress. This evolved into racism.
Today, no one openly proposes racism. However, racial discrimination has become implicit cultural discrimination. Culturalism often attributes a nation’s achievements solely to its unique culture.
Refuting racism biologically is easy; there’s ample evidence. Refuting culturalism historically is harder.

Interaction with the Economy

The Vicious Cycle of a Stagnant Economy

For most of history, even if the overall economy grew, per capita output remained flat.
In 1500, average annual output per person was about $550. Today, it’s $8,800.
This doesn’t mean cash increased that much. Money can be deposited, lent out, circulated, re-deposited, and re-lent. The bank’s actual cash remains the same, but each loan provides funds. Loans promote business development. As long as there’s no bank run, the bank is safe.
Commercial banks profit by leveraging a small deposit interest cost to obtain larger loan interest income.
This resembles a Ponzi scheme, but it’s also a masterpiece of collective imagination. Even if depositors know the loan-to-deposit ratio principle, they trust the bank and don’t fear a run. The more people trust, the less likely a run.
The bank’s trust chain: Depositors trust the bank, believing they can cash out anytime. Banks trust borrowers to repay with interest. Trust in the future is banking’s foundation.
Before modern civilization, money could only buy existing things. Entrepreneurship invests in the future; without financial support, the economy struggles. Humanity was trapped in this dilemma for millennia, and economic levels stagnated.
Modern civilization uses credit as a form of money to develop production, advancing the future.
Past civilizations didn’t fail to recognize credit’s role or find ways to use it. The key difference is that people then didn’t believe the future would be better; they wanted to maintain the status quo. Ancient civilizations believed wealth was finite, would only deplete, and wouldn’t grow.
Therefore, they viewed the economy as a zero-sum game. If someone gets rich, someone else suffers; there’s no win-win. Many cultures believed making money was sinful, unfair to others.
Under the old concept, because credit had no value, there was no entrepreneurial environment, leading to long-term stagnation. People never thought the economy could grow, and the rich were unwilling to lend. This created a vicious cycle.

Breaking the Cycle

The Scientific Revolution introduced the concept of progress; invest in research, and everything can improve. This was quickly applied to the economy; people believed geographical discoveries, technological inventions, and organizational development could increase total wealth. Opening new areas wouldn’t erode old ones.
Progress fosters trust in the future; this trust creates credit. Credit brings real economic growth, further reinforcing trust. The economy enters a positive cycle.
Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776) was based on this. Smith proposed that each person’s self-interest is the foundation of all wealth. As long as everyone maximizes profit, they create more wealth for society.
This overturned the zero-sum game concept; self-interest can be altruistic. It broke the long-standing opposition between wealth and morality.
This theory has a premise: profits must be reinvested to expand operations to benefit society. Thus, a new capitalist standard emerged: the rich should use income for social production.
People in the past didn’t think this way, believing production activities wouldn’t yield much profit. Medieval nobles advocated generosity and lavish consumption, spending all income on social, political, charitable, and religious activities.
Compared to past nobles, today’s capitalists’ consumption is a surprisingly small proportion of their income.
Not only the rich but also ordinary people are keen on investing and care about wealth appreciation. Government management also embraces this concept and aims for development.
Economic concepts began influencing education and values. Economic development has become an unquestionable truth, as influential as religion.
Conversely, economic concepts determine scientific development’s direction. Research contributing more to economic growth receives more support.
Science breakthroughs are the fundamental force behind economic prosperity. Simultaneously, banks and governments print money, hoping to fund more breakthroughs and create new industries to maintain growth momentum.

