Do we only love someone until they have nothing else to offer ? (Movie review : The Lobster)
In today's post I'll be reviewing a movie I recently watched called ****The Lobster****.
The movie is Greek film director **Yorgos Lanthimos's** satirical work on various social constructs of the society.
The social construct heavily mocked in this movie is *****Relationships*****
The Promotional Poster
One thing that caught my attention is the thought provoking promotional poster by **Vasilis Marmatakis** . If you have seen Vasilis's work you will know that he has an obsession with negative space.
Image source https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3464902/
Movie Premiere & Genre
The movie premiered on 16th October 2015 and is available on Netflix . The genre of the film : ***Romance/Drama/Dark Comedy*** .
What Is The Storyline ?
In an alternate reality, David the protagonist in the movie is heartbroken after his wife leaves him. He is then transported to a hotel. The hotel has a set of odd rules . One of the primary rule is , ***the people residing in the hotel has to find a suitable partner within 45 days or else they will be turned into an animal***.
Upon entering the hotel reception David has to surrender he's belongings and take a couple of questions. One of those question being which animal does he wants to be turned into if he fails the objective of finding a partner within 45 days.
David chooses to be a lobster.
Why lobster ?! Because a lobster can live a long life about 50-100 years. But most importantly because it lives in the sea. And David loves the sea.
David is given a room and he's clock starts ticking. He has 45 days to find a compatible partner.
**Relationships in the hotel are formed based on similar attributes each partner has. For example , A person with an attribute as stupid as a nose bleed has to find another person with nose bleed to be a match**.
So you'll find people taking extremes measures to find a match
Image source https://giphy.com/gifs/a24-the-lobster-26BREdTQgXYadJWH6
It is important to note that the the entire movie revolves around the idea of relationships. Everything in the movie is intentionally made to feel so **artificial**.
The relationships that we witness in the first half of the movie seems ****so forced and fake.****
The first half of the movie is shown in the hotel where David need to find a partner in 45 days to eventually be married and in the second half David is with the loners in the forest.
The loners are a group of ****Single people**** lead by the loner leader Lea Seydoux . The loners too have their own set of strict rules and ideology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9a_Seydoux
Image source https://giphy.com/gifs/a24-colin-farrell-the-lobster-xT4uQCbyQdqPL4ZsKQ
Interestingly it is among the loners that David finds the love of his life . But unfortunately among the loners ****relationships are forbidden****. Any form of relationships among the loners will result in serious consequences.
Image Source https://giphy.com/gifs/filmlinc-nyff-new-york-film-festival-the-lobster-3oEdva32q73jwtGQa4
The short sighted woman saves David from a near death situation and that is the beginning of David and Rachel's chemistry.
The Cast & Crew
The lobster is co-written and directed by 4 time academy award nominie Yorgos Lanthimos and co- written by Efthymis_Filippou. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorgos_Lanthimos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efthymis_Filippou
Yorgos's work include The favourite which won the best picture and 7 other awards at the **72nd British Academy Film Awards.** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Favourite
The Protagonist David is played by the Irish actor Colin Farrell . The narrator of the movie and David's love is played by British actress Rachel Weisz .
The loner leader is played by Lea Seydoux. Other notable actors and actresses in the movie are John Rilley , Ariane Labed .
**Awards & Nominations**
Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou won the best European screenwriter award at the 28th European Film Awards. Apart from this the lobster team managed bag in several other awards and plenty of nominations.
***Bob the Dog(Dog in the movie) went on to win grand jury prize at the*** *****68th Cannes festival*****
**Conclusion : Skip Or Watch ?!**
Yorogs and he's team has done a fantastic job with the comedic performances. My personal favourite of the film is the constant witful social commentary throughout the entire film. It is so good, that it will make you to pause and play it again.
Besides the comedic performances the film does a great job in capturing emotions. **You will not see it coming** , **You'll be enjoying the film and all of a sudden, find yourself dealing with emotion.**
In my opinion this is nothing short of a masterpiece and ****should definitely find a place in your**** *****movies to watch list*****.
If you made it till here then thank you so much. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section , I would love to hear them.
Also you might as well want to check out my noise.cash account . I post short articles around Crypto , Technology and Philosophy. https://noise.cash/u/memesdaily
@memesdaily
10/1/2022
A Simple Bathroom I Designed
My intense procrastination had me take a break for the past couple of weeks from posting here as I had work piling up and project deadlines to meet. Anyway, now that I have almost completed the project I would like to share my work here.
Not many here know that I co-run an Architectural Visualization company where I design Architectural 2d plan and 3d models for residential and commercial projects.
In this following article I shall be sharing a conceptual *****Bathroom Design***** which is part of a bigger project that I was working on.
**The project is a 5 storey , 3 star hotel with 15 rooms , a roof top swimming pool and an in-house fine dining restaurant.** Our company was lucky enough to bag the design contract for this project as there were bigger market players competing for the design contract.
Bathroom 2D Plan
Since the area allocated for the bathroom was small (4 x 1.40)mtrs we had to get a little creative.
Constructing the 3D model
We imported the Cad file into Sketchup to start constructing the 3d model. Here we have the walls constructed in the software and as you can see we have divided the bathroom into two parts , **the shower area** and **the commode - vanity area.**
To show clear distinction between the two areas we used two different tiles here , ***one for the shower area and one for the commode -vanity area.*** We separated the shower area from the rest by using a frosted glass UPVC partition.
For the shower area we used **simple white tiles** starting from the floor and right up to the ceiling. Although the wall tiles and floor tiles in the shower area have the same design, the floor tiles are slightly different in texture to make it ****anti skid****. Lol! that's no brainer.
We decided on ***Stuco grey as the wall paint*** for the vanity area as it goes very well with the vanity area floor tiles. The tiles of the vanity area are ***black & white diagonal checkered tiles***. And the ceiling paint for the entire bathroom is ***Stuco white***.