Economics and the Rise of European Civilization

European capitalism’s rise is closely linked to Asian economic development. Until the late 18th century, Asia was the global economic power. However, Asian regimes disregarded credit. Their conquests’ economic sources were often taxes and plunder.
European regimes had a business mindset, often ruled by bankers and merchants. Credit was the main economic source of European conquest; conquest became a public investment, with proceeds distributed to the public. The whole populace participated, greatly improving efficiency.
Asian expansion often impoverished the people and destabilized the regime. Asian expansion would collapse at a certain point. European rulers provided credit for merchant expeditions. The huge benefits made rulers trust them more and provide more credit. European expansion snowballed.
Not all investments yield generous returns. The British wasted money trying to find an Arctic route to Asia. The results were futile, and some expeditions never returned.
To increase investors and share risks, investment shifted from wealthy individuals to joint-stock companies.
Western Europe developed a complex financial system, raising large sums quickly. This was far more efficient than the ruling regime’s administrative power.
The Netherlands’ rise, replacing Spain and Portugal as maritime hegemon, stemmed from credit’s power. The Dutch weren’t interested in land warfare; they hired mercenaries to fight Spain, while they vigorously developed navigation.
The Dutch utilized the emerging financial system, repaid loans on time and in full, and maintained credit credibility. The Dutch judiciary was independent and protected individual rights, especially private property. Meanwhile, Spain and other European countries were destroying their credit systems. Kings often defaulted on loans, making fundraising increasingly difficult. Investors realized dealing with merchants was easier and more cost-effective.
Share trading spawned the world’s first stock exchange in the Netherlands.
The Dutch East India Company was a famous joint-stock company with a high return. It traded in Asia and funded military operations against rivals and pirates. It eventually conquered Indonesia.
In Indonesia, the East India Company initially engaged in normal trade. To protect its interests, it attacked local governments that raised tariffs and fought competitors. The merchant fleet’s military strength grew, equipped with cannons, mercenaries, and fortresses. The mercenary market was mature; a commercial company establishing an empire wasn’t surprising.
Simultaneously, the Dutch West India Company made strides in America. To control the Hudson River, a key channel, it established a colony on a small island at the river’s mouth, named New Amsterdam. The British eventually seized it, renaming it New York—today’s New York City.
The West India Company built a wall in New York to defend against the British and Native Americans. Today, it’s Wall Street.
After the Netherlands declined, Britain and France competed for its position. Initially, France had advantages. However, Britain ultimately won the financial system’s trust and became the winner.
In 1717, the French Mississippi Company developed a colony in the lower Mississippi River and established New Orleans. The owner, John Law, had close ties to the French court. He was the central bank’s governor and the French Comptroller General (equivalent to Finance Minister). He painted a rosy picture of the Mississippi Company. The lower Mississippi was mostly swamps, but he described it as full of gold and silver, with unlimited opportunities. The company’s stock soared, rising to 20 times its issue price.
Then, things took a sharp turn. As a few sober individuals began selling, the balance tipped, and the stock plummeted. To stabilize the price, John Law, as central bank governor, bought company stocks, exhausting the bank’s funds. Then, as Comptroller General, he ordered money printing to continue buying. Ultimately, the French central bank and treasury were left with worthless stocks, and the civilian economy suffered a catastrophe. This is the famous Mississippi Bubble.
After this bubble, the French royal family never recovered. The French lost confidence in their financial system, causing credit interest rates to rise. The royal family borrowed more foreign debt at higher rates. In the 1780s, King Louis XVI found half the annual budget went to interest payments. He was forced to convene the Estates-General, which hadn’t met for a century and a half, triggering the French Revolution.
France was overwhelmed, but Britain thrived, expanding wildly with capital’s power. The British East India Company’s achievements surpassed even those of the Dutch East India Company.