Sanitary Ware
For the commode we chose ***Jaguar's ceramic wall mount western style commode*** . And for the washing basin we chose ***Cera's washing basin cum cabinet****.* The vanity mirror here is a simple ***Oval Bevelled Mirror***. All of the bathroom fixtures are of the brand ****Jaguar****.
We got a little creative with the shower area fixture by choosing a bronze color shower head.
Renders of the the 3d model
**Top View**
**Side View**
**Shower Area**
If you made it till here then thank you so much. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section , I would love to hear them.
Also you might as well want to check out my Noise.Cash account . I am very active over there and post short articles around Crypto , Technology and Philosophy. https://noise.cash/u/memesdaily
@memesdaily
12/9/2021
The future of fan tokens has arrived
One of my favorite football player Lionel Messi announced last week that he is parting ways with FC Barcelona. This news come off as a surprise to me and to the entire football community around the world. Joining Barcelona football academy at the age of just 13 , Messi indeed has come a long way. **He has ended he's service of 21 years at Barcelona to start a new journey at Paris Saint-Germain F.C**.
It was just last year that Messi renewed he's contract at Barcelona for another 2 years. But due to the limit on football player's salary within La-Liga , Messi and Barca mutually agreed to separate.
This move comes off as a very good news to the struggling French league **Ligue1**. Ligue1 had struggled in the past with lack of viewership and when the Covid pandemic hit, it had made things worse for them.
Messi's move not only brings glory to the Ligue 1 but also some glory to the crypto world as well. Earlier this week with Messi's move to Paris saint-Germain , **Psg became the first club in the history to have done a portion of the football deal in Cryptocurrency for a high profile** ****marquee player.****
The deal consist of a 2 years contract with a salary of 35 million per year. And a possible contract extension to the 3rd year as well. Upon Messi arrival at Psg , Messi was greeted with a welcome package of ****35 million which consisted a significant amount of Psg fan tokens****. In my opinion this is a great move for the Crypto community as tapping into an already well established billion dollar football sector will bring in so much exposure and adoption rate to the cryptocurrencies .
What is a Paris saint-Germain fan token ?
Psg fan token is an **Erc-20** token which are generally asserts that represent ***proof of membership.*** This Erc-20 token is created by Socios for Psg. The loyal fans of the club can get hold of these tokens through socios . These fan tokens comes with a lot of utility, for example the token **holders get to vote for small decisions within the club like Jersey design, player's vacations destination , the music played in the home stadium**. Apart from these, there are additional perks like **exclusive player interviews and training videos and other fun activities**. If you are a football fanatic you will be drooling right now reading about all these exclusive perks. https://www.socios.com/
Image & Token details source - Coin marketcap https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/paris-saint-germain-fan-token/
Token Details
Psg launched their fan token last year at the price of 5 dollars per token. The max supply of Psg is at 20,000,000 PSG and the current circulating supply is at around 2,906,328 PSG.
Few days back the Psg fan token hit the all time high of 60$ per token. The token has a market capitalization of about $52 million and hit a crazy trading volume of almost 1 billion upon Messi's arrival.
Image source - Coinmarketcap https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/paris-saint-germain-fan-token/markets/
These fan token are available on various popular exchanges like binance and Hitbtc and at the time of writing this article is trading at about **$41.**
About Socios.com
Socios the company behind the creation of these fan tokens has multiple partnership with various other football clubs like Barcelona , Juventus , Manchester city and Arsenal.
**The have also extended their Partnership outside of football to other sports like Cricket, Basketball and the very famous fighting championship** ****UFC**** **.**
Socios Ceo Alexandre Dreyfus claims that the the fan token model is very well accepted by the fans and has *already generated close to around $200 million for its partners*.
Final notes
In my honest opinion, I am just thrilled by the fact that crypto makes insane ideas like this possible. Economically speaking the fan token model does creates multiple revenue streams for the club issuing it. And as the adoption of fan tokens grow, we may as well see it as a **legal tender**?! . **Who knows ?! Maybe one day I will be buying an el-classico tickets with some Barcelona fan token.**
Let me know your thoughts on Messi's departure from Barca. Will the Messi magic continue to prevail in France ?
Thank you for reading.
I often post content around Crypto,Philosophy ,Technology and you can check out my other posts by clicking over here https://read.cash/r/memesdaily
13/8/2021
@memesdaily
Playtest : Sci-Fi Horror (Review)
I am really excited to announce that I will now be reviewing movies and television series once a while . I would really appreciate movie connoisseur to give me suggestions on how I can improve my reviews.
Today I am going to review an episode from the television-series **Black Mirror**, that I recently discovered. **Black Mirror is probably one of the best anthology sci-fi** television series that I have come across and I am really excited to share my thoughts on it.
Playtest premiered on Netflix on 21 October 2016 and is the second episode of the 3rd season.
**What is the storyline ?**
The episode is about an young adult named Cooper who has been grounded at home for years due to his sick dad. Upon the death of he's dad , Cooper plans a world tour to have a change in environment. Apparently after dads death, he is not in talking terms with he's mother .
On the tour he encounters a bad incident where he's bank account is hacked. And due to this he forced to take up a job for some money to buy he's return flight ticket.
He takes up a volunteering job to test a sophisticated AI- augmented reality personal survival horror game for a famous Video-game company. The game is designed to dig into the person's deepest and darkest fears and simulate the fears in the game. Shit scary huh ?!
**Cast and Crew**
The episode playtest was written by British screenwriter , producer and the creator of Black Mirror Charlie Brooker himself.
And the episode was directed by American film maker Dan Trachtenberg. Trachtenberg is famously know for his horror thriller film 10 Clover field, which went on to win him the directors Guild of America Award
The protagonist Cooper is played by an American actor and former hockey player Wyatt Hawn Russell. Russell does have experience working with horror films, he has worked in the horror film overload.