Politics Serving Capital

The First Opium War between China and Britain exemplifies this. The British East India Company profited immensely from selling opium to China. The Chinese government’s ban on opium threatened these profits. Merchants, closely connected to Parliament (many MPs and ministers held company shares), pressured the government, leading Britain to declare war.
By the late 19th century, China had roughly 40 million opium addicts, about 10% of the population.
Egypt’s situation was similar. In the 19th century, British and French investors loaned vast sums to Egyptian rulers for projects like the Suez Canal, and some less successful ventures. Egypt, deeply in debt, saw creditors increasingly meddling in its internal affairs. Egyptian nationalists rebelled, voiding all foreign debts. A year later, Queen Victoria went to war.
Beyond profiting from wars, war itself became a tradable commodity.
In 1821, Greeks revolted against the Ottoman Empire. British financiers saw an opportunity, proposing bonds on the London Stock Exchange to fund the Greek military. These “Greek rebellion bonds” fluctuated with the war’s progress. As Turkey gained ground and the rebels neared defeat, Britain, protecting creditor interests, organized a force, defeated the Ottoman fleet, and secured Greek independence. Greece was burdened with massive, unpayable debt, struggling under its weight for decades.
Politics and capital jointly determine a market’s credit rating. Abundant natural resources don’t guarantee high investment value. Political factors, like stable institutions and a sound economic system, are also crucial.

The Cult of the Free Market

Everyone acknowledges economics influences politics, but many resist political influence on economics. They advocate for government non-interference in economic affairs, opposing military intervention and criticizing welfare policies.
However, a completely free market is a myth. Trust, the economy’s most vital resource, requires political guarantees.

The Dark Side of Capital

The free market appears desirable under the assumption that capitalists reinvest profits to increase production. However, other avenues exist, such as employee mistreatment.
In a truly free market, companies can collude and exploit workers, potentially leading to restricted personal freedom or even slavery.
Slavery was nearly extinct in Europe by the late Middle Ages. Ironically, the slave trade boomed during capitalism’s rise, driven by unrestrained market forces.
European conquest of America led to sugarcane plantations. Sugar, a medieval European luxury, saw British annual consumption rise from almost zero in the 17th century to roughly 8 kilograms by the early 19th century.
Sugar demand was high, but sugarcane cultivation was arduous. Market-driven labor costs would be prohibitive. Plantation owners sought slaves.
Slave trading companies, listed on European markets, raised public funds. They formed fleets, hired sailors and soldiers, and traded for slaves in Africa. The slave trade was a joint venture between European investors and sugar consumers.
Capital’s greatest flaw is its prioritization of growth above all else. Without ethical constraints, it can lead to catastrophe.
In 1876, the King of Belgium founded a humanitarian organization, ostensibly to explore Central Africa, fight the slave trade, and improve local living conditions. In 1885, European powers allocated 2.3 million square kilometers of Congo Basin land to this organization—75 times Belgium’s size.
This “humanitarian” organization quickly morphed into a commercial enterprise. All its activities became profit-driven, establishing mines and plantations, and exploiting the local population. Conservative estimates suggest 6 million Congolese deaths between 1885 and 1908.

The Great Industrial Development

Ways of Harnessing Energy

Superficially, energy and resources appear finite. However, scientific research consistently solves resource depletion, either through more efficient use or the discovery of new energy sources and resources.
Before the Industrial Revolution, humans relied almost entirely on their own bodies or animals, consuming solar energy stored in plants and converting it to muscle power.
Human history, therefore, was governed by two major cycles: plant growth and solar changes.
Gunpowder’s invention in 9th-century China was a minor breakthrough, converting thermal energy into kinetic energy. However, its transformation into a controlled energy source was slow.
The steam engine finally allowed humans to control the conversion of thermal energy into kinetic energy. Early coal mine steam engines were inefficient, but abundant coal made this less of a concern.
Improved steam engines moved beyond coal mines into textile mills, revolutionizing the industry. This sparked a shift in thinking: if coal could power textile machines, it could power others. Machines rapidly took over various industries.
Since then, people have been captivated by using machines to control energy, making any type of energy anywhere available.
Physicists discovered atomic energy, and people immediately sought its application. It took 600 years from gunpowder to cannons; from mass-energy equivalence to the atomic bomb, only 40.
The internal combustion engine was another pivotal invention, making petroleum a key energy source. Humans had long known about petroleum, but only for waterproofing and lubrication. Until about a century ago, these were considered its sole uses. Waging war for oil would have seemed ludicrous then.
Two centuries ago, electricity was largely a mysterious academic experiment and magic trick. A series of inventions have made modern life utterly dependent on it.