I Have to say that it is clearly evident from he's facial expressions in the episode that he is gripped with fear and passes on the same emotion to the audience.
Nigerian-born British actress Wunmi Mosaku makes her appearance as katie in the episode and is Shou's assistant. The very experienced Hannah John-Kamen plays Sonja, and is Coopers girlfriend in the episode. Her natural looking smirky face had me confused to thinking that she was plotting against him. The Gaming company CEO Shou is played by Japanese actor Ken Yamamura as show in the above image.
**Awards and nominations**
The Playtest graphics team led by Justin Hutchinson-Chatburn did get nominated for BAFTA Craft Awards under the Visual and Graphic Effects section
**You can watch the episode** **here** https://www.netflix.com/in/title/70264888
**Conclusion**
In my honest opinion this is a must watch for all science fiction fanatics out there . One of my favorite lines from the movie is when Sato says says*****" In an immersive horror game I have always liked to make the player jump , Afterwards you feel good , you glow. why ?! Because you are alive. You Have faced your greatest fear in the safe environment , it liberates you "***** and I have to say it was at this moment I really felt the essence and thrill of the episode.
Thank you for reading. Also check out my blog here https://read.cash/r/memesdaily
@memesdaily
12/8/2021
A Spectrum Of Personalities
Almost every weekend my friends and myself get together for a couple of beers at the bar. And while we chug down beers like water, (Yes, I shamelessly admit we all are alcoholics) we ruminate and discuss the mundane thoughts in and around life. In our previous meet up over drinks, a friend of mine told me that he feels uncomfortable around me because **I keep changing my views/ideas every once a while. He said this periodic change of views make me indecisive and lack in character**. All my friends are very loving and they take good care of me. They all have good intentions for me and I am certain about that, but upon hearing this statement , my mind was instantly put into an introspection mode.
To be honest a part of what he said is true. **Indecisiveness is indeed unhealthy and is a consequence of constant change of ideas in the mind.** But what I disagree with is he's remark about lack in character. Changing ideas from time to time in my opinion is not a flaw or a bad trait in anyone's character. I personally believe that in this ever changing complex world , changing your ideas every once a while based on solid rationale is a sign of learning.
Personalities Exist On A Spectrum
Lately I have come to a realization that over the past couple of years I have been unconsciously living multiple personalities that represent a particular idea or a view. Okay wait !!! before you start to think I have some sort of multiple personality disorder, let me stop you . *I don't*. **The multiple personalities on a spectrum are just personalities of mine, that represent particular ideas or views without any bias of my own***. Let me explain this with an example to help you understand this better.
Photo by tao he on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/@gabriellic?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText https://unsplash.com/s/photos/spectrum?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText
Consider a spectrum as shown, it is filled with bright colors from Red to Violet. Each of these different colors represent a different unique personality that is able to fully absorb its corresponding ideas. For simplicity sake lets assume the color green. **Now Green for me mostly represent a personality that is associated with being religious**.
So basically what I do is every time when someone tries to tell me something about any religion, **I switch myself from my normal personality to a personality that is able to absorb the conversation about religion**. **This helps me absorb the dialogue fully without bringing in any biases of mine**. This way I am able to put myself out there, in their shoes and view things from their perspective and get full essence of the idea.
Okay now you might ask, *How can any idea of a religion be backed by a rational thought ?* If you have been following my pervious posts you know I operate very rationally and if I operate rationally I should be having a rational backing to my ideas about religion right ?!
***Science argues that religion is institutionalized fiction*** . And I understand why they say that. But for me I do not question the existence of God because for sure, I do not know and nobody does. Also science still can't explain all the mysteries that occur in our cosmos. Hence from what I know right now and what I am able to rationally process right now is **Why does religions exist and the need of it?!**.
This changes the narrative from questioning the existence of god or any higher order energy that controls the universe, to coming close at understanding the reality. **For my religious personality it is all about changing the narrative and asking different questions when there isn't much observable evidence.** This technique lets me absorb in ideas which I believe are relevant to me and discard the ones that don't make much sense to me.
Personalities can be literally anything on the spectrum , it could be a personality that is associated with a particular Philosophical idea or a personality that is associated to a particular cultural idea.
You see, I live in India and India is culturally diverse. Stubbornness with one idea and not letting yourself open to other ideas in my opinion is ridiculous. ***The point here is to have multiple personalities for each culture without any*** *****own bias***** ***this helps you fully experience the beauty of each culture***.
Merger Of Thought Processes
A personality can also merge with other personality to form a new personality altogether. This personality can give rise to new ideas. Take for example the simple act of thinking , the voice in our mind in just one language that we all are comfortable with, which is our mother tongue (English for me).
Photo by Joshua Fuller on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/@joshuafuller?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText https://unsplash.com/s/photos/multiple-personalities?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText
If we learn different languages and force the voice inside of our brain to think in a different language, then the thought process will be different. Merge the different language voices in your head and boom!!!! **You have taken your thought process to a whole new level.**
Society disdain the act of changing mind often
Once an idea is fully understood the next step is to change your mind. And changing your mind often, is looked down upon in the society. The people around you, want you to be **confident and decisive with every thing you do**. Changing your mind often gives away that you don't really know what you want. You see, the point here is that we live in this highly complex society and it is never possible to be fully confident at any given point of time. There are always things we aren't aware off and that is why its important to put yourself in other's shoes and view life / ideas from their perspective.
Final Notes
The goal with multiple personalities on a spectrum is to aid in understanding any absurd idea better, but sometimes overload of information can paralyze your thought process. Another downside is being **way too much open may result in you being frequently influenced by others.** The idea here is to strike a balance between both worlds and this can be mastered only with practice.
You can check out my other posts on my blog [here] https://read.cash/r/memesdaily
Thank you for reading
@memesdaily
Date: 9/8/2021
Contracts run the world
This evening as I was taking a stroll in the city, I witnessed a disheartening incident. There was a man sleeping on the footpath besides the road. Judging by he's clothes he appeared homeless. Suddenly out of nowhere 3 Police officer appeared at the spot and he was awakened by them. They tried to drag him into the police van against his will. The homeless man continued to resist, this resulted in the officers assaulting him further. Infuriated by the ill treatment I decided to get myself involved. I asked the officers to handle the situation in a humane way and the reason for assaulting the poor man, to which they replied despite several warnings he keeps coming back to the same place to sleep and in allowing him, it will encourage other homeless to do the same, thus causing inconvenience in the locality. The Police took him into custody and was released later. As per my knowledge of the locality there are not many shelters for the homeless especially if you are a male adult.
On my way back home I was bothered by this thought of how far humanity has progressed and yet we haven't fixed poverty. *We live in this capitalistic society that fails to accommodate the ones that don't perform*. So I ask, What is society ? Why do we even need to abide by the rules? In the case of the homeless man, he was better off being free than be bound to the rules. We may also think of ourselves as free beings in this society, but how free are we ?
In 1651 Thomas Hobbes an English philosopher published a book called Leviathan on the entire existence of the society and why we need it. *In his book he mentions that existing in free society where there is an abundance of freedom and literally no rules to abide by, as an absolutely chaotic place to live*. **He calls this hypothetical situation as the** ****state of nature**** **where living is brutal and short**. Living in such a state of nature is pure chaos as there is no culture , no art , no security, and definitely not a place to do business. It will be a darwinian era where the fittest will only survive. Our entire civilization will collapse. So how to avoid such societal collapse ?!
**Agree on a contract to trade your** ****absolute**** ****Freedom for Security****.
Social Contract In Barter System
Imagine yourself in a **lawless society** as a farmer that grows Oranges, and in a nearby farm there is another farmer that grows Apples. Say One day you get tired of eating oranges and the other farmer gets tired of eating his apples. Now there are two option here, since both live in a no rules society, you could steal the apples and he could steal your oranges. Or both could agree upon a **Social Contract** that prevents stealing from each other and be willing to exchange oranges for apples.
The first option is violent and will always keep both on the edge. The second option completely avoids theft and violence. Both farmers as rational thinkers are motivated to go for the second option by signing a mutual contract where both ****give up**** **their** ***freedom to steal from each other for the safety of each other***.
Social Contract In Monarchy
Thomas Hobbs believed in an authoritarian system where it was necessary to create rulers/kings as they would be the one to maintain and uphold the social contract. People as a collective decide on a ruler and give unlimited power to the ruler to maintain and uphold the social contract. The social contract here was simple, **maintain peace and safety for the people, so people can focus on better things in life**. But Thomas had a flaw in his theory, the idea of an authoritarian system was not an efficient one. From history we know that having unlimited power with one person or a small group of people results in a tyrant. **A tyrant can then possibly create a chaotic environment same as the** ****state of nature****.
Modern Day Social Contract
John Locke another philosopher believed in Thomas Hobbs idea of the state of nature. He Believed that humans were born completely free in the state of nature, however that doesn't mean that every act of humans were allowed.
In his book the two treaties on government he explains that humans start with basic rights like **Life, Liberty, Property**. Which means that **No one can kill each other, no one can enslave anyone , and no one could steal from other.**
These 3 basic rights need to be provided to each and every human by default. Locke didn't believe in the idea of an authoritarian figure like a king/ruler. He believed that people should collectively form a **Government** and it was the duty of the Government to protect and uphold the 3 rights through a social contract. The Government's role is to mediate and make sure that everyone is following this rule and punish those that aren't following it. And in an event of bad performance by the government we the people must have the power to overthrow the government and re-elect a new one. This is called the **Democracy**.
In modern society we give up some of our freedom in exchange for security and other benefits from the government. We pay taxes to the government and get to use public services like public roads, toilets, and in unfortunate events we get to use emergency services like the Ambulance, Police or firefighting services.
Final Notes
Under the Social Contract you don't get to choose if you agree to the contract or not. You are just forced into agreeing it by default. Like the homeless man who was born into the system and didn't have the choice to agree/disagree to the contract. Imo he could have lived a free life by not following to the rules of society. Stealing or begging was survival for him and that is not an immoral way of living because **morality is a product of a social contract**. If he didn't agree to the social contract in the first place then morality doesn't exist for him. We agree to what is possible and what is not possible with the social contract and that is how **morality is born**.
Imo social contracts sometimes can be unfair to people. Think of a gay person born into a society that doesn't allow homosexuality. Study shows sexuality/sexual preference is not something you get to pick but born with it. One just can't fathom the amount of discrimination gay people face on a daily basis.
Thank you for reading.
7/26/2021
@memesdaily
Few months back I came across a random post on twitter that said read.cash/noise.cash team is building a new product . Does anyone here have an update on it ?
Our Flawed Morality
Morality is a human construct used to differentiate between what is good and bad. However there is a flaw in the fundamentals of how we all evaluate morality. Through this post I intend share my insights ( *greatly influenced by Thomas Nagel* ), on why I believe our moral evaluation is much complex than what we think it is.
To aid in understanding this better, I would like to share an incident that occurred in my life. Coincidently, this incident that I am about to share also happens to be similar to a story most philosophy students get told. So if you are a philosophy student and you come across a similar story, *Trust me!!! I didn't make this up, it freaking happened with me*
Moral Responsibility
This incident occurred on a cold windy night in the year of 2015, were I and my friend was traveling back home after attending a party that we both were invited to.