The Energy Boom

The Industrial Revolution was, at its core, an energy conversion revolution. We’ve repeatedly shown that energy is virtually limitless. We consistently find new energy sources, and the total energy available to humans keeps growing.
The energy modern human activities consume annually equals just 90 minutes of Earth’s solar energy intake. Global plants store about six times that amount from the sun each year.
Before the Industrial Revolution, plant-based energy was almost the sole source, imposing a clear upper limit.
Harnessing and converting energy also addressed raw material shortages. Humans could use abundant, cheap energy to transport materials from afar, extract previously inaccessible resources, and invent new ones.
Chemists discovered aluminum in the 1820s. Its extraction was once so difficult that it was more expensive than gold.
During World War I, Germany, under blockade, faced a shortage of nitrates for explosives. Ammonia could substitute, but at a high cost. Chemists then invented a technology to produce ammonia virtually from air. Without it, Germany likely wouldn’t have lasted until 1918.

The Second Agricultural Revolution

The Industrial Revolution’s most significant aspect was initiating the Second Agricultural Revolution.
Advanced farm tools, fertilizers, and pesticides dramatically increased crop and livestock yields.
Mechanization extended beyond production tools to the production process of life itself. Modern chicken farms, for instance, prioritize meat and egg production efficiency, disregarding the creatures’ needs.
This parallels the Atlantic slave trade. European civilization didn’t hate Africans, and modern people don’t hate livestock. It’s sheer indifference.
The farm environment can meet animals’ physiological needs, eliminating the need for complex natural social behaviors. However, their psychological needs are innate, ingrained through evolution. Depriving them of social interaction causes psychological distress.
In the 1950s, American psychologist Harry Harlow experimented with baby monkeys. He placed them in cages with two surrogate mothers: one wire with a milk bottle, the other cloth, resembling a mother monkey but offering no practical aid. Most babies chose the cloth monkey, only approaching the wire one for milk.
Historically, most farm produce fed farmers and animals, with a small surplus circulating. Farmers comprised over 90% of the population.
Today, 2% of American farmers feed the entire US population and still export substantial amounts of food.
Without freeing so many people from agriculture, the Industrial Revolution would have lacked a foundation. For the first time in history, production outstripped demand.

The Rise of Consumerism

To handle the oversupply from the Industrial Revolution, consumerism reshaped social ethics. Frugality was no longer a virtue; self-indulgence was encouraged.
Products are constantly updated, creating many previously nonexistent needs, many of which are social and psychological, not material.
Religious holidays have become shopping events. Even Memorial Day in the United States is a major sales day.
Consumerism is most apparent in the food market. Hunger is no longer the issue; obesity is. The fitness and weight loss industry, spawned by obesity, generates significant consumer demand.
However, consumerism clashes with capitalist ethics, as profits aren’t reinvested. This isn’t truly a problem, as even in the past, aristocrats defied capitalist principles, spending lavishly. The situation is merely reversed today, with the masses indulging while the wealthy focus on wealth appreciation.

The Never-Ending Revolution

Breaking Free from Nature

The Industrial Revolution significantly reduced human reliance on nature, leading to widespread transformation of the natural environment into an artificial one.
Humans’ total weight now surpasses that of all large wild animals. Poultry and livestock outweigh humans by more than double.
While new technologies have overcome various resource shortages, the ecological crisis is an undeniable and irreversible reality.