Initially I had planned to leave the party early and hence we mutually agreed to get our own transport which in this case was our bikes. Like all parties we too had a ton of alcohol. At the start I promised myself, Just one glass of whiskey . The alcohol got into me. My plans changed and I decided to wait longer (bad idea) as a result got more drunk. Lol!!!. My friend on the other hand was also drunk but not as drunk as me. We had a great time. The party ended and now it was time for us to go home. Completely intoxicated I started my bike for a long journey home. My Friend somewhat drunk followed me with his bike. We decided to take the same route as our homes were nearby. Both of us were vibing on our journey back until a freak accident.
As we were riding, suddenly out of nowhere a cat jumped in front of my friends bike and he ran over it. Immediately we stopped at the scene to check on the cat only to find out it had died. Hearing the squeak of the wheels a man appeared at the scene. He claimed to be the owner of the cat(which I still don't believe). He started to accuse my friend of killing he's cat. My drunk ass tried the best to explain the owner of the cat that it was not anyone's fault but just a misfortune. We both reeked of alcohol and the owner of the cat used this opportunity, to call the cops on us if we didn't give him the compensation. After an hour or so of arguing my friend eventually decided to pay the amount to avoid further consequences of the cops getting involved and we fled the scene. Both of us got home safely, I passed out on my bed and for my friend I don't think he slept, obviously because he *felt responsible for the cat's death* .
So a philosophical question here, **Is he morally responsible for the cats death?** Most would argue yes! because he killed the cat. I agree taking a life is indeed immoral. But you see both of us first violated a rule by drunk riding. And for an instance assume, had the cat jumped into the same spot a few moments earlier then I would have been the one to run over the cat right?!.
My point here is that we can't blame or rather question the morality of my friend because of the outcome. Yes the outcome was bad. But he didn't intentionally want to kill the cat, it was an accident. The cat decided to come in his way, which was something out of he's control. My friend got unlucky and that led **you to question his morality** . So how can one judge the morality of an individual when luck is a factor?! As mentioned earlier we both committed the immoral act of drunk riding but due to just luck the outcome ended up being an unfortunate one for my friend. So who do we morally blame here then? Imo this is the part where morality appears to be flawed.
Fix The Flaw ?
Thomas Nagel an American philosopher, speaks about this flaw of morality in his essay called the **Moral luck** and he describes the different types of moral luck that one must take note of before passing a moral judgment. Taking account of the different types of moral luck that exist, one can improve moral evaluation greatly. We shall look at a few of these. If you are curious to know more about moral evaluation then I highly recommend you to check it out here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Nagel https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-luck/
****Circumstantial Moral Luck****
This is a type of moral luck that is brought onto one based on his/her circumstances. For example, a child born to a terrorist in most of the case will be raised to become a terrorist and follow " resort to violence " ideology. Similarly a child born into a soldiers family , if grows up to be a soldier, will be seen as a hero. Clearly the child didn't get to choose who to be born into in either of the case.
****Resultant Moral Luck****
Resultant luck is when two people perform the same task and the outcome ends up being different for each other. Consider the same incident I mentioned earlier. Myself and my friend performed the same act of drunk riding. We both were morally wrong here but an external factor that was something out of anyone's control changed the end outcome for my friend.
****Constitutive Moral Luck****
Certain toxic behaviour are picked up through the genes of parents. For example if you are born to parents that are short-tempered you are also likely to be short-tempered. Although toxic behaviour can be corrected with counseling, it is just that one has to put extra efforts to correct it than the one born without it.
Final Notes
The teachings of Nagel does help in understanding moral evaluation better. In my opinion ***nothing in philosophy hold eternally true*** including this. But for now this is the closest we have to making some sense of morality.
References - Moral luck https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-luck/
Thank you for reading. Also feel free to check out my other posts here https://read.cash/@memesdaily
Virtue Signalling Is Vice And Virtuous
Modern Society deems Virtue Signalling to be a vice than a virtue, but to me it appears to be both. In this post I will be first discussing the vice and then give an explanation to why it appears to be virtuous as well.
Before I get into explaining the effects of Virtue Signalling it is important we revisit the definition of it. **Virtue Signalling is when he/she is giving the audience an illusion of contributing to moral discourse, when in reality he/she intends to appear virtuous in front of the audience.** It is more of a public image building project than solving or addressing the real issue.
Why we virtue signal
One of the reasons I believe why we virtue signal is because we are continuously surrounded by virtue signallers, just look around Politicians, Media Influencers and Celebrities. These individuals crave for social approval and have no sense of rational thinking. They take side of the larger audience even when in reality the audience is wrong. Being in an environment full of virtue signallers, make you question what your moral duties are as a member of this society and that eventually leads you to become a virtue signaller. And as you become one of them your actions of virtue signalling cause the same fate for someone that looks up to you.
**Rise of Social media**
Almost everyday when I tune into my socials like Instagram or Twitter I am instantly disheartened with the amount of virtue signaling I pickup. The level of virtue signalling has got so bad that, one is now not able distinguish what is real. It is clear by now that social media has blown up virtue signalling out of proportions than anything in the past .So now you might ask,
***Did virtue signalling exist before social media*** ?
Yes, but at a small scale. You see, we humans are social creatures we need to coexist with other humans to grow and achieve our goals.
Even before social media virtue signalling existed but it was very difficult to execute compared to what it is today. Back then people got to know other people only in the physical real world and as a result it was easy to pick up on fake people. **With social media it is a different story as there is no effective method for tracking reputation of an individual** and one can easily fake their personality to appear perfect.
The Vice in Virtue Signalling
Virtue signallers can mislead audience into criticizing something or someone in an unfair way. The audience in most cases may have the heart in the right place, it is their lack of ability to think rationally that causes them to join the act of virtue signalling. A popular example when talked about virtue signalling is the *immigrant issues*. You will see that just before elections politicians come out with ridiculous statements like the **countries should be borderless** just with the motive to win the hearts of the immigrants. Rationally speaking this is not possible. How can you possibly let anyone into your country?! What about the social benefits that's meant for the citizens of the country?! Do they have to share it now ?! And as a result politicians are able to divide people into two different extremes.