Precise Time

While less dependent on nature, humans are increasingly reliant on modern industry and government.
A key manifestation of this is time. Humans have largely shifted from agricultural society’s loose time rhythm to industrial society’s precise one.
This precise time concept originated in factories and gradually permeated schools, hospitals, government, and all aspects of life. Accurate public transportation is also integral to industrial society’s time concept.
In 1784, Britain saw the first coach service with a published timetable, though it only included departure times.
In 1830, Britain’s first commercial railway opened. Ten years later, a train timetable was finally published. Trains’ speed made regional time differences noticeable, causing inconvenience. This led to time unification across regions, based on Greenwich Mean Time.
As more institutions unified time, this behavior eventually became government legislation. This marked the first time a country adopted a national unified timetable, requiring adherence to artificially defined time, rather than local natural time.
Broadcast media became the primary enforcer and disseminator of timetables. Time signals were among the earliest radio broadcasts, allowing time adjustments. Even today, radio programs begin with the time, preceding any other content.
During World War II, British radio broadcasts to Nazi-occupied areas started with Big Ben’s chimes. German physicists even deduced London’s weather from the chimes, a valuable intelligence piece. The British, discovering this, replaced live chimes with a recording.
For the timetable system to function, clocks became ubiquitous. Modern life is inseparable from precise time.

The Collapse of Family and Community

Industrial society’s most significant change is the decline of family and local community, replaced by a new order established by the state and the market.
Humans have always lived in small, close-knit communities, unchanged by the Cognitive and Agricultural Revolutions. Even during historical empires, the family remained society’s basic structural unit.
Before the Industrial Revolution, most people’s lives revolved around three frameworks: the nuclear family, the extended family, and the local community. The family also handled welfare, health, education, construction, guilds, pensions, insurance, media, banking, and even policing.
For major issues beyond the family, the local community often intervened. Places had recognized conduct principles, and communities often maintained order based on these principles of equality and mutual aid.
Kingdoms and empires handled larger-scale functions like wars, road and city building. The king levied taxes and recruited soldiers or workers. However, he rarely interfered in family and community affairs.
Traditional societies lacked the resources to support numerous officials, police, social workers, teachers, and doctors. Therefore, most regimes didn’t develop extensive welfare, medical, and education systems.
Even if the government wished to intervene in a citizen’s life, it lacked practical means, relying on indirect intervention through intermediate organizations. For example, the Ming Dynasty’s Lijia system grouped 10 households into a Jia and 110 into a Li. The central government issued decrees through Li chiefs and Jia heads.
However, family and community life wasn’t idyllic. Historically, family and community oppression on members was no less than that of the modern state market. Individuals couldn’t break free; losing family and community protection meant near-certain hardship.
Over the past two centuries, market power has been unleashed, and the state, aided by communication and transportation, extended its control to every individual. The order established by family and community became an obstacle to the new order.
Social development gradually replaced community order with state order. Besides external infiltration, the modern state used thought to promote community disintegration from within, praising free will and encouraging youth to break from traditional constraints.
Modern social order has transferred responsibilities previously held by the family to professional institutions.
The state now views everyone as an independent individual. Obligations and responsibilities don’t implicate others, even relatives. This became the basis for women’s and children’s independence, often considered property under community order.
The price of modern order is societal extremism. Family and community power weakens, individuals become more independent, and resistance to state and market power becomes more difficult.
Society has replaced the nuclear family and community’s material functions, but they retain emotional significance. The state and market penetrate individuals emotionally by shaping imagined communities. The two most important modern imagined communities are the nation and the consumer public.
The nation strives to conceal its imaginary nature, seeking historical clues to prove its reality.
The consumer public concept blurs national boundaries.

An Era of Peace

Rapid modern changes have become the norm, and social order is constantly shifting, unimaginable to the ancients. Modern people are accustomed to this pace.
Drastic changes bring turmoil, but also unprecedented peace.
In medieval Europe, annual homicides per 100,000 people were about 20-40. In modern society, it’s only 9 globally, and just 1 in Europe.
Since World War II’s end, most European empires have withdrawn peacefully, leaving behind relatively stable societies, not chaos.
The Soviet Union’s 1989 collapse was also remarkably peaceful and swift.
Since World War II, there have been no instances of invasion and annexation. Modern countries show little interest in international wars.
Most modern wars are border conflicts, civil wars, or coups.
Historically, even in peacetime, countries actively prepared for war. Modern society’s peace is genuine. No two countries constantly fear unprovoked full-scale war. There’s no incentive.
Nuclear weapons are a key reason for modern peace. This deterrent, capable of destroying all humanity, makes world conquest by force impossible.
Another reason is war’s increasing cost. Ancient wars were for plunder and profit; modern wars are unprofitable.
Past wealth was primarily land, immovable and occupiable. War had meaning. Today’s wealth is mobile, and there are numerous ways to compete for it. War doesn’t achieve this.
Conversely, peace is profitable. Historically, trade wasn’t as developed. Peace, at best, saved war costs, offering no clear economic benefits. In modern society, economic exchange between peaceful countries brings mutual prosperity.
Interconnected economies make war less likely. No country can be entirely self-sufficient. The world has become a vast empire.

More Happiness

Are Humans Happier?

History rarely examines whether people in a given period were happy, nor does it compare happiness levels across periods.
Happiness is subjective, making measurement difficult. The most scientific approach currently involves isolating factors and statistically studying large groups’ happiness scores.
Research shows money brings happiness, but with diminishing returns. Illness reduces happiness short-term, but even chronic diseases have limited long-term emotional impact.
Family and community impact happiness more significantly than the former two. While modern material conditions have improved, the decline of family relationships may offset this. It’s uncertain whether modern people are happier.
Happiness isn’t solely determined by objective conditions. Achieving expectations, regardless of scale, also significantly influences happiness.
Modern living standards lead us to view primitive life through a modern lens, concluding it was unhappy. However, the ancients lacked expectations for modern material conditions.
If happiness is judged by expectations, mass media and advertising may be increasing unhappiness by encouraging comparison with society’s top conditions.

The Biological Basis of Happiness

Biochemically, the human body limits happiness-producing substances, maintaining them at a stable level. Happiness offers no clear reproductive advantage and isn’t strengthened evolutionarily.
Happiness-producing substances are merely evolutionary tools, influencing behavior, prompting action or avoidance.
Evolution creates varying happiness levels. Some individuals naturally maintain higher levels, while others don’t.
Numerous studies link factors like marriage to happiness. However, correlation doesn’t imply causation; it might be a result.
From a biological perspective, historical processes have minimal impact on happiness, as human civilization’s short history hasn’t altered the human body.

The Meaning of Existence

Is the meaning of all human civilization ultimately in life sciences? Will solving all problems be as simple as finding ways to make the body produce more happiness, like in Huxley’s Brave New World?
This view equates pure biological pleasure with happiness.
Raising children involves countless headaches, yet most parents find their children a source of happiness.
Happiness isn’t merely the sum of isolated happy moments. Meaning plays a crucial overall role.
Biologically, human life is meaningless. However, the meaning we ascribe to it can bring genuine happiness.

The Happiness of Knowing Yourself

Whether from a biological or meaning-based perspective, happiness is a subjective feeling, a product of liberal thought. Everyone uses their own feelings as the standard; there’s no objective measure.
Most religions and philosophies differ from liberalism, believing people shouldn’t act solely on their temperament.
Buddhism is deeply concerned with this, systematically studying happiness’s nature and causes. It posits that happiness isn’t subjective feeling or finding life’s meaning, but relinquishing the pursuit of subjective feelings.
Overall, the study of happiness remains inconclusive.

The Man-Made Apocalypse

Beyond Nature

Through breeding, humans have surpassed natural evolution’s constraints, shaping species evolution through artificial design.
However, breeding isn’t drastically different from natural selection’s symbiotic relationships.
Genetic technology allows adding traits entirely absent in an organism.
In 2000, Brazilian bioartist Eduardo Kac, with a scientific team, created a fluorescent rabbit by implanting fluorescent jellyfish DNA into a rabbit embryo, creating a life form unprecedented in nature.
Intelligent design currently has three methods to replace natural selection: bioengineering, bionic engineering, and inorganic life engineering.