Virtue signallers in some cases try to outdo previous signallers by criticizing more harshly just to be recognized as **more virtuous than the crowd**. As a result of this virtue signallers may cross the line and do things that are unlawful.
The Virtue in Virtue Signalling
While I have explained the negative effects of virtue signalling it is important to see the other side of the coin as well. Here are a few reasons I believe virtue signalling is beneficial. Some of the religions we know of have practices like fasting which is scientifically proven to be a good healthy practice. Fasting in Muslims the during Ramadan helps detox the body. Here in some cases you will have followers of the religion trying to demonstrate that they are more religious to other members by trying to strictly follow this practice. This signalling in one way is good as it drives more people into being more strict with fasting. In most cases virtue signallers like the religious leaders here in this example are aware that they are virtue signalling to the crowd.
When it comes to raising money for a good cause virtue signalling can be very beneficial. Get a few popular figures to donate money and then signal it. And you will find people competing with other people to donate more towards the cause just to appear more virtuous.
Conclusion
The answer to Virtue Signalling being right or wrong is paradoxical. There are situations where signalling is demanded and situations where it is not necessary. In my opinion the ability to think rationally in a particular situations will allow you make the right decision.
If you made it till here thank you so much. Also feel free to check out my other posts here https://read.cash/@memesdaily
TL;DR
1) Virtue Signalling is both a vice and a virtue. As situations arises one must use critical thinking to know the difference and act accordingly.
2) Beware of Social media as it is mostly filled with virtue signallers that lack critical thinking.
Why Ethics In Artificial Intelligence Is Important
Science fiction movies portray a sophisticated Artificial Intelligence taking over the humans. Well, in my opinion that's bit too exaggerated at least considering the near future. For me what is more likely to happen or rather is happening is the **unethical use of Artificial Intelligence by humans on other humans for nefarious intention.**
Humans always game the system
According to me there are 2 types of system that humans have managed to game. One occurs naturally through evolution and the other is man made.
1. Biological system
2. Artificially intelligent system
Before I start let me give you a quick primer on Artificial Intelligence. **Ai is a term given for a computer simulation that is capable to think just like humans**. Ai was introduced to the world back in 1956 and gained popularity in the year 2009 with the exponential rise of internet. This is because Ai requires large number of data to be train well and the internet made this possible.
Biological System
If you look at the brief history of evolution, it shows how we started off as a single cell on this planet that evolved to become an organism. The organism realized it had higher energy requirements to survive so it consumed smaller organisms as food. Because energy was the basis of survival for it an incentive was introduced into it , to do it on a continuous basis over and over again. Similarly it realized it had to multiply in order to become a complex organism and hence it produced similar copies of itself. Fast forward today nothing much has changed. Humans basically have this same survival philosophy. We need energy so we consume food and get rewarded with a good feeling and when we reproduce boom!! again a good feeling.
The point I am trying to make here is that today we have gamed this biological system just for the reward part.
Take for example the Junk food vs Healthy food debate we have with our self every time we decide to eat. Large fast food corporations have spend billions of dollars in R&D to perfect their unhealthy food to taste better and give us that good feeling after consumption
Artificially Intelligent System
One of the examples that come to my mind when I think of gaming the Artificial intelligence is the 2016 US election. A quick disclaimer: I am not from the US and I don't support any of the political sides.
Tech giants like Google and Facebook were the early movers in the AI space. They had deployed Ai algorithms on their platform to study user behavior and to increase user engagement. What they didn't expect is that someone can use this system to promote political narratives. People on their phone constantly saw political ads and propagandas , the more they saw it the more they got of it which later influenced their vote . One candidate was very successful in capitalizing on this and did end up winning the election.
**Ai vs Humans**
Another area where ethical use of AI should be exercised is in the Job sector and this is a more serious problem we are facing right now. Large corporation are aggressively implementing Ai and Automation in their industry to maximize profits this leave the employees without jobs. And what's even worse is the fact that these **jobless people are in a vicious circle of reskilling as per the market demands and these market demands keeps changing with Ai being introduced in that sector.** Even in the software industry the bottom layer of software is being eaten up.
Conclusion
Any technology is a double edged sword. It is our duty to construct strict policies that protect us from any kind of exploitation. At the same time we must create better incentives for tech corporations so they don't feel the need to game the system. I would like to end this with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi
****There is enough for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.****
If you made it till here, Thank you so much. Please note this is my original work and is posted across different socials. You can also check out my other posts here https://read.cash/@memesdaily
TL;DR
1. Humans always game the system for greed.
2. Biological system is one of those systems humans have gamed . Our eating habits have been gamed by large fast food corporations so that they can profit off us.
3. Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool that needs to used in an ethical manner.
4. Policies must be introduced to protect the common people from use of unethical Ai and at the same time not jeopardize innovation.
Astronomy : The antidote to arrogance
The development of the cognitive ability in the humans has got us all this far. Along with the gradual development of our cognition over centuries, **Arrogance** has also found its way to develop and thrive within us. Arrogance arise when one possess a toxic Superiority Complex
Arrogance and Astronomy
On an individual level the arrogance of a person is totally justified in society as it is a way to keep unwanted people away. To some extent it is true, being arrogant indeed keeps you safe from being taken advantage of. The problem with being arrogant is you become a person that is difficult to work with. The person working with an arrogant person always feels this sense of inferiority. Another bad consequence of arrogance is this high sense of inflated self ego that refrains you from asking for help whenever needed.