Bioengineering

Bioengineering isn’t new; humans have practiced it for millennia, including castration.
Castrated cattle are less aggressive and easier to train for farm work.
Modern bioengineering operates at cellular and nuclear levels. Gender can be directly altered through surgery and hormone injections.
Bovine cartilage cells have been implanted on mice, and by controlling tissue growth, they’ve been grown into human ear shapes.
Bioengineering’s power raises numerous ethical concerns. Its practical application remains largely limited to transforming microorganisms, plants, insects, and other politically non-sensitive species.
We can transform E. coli to produce biofuels or insulin outside the body. We can also insert Arctic fish genes into potatoes to enhance cold resistance.
Some mammals have undergone genetic modification. Cows have been modified to produce milk containing an enzyme that combats pathogens. The pig industry uses genetic modification to insert a worm gene, converting unhealthy pork fatty acids into healthier ones.
Vole breeding is typically crossbreeding, but one species exhibits stable monogamy. Genetic modification can identify and utilize this monogamy gene to alter other species’ social structures.
Bioengineering can not only transform existing organisms but also revive extinct ones. Mammoth gene sequencing has been completed from remains. Replacing modern elephant egg cell DNA with mammoth DNA could cultivate mammoths.
Completing the Neanderthal genome project could allow Neanderthal recreation.
We might even directly transform humans, cultivating individuals with superior biological traits.
Current obstacles are primarily ethical and political, not technical. However, numerous gray areas exist, and ethical and political barriers can’t entirely halt bioengineering research at certain levels.

Bionic Engineering

Bionic engineering alters life’s characteristics by combining inorganic tissues with organic life.
Modern humans are, to some extent, cyborgs. The mechanical tools and electronic products we use extend our senses and abilities. Narrowing the definition to require inorganic components to be part of the body, that era is also approaching.
The US is researching bionic insects, implanting chips in flies or cockroaches, allowing remote control of their movements and perception of their sensory information.
The US Navy has proposed a bionic shark project, using implanted tags to control shark behavior and leveraging their sensitive magnetic field detection for submarine and mine detection.
The latest hearing aids, or bionic ears, feature an external microphone converting sound to electrical signals transmitted directly to the auditory nerve.
Germany is developing artificial retinas to restore partial vision to the blind. Microchips implanted in the eye convert light into electrical energy, stimulating undamaged retinal nerve cells to produce visual information. This technology has enabled patients to perceive space, recognize letters, and faces.
In 2001, an American electrician who lost both arms received advanced bionic arms controlled directly by the brain, similar to natural arm control. While limited, they enable simple life actions.
Bionic arms lack human arm sensitivity and touch, but these issues will likely be resolved. Bionic arms offer unique advantages, like strength and remote control.
Duke University scientists implanted electrodes in rhesus monkeys’ brains, transmitting signals to external devices controlling bionic hands. One monkey learned to control the bionic arm consciously, simultaneously with its own arm, even when the bionic arm was in another city.
Locked-in syndrome patients lose almost all motor ability. Some have received brain electrode implants. Deciphering brain signals could enable not only action commands but also language interpretation, providing a communication pathway. This could even become a modern mind-reading technique.
Brain-computer interfaces are the most revolutionary current research. Immersively reading others’ memories through such interfaces could blur the lines of personal memory. Self-awareness would be subverted, and such humans would become a new species.

Inorganic Life Engineering

Creating entirely inorganic life is exemplified by independently evolving computer programs and viruses.
While computer viruses’ classification as life is debatable, what about a computer-simulated person mimicking all human neural activity? The Blue Brain Project is researching this. Although the human brain may function differently from a computer, the project’s potential impact, if successful, would be profound.