Astronomy a Humbling Science
Astronomy is the study of the universe as a whole and all of the celestial bodies within it. For me I was driven to astronomy mainly because of curiosity to find answers. With time I realized how much of an humbling experience it is. Our universe is 13 billion years old filled with an infinite number of galaxies possibly just like ours. Take for instance our galaxy the Milkyway it has close to 300 million planets that can support life. Our solar system which consist of the 8 planets including our home earth is just 4.5 billion years old compared to 13 billion age of the galaxy , we are just a fraction of it. Just think of the number of extra terrestrial life that could exist in other solar system of our own galaxy that has the conditions to support life. **Definitely we can not say that we are alone**. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way
So what makes us think we are the special ones ? You may argue our **Intelligence**. Take into consideration the technological advancements we have made in the last couples of decades. Consider the internet for example. We built the first working prototype of the internet back in 1960s. Today the internet has changed everything as we know. Now On in this context think of what internet or technology will be if it was a million years old ? One can't fathom what a million year old technology would look like. So now what happens if an older alien civilization possess such a technology **Definitely we are not intelligent either**
The Maya civilization were the early adopters astronomy. Astronomers held a highly respected noble position among the kings and emperors. Astronomers would look at the various alignment of the planets , stars and then decide on a war with an enemy or construction of some architecture. But here is the thing, the astronomy that they followed was flawed and we realized this with time. Today the position of mars has nothing to do with a country going on a war with another. Building a skyscraper in Dubai today has nothing to do with the position of Jupiter. This shows how the entire civilization was wrong about the concept of astronomy for centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_civilization
The reason I mentioned about the maya civilization is to give a perspective on a possibility that even the modern science we know today could also be proven wrong by the next civilization that succeed us. Maybe AI robots .**Still feel intelligent?**
Religion and Arrogance
For me I like to think of earth as a spaceship that is moving in this universe and religion as a user manual of the spaceship (earth). The user manual has been introduced with a good intention. But just like any other user manual they are never perfect to solve a problem.
Religion no doubt has its benefits, but it has also contributed arrogance in some form. **It teaches us that having faith in your belief system requires you to think that everyone else is wrong**
Conclusion
The conclusion here is to be fluidic with your attitude that is to have a healthy sense of Arrogance and humility as situation arises. In the bigger picture we as humans are nothing. We are just a species that functions with an overinflated sense of superiority. Learning about astronomy can reduce some of that superiority we all feel and replace it with some humility. I would like to end this post with a quote from Jiddu Krishnamurti.
**"Our purpose on this planet is no more grander than that of an ant"**
If you made it till here thank you so much also you might want to check out my other posts here. Please note the above is my original work and is posted across my socials. https://read.cash/@memesdaily
Tl;DR
1. Society has erroneously normalized Arrogance.
2. Having healthy amounts of arrogance is a must to grow in this current society of ours otherwise you will be taken for granted .
3. Astronomy teaches you humility/modesty because you realize in the bigger picture of the universe we as humans are nothing and we have no more grander purpose than that of an ant.
Ethereum's Scaling Dilemma
The Ethereum's scalability solution has created a dichotomy within its fellow community members. With members proposing different scaling solution like **Rollsups**, **Sidechains**, **Plasma**, **Channels**. Each ones comes with its merits and demerits and I plan to unravel it in this post.
Royalty Free Image by Muhammad Salman from Pixabay https://pixabay.com/users/imnamlas-15727080/
Understanding Ethereum
Before we get into scaling lets us first understand the various layer of the Eth block chain. Eth fundamentally has 4 layers. For now I will only be talking about the first two layers.
1. Layer 1
2. Layer 2
Scaling Solutions
So basically there are 2 ways to scale the ethereum block chain one way uses layer 1 and the other uses layer 2.
1. Layer 1 scaling solution is to simply improve the throughput of the network by allowing more transaction capacity.
2. Layer 2 scaling solution it to reduce the load on the main chain by moving most of the interaction off-chain.
**Layer 1 scaling**
One of the proposed way to improve the transactional throughput of the network is by increasing the the number of sophisticated nodes on network, but soon the eth team realized that this solution would lead to centralization as normal users of the network wont be able to afford a super computer to run these sophisticated nodes. To fix this the concept of sharding was introduced.
**Sharding**
Sharding is the process of distributing the computing and storage workload into smaller parts called **shards**. This way each nodes no longer have to process the entire networks transactional load.
The concept of sharding works only when Ethereum moves from the proof of work consensus to proof of stake consensus. This in short is what the team has planned for layer 1 scaling of ethereum and is popularly know as Ethereum 2.0
Layer 2 scaling
Layer 2 scaling is all about moving most of the interaction off-chain instead of doing it on the main chain. The main chain will have smart contracts deployed on it with its role to just perform basic function like deposits/withdrawal and running proofs.
There are many layer2 solutions but we just need to know most widely discussed ones.
1. *Plasma*
2. *Rollups*
**Plasma**
Plasma is framework wherein the idea is to create multiple child chains of the parent chain(ethereum). Smart contracts deployed on the parent chain allows the child chains to operate under the parent chain and have interaction with it whenever needed. The plasma uses the concept of merkle trees in its functionality and in this way major chuck of the transaction is offloaded onto the child chains thus allowing cheap and fast transaction. In my previous post I have explained the concept of merkle tree very briefly please do check it out here http://plasma.io/plasma-deprecated.pdf https://read.cash/@memesdaily/merkle-the-unsung-hero-of-decentralization-94708f98
One of the demerits of plasma is the long waiting period for withdrawal of funds out of the network.
**Rollups**
Rollups function in the similar way to plasma but are slightly different. Rollups bundle up transactions into a batch and send them off to side chains to compute while maintaining the State root value on the main chain. If there are changes in the merkle tree then the state root is updated back on the main chain. This is made possible with the concept of merkle trees. The batches create scalability because they are not using Ethereum for any computation but just as a data storage system. Rollups also solve the game theory issue of data availability problem that exist in the plasma.
There are two types of rollups
1. *Optimistic Rollups*
2. *Zk rollups*
**Optimistic Rollups**
Optimistic Rollups is a mechanism in which when the state root that is submitted on main chain is by default assumed to be true unless challenged by someone. In an event of a fraud the challenger who challenged the batch is rewarded and the sequencer that submitted that batch will be punished by taking over his/hers staked Eth. This punishment is called slashing. For now the community has decided to go ahead with optimistic rollups as a layer two scaling solution.
**Zk rollups**
Zk rollup on the other hand are fast compared to optimistic rollups. Zk rollups submit the batch the state root and a cryptographic proof that the state root is correct. Proofs can be verified on chain for a reasonable cost. Therefore there is no need of fraud proofs like optimistic rollups. Zk rollups are technically complex and does not allow an easy way for existing smart contracts to migrate whereas optimistic rolls do.
Conclusion
For now Ethereum has a long way to go in terms of scalability. With just the implementation of layer 1 scaling, the transaction per second is said to improve to **4k tps**, with both layer 1 and layer 2 the tps is said to improve to **100k tps**. All of the proposed scaling mechanism have some tradeoffs which will eventually evolve with time.
I have tried to keep this short and less technical, but if you want a more detailed information on the above please check out vitalik's blog here https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html
If you made it till here and found it helpful please do consider checking out my other socials like steemit and hive. https://steemit.com/@memesdaily https://hive.blog/@memesdaily
Please note: The above is my original work based upon the interpretation of vitalik's blog and is posted on my different socials under the user name - memesdaily .
TL;DR
1. Ethereums network will be scaled at two layers. Layer 1 and layer2
2. Layer 1 scaling includes change from proof work to proof of stake and by sharding.
3. In Layer 2 the scaling will be done through optimistic rollups.
4. Scaling up with sharding and rollups at layer 1 and layer 2 respectively will improve ethereum's transaction per second from 14 to 100k transaction per second
MERKLE : The unsung hero of decentralization
The media has extensively glorified Satoshi Nakamoto , Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood, and there is nothing wrong as these individuals are the enablers of decentralization to the masses, but in the process we all forget to accredit the individuals behind innovation like the ledger systems, cryptography that forms the fundamental building blocks for the decentralized internet we all enjoy today.
Introduction
In this post I would like to introduce cryptographer **Ralph Merkle** and he's work the **Merkle Trees** that powers Bitcoin ,Ethereum and other blockchains as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Merkle
What is a merkle tree ?
Merkle tree is a hash based data structure in the from of a tree that is used for data verification and synchronization. It was founded in 1979 and gained it's practical use case with the rise of the internet.
Hashing
Before we dive deep into Merkle tree we need to first understand what hashing is. **Hashing is the process of converting an input** (an Input can be data such as a document or text ) **into fixed size text** **using a mathematical algorithm called hash function**. **This fixed size text is the output and is called Hash value.** No hash value can ever be the same.
Merkle tree and How it works
Merkle tree is a structure of hash values as illustrated in the image below. It starts with a data block which acts as the input. Here is a detailed step by step explanation
Step 1
Data block 1 is hashed to Hash value 1 , ( It is also called Child 1)
Data block 2 is hashed to Hash value 2 , ( Child 2)
Data block 3 is hashed to Hash value 3 , ( Child 3)
Data block 4 is hashed to Hash value 4 . ( Child 4)
Step 2
Hash value 1 and Hash value 2 are hashed to create Hash value 5 (also called Parent)
Hash value 3 and Hash value 4 are hashed to create Hash value 6 (Parent)
Step 3
Hash value 5 and hash value 6 are hashed to create hash value 7.
The obtain hash value 7 is called **Root hash**
The root hash is the main hash and contains the details of all the concatenate hash values( ie Parents and Children). Using the Root hash value along with a few concatenated Parent or children hash value we can verify all the data blocks.
Application of the Merkle Tree
****Torrent Network****
Torrent is a peer to peer file transfer service. It is designed to be an anonymous network of users sharing files to each other, so how do you trust someone sending files to you on this network ?
**Answer. Merkle trees**
As explained above the files are split into small pieces similar to data blocks. When you download the torrent file or Magnet link you are essentially downloading the **Root hash value** **from a trusted source**.
Once you have the root hash value you can then download its parents (hash value 5, hash value 6 ) and children (Hash value 1,2,3,4) from unknown users of the network. We can then verify that if these downloaded Hashes Values are correct by concatenating them and confirming that it is equal to our root hash we obtained from the trusted source. The process is repeated until the entire Merkle tree downloaded from the network.
****Blockchain****
Writing too much data onto the block chain is very expensive and is considered inefficient. Using a merkle tree **thousands of transaction can be coupled into one single string called a root hash. This root hash value is then written onto the chain** And by using the root hash value and a short proof one can confirm the authenticity and details of the transaction on the chain. This entire process is called a merkle commitment.
Example of Chains running the merkle commitments are Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Conclusion
Just like Ralph there are plenty of geniuses out there who have contributed immensely and are the silent heroes of the decentralized world. And we should all give the credit where due. In the coming few weeks I shall be covering some of them.
Feel free to comment down below your thoughts and questions.
**If you made it till here you might as well want to check me out on my other socials like** **Hive** **and** **steemit****. I actively post there and also post different content at times.** https://hive.blog/@memesdaily https://steemit.com/@memesdaily
TL;DR
1) Ralph Merkle founded Merkle trees. Merkle tree is a hash based data structure in the from of a tree structure.
2) Hashing is process assigning a unique id (hash value) to a piece of data. Data here is the input and can be a document, image or a transaction. The output obtained here is called hash value .No hash value can ever be the same
3) Hashed value are then concatenated with other hashed value to produce a new hash value. This forms a merkle tree
4) Merkle trees are used in Torrent network and most block chain networks
**Please note the above is my original work and was posted on my different socials across hive and steemit . If I am violating any community rules please feel free to get in touch with me through the comment section.**
Thank you
@memesdaily
@memesdaily