Impact on Culture

While most of these artificial life forms aren’t yet reality, they’ve already significantly impacted culture and created numerous problems. Laws require reconsideration, privacy needs redefinition, equality must be addressed, and extended lifespans impact retirement age, among other issues.
Regarding genes alone, are they private? Can they be discriminated against? Can newly created species’ gene sequences be patented? Beyond these, the potential creation of superhumans poses the greatest challenge.
These developments could lead to the most severe inequality in human history, challenging our current values and causing immense changes.
Humans generally resist being superseded by an unfamiliar species. However, modern science demonstrates the capability to create a new human far superior to us. Their emergence would likely lead to their dominance.

Building a Living System Inspired by Out of Control

hi@victor42.work (Victor42) — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 15:00:00 +0000

I revisited Kevin Kelly’s (KK) Out of Control and What Technology Wants. His worldview is mind-blowing. Both books are dense; you can’t rush them. The ideas interconnect, resembling a living system.

I won’t recap the books. Inspired by Out of Control, I built a chaos system simulator to observe emergent behavior. I coded it in half a day, and the results surprised even me. Check it out (Chrome or Chromium-based browser recommended; cross-browser compatibility wasn’t a priority).

Here’s how it works: Set the grid size, and it generates a random matrix. The grid wraps around, having no center. Two colors of dots are randomly distributed in equal numbers (the total must be even). It evolves iteratively. Each dot’s new color is determined by the majority color within a surrounding square (e.g., a 5x5 square represents a “connection level” of 2). All dots evolve simultaneously.

This system mirrors KK’s four characteristics of decentralized systems:

No central control.
Autonomous sub-units.
Highly connected sub-units.
Nonlinear causality from peer-to-peer influence.

The goal is to see emergent behavior from simple, individual changes in a large, decentralized group – the core of Out of Control’s second chapter. Search “swarm intelligence” for a quick overview.

The default is a 10x20 grid with a connection level of 1. Each manual evolution stabilizes the pattern. Random evolutions produce different final patterns, proving that living systems are sensitive to initial conditions, with unpredictable outcomes.

Increasing the connection level (explained in the app) signifies stronger inter-individual influence. Higher levels mean greater “socialization.”

Now, both manual and random evolutions create more regular patterns. Sometimes, perfectly straight lines emerge, forming two opposing groups, akin to the development of civilizations – nations are born.

I increased the grid to 20x30 (600 “individuals” instead of 200). What would happen?

Not much difference, but interestingly, at 20x30, setting the connection level back to 1 (weaker individual influence) often creates isolated islands.

Increasing the connection level to 3 eliminates the islands. Consider the spread of rumors! In our interconnected information age, how much pseudoscience becomes “common knowledge”? Lacking reliable scientific standards, we’re pushed toward ignorance by commercial hype, relying on friends and family, even if their information is flawed.

The result is similar: many believe cacti absorb radiation or avoid nonexistent harmful food combinations. Truly scientific individuals might have a connection level of 1. But amidst rampant rumors, they can’t verify everything, absorbing some false beliefs and, in a sense, being “eliminated.”

Rumors are an inseparable byproduct of the information age, because the information society is itself a giant chaotic system.

I kept hitting random evolution until, finally, a single-color result appeared!

Increasing the population can cause a qualitative change – a core concept of swarm intelligence. Hundreds of bees behave differently than the sum of their parts; the swarm gains a consciousness. It’s alive!

Two equally numerous, randomly distributed colors can result in a single color. More bizarre stable states, like a checkerboard pattern, probably exist, but I haven’t found the initial conditions to create them.

This uniformity signifies consensus. This can be efficient or disastrous, depending on its use. It relates to bird flocks, musical creation, the formation of scientific systems, and also mass extinctions, moral decline, new values, machine dominance… things we might not want.

But that’s letting it run wild. Chaotic systems are unpredictable; we can’t control them externally. However, controlling the initial conditions allows us to create highly fault-tolerant systems, like the neural network computers of sci-fi.

KK’s vision of the future hinges on a world where life (chaotic living systems) and machines (systems with predictable, fixed rules) are deeply integrated. Combining their strengths could create an unimaginable new world. But we must relinquish our desire for absolute control – over technology, society, and even thought. Because these, too, are alive.