What to write about

English, Otros

Twenty-two years ago I started this blog (about half my current age!) For a while I wrote quite a bit about technical topics (e.g., how to setup certain services in Linux), life events, and random thoughts. Occasionally I would get some positive feedback for the technical entries, or I would help myself (searching in Google a solution and finding it in my own blog, realizing I already went through it, fix it and shared it!). At other times trolls would spend some time leaving comments accusing me of doing this just to show off, that I should party more and have a life, or just some classic old fashion attempts at offending me or other commenters.

This writings opened opportunities such as writing articles for magazines, or writing a full Ubuntu guide. But also some of the shared (more philosophical) thoughts ended up unexpectedly/unwillingly hurting close people in my life, which strongly influenced me, conditioned future publications and removed the incentive to write as often and free as before. That original approach of openly sharing (at times naive or not fully informed) thoughts mostly disappeared. I kind of lost a habit that helped me vent, express myself, structure and test my thoughts, or simply produce content that could be useful to others.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to recover that freedom to write a blog post about whatever, recover that more naive approach, not so much aware of how the shared thoughts at one random point in your life may condition your future. It would be great if we could all be better at understanding that we all can have incorrect thoughts at different moments in life, that sharing them can be part of a process to challenge them, that we can change our minds about something we wrote or said in the past, thus past writings do not necessarily define your current perspective. And that this is true for yourself and for others, so it would be great if we managed to be as forgiving towards ourselves as towards others.

Inmigración

Español, Otros

Estoy bien, acabo de llegar a mi apartamento de Lausanne. Durante todo el trayecto en metro entre la estación de tren y mi parada, una persona no ha parado de señalar a los inmigrantes, gritando que somos escoria, que traemos lo peor a Suiza, que somos pederastas, que abusamos y matamos a bebés, que tenemos sexo con animales, que tenemos una cultura de salvajes, incluidos los europeos.

Tres personas lo han confrontado en diversos momentos: un chico joven que intentaba dialogar con él y le ha pedido respeto; una mujer que le ha instado a que se guarde sus opiniones para sí mismo; y otro hombre que ha explotado y le ha dicho que basta ya. Les ha escupido a los tres, acusándolos de proteger a esta escoria que hace salvajadas y degrada el país, entre otras muchas cosas.

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Beware of what we consume

English, Tecnología

It is often said that we are what we eat, and this comes up typically in the context of having healthy habits to live a healthy life. Our body will use the kind of food we ingest for development and maintenance, not paying attention to this may lead to bad long term effects in our well-being. A similar concept can also be applied to the world of information consumption. And when I say information consumption, I am thinking about the content we pay attention to with the apps that we frequently open in our phone, the websites we recurrently visit, and/or the more traditional/media we often use.

Every second we are alive, our brain is modifying itself, connections between neurons get reinforced or weaken at different timescales. They encode and replay our memories, shape our skills, determine our future behaviors and decisions. We are capable of very quickly remembering events that happened minutes o hours ago (e.g., where we parked our car), forgetting what may not be that useful anymore (e.g., where we parked two days ago), or detecting statistically regular patterns that repeat over extended periods of time (e.g., the typical timing of traffic lights along a frequent commute).

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Metaphorical Truths

English, Otros

The world we live in is extremely complex and very hard to fully comprehend. We can spend years and years just investigating a tiny part of it to try to shed some light and gain some understanding. At an individual level, I would argue that it is impossible to have a complete view of how the universe works at all times or, even, what are the most likely causes of the things we are experiencing according to the most up-to-date human knowledge (and what would be the most optimal reaction).

As individuals, not only we do not have instant access to all the human knowledge, we also do not have an unlimited amount of cognitive resources. We cannot analyze every situation to its full extension to understand what is the most reasonable explanation of what happened, and what is the best decision or action to increase the chances of a future outcome that maximizes some pre-established motivation or goal (e.g., maximizing happiness). Hence, our brain seems to have evolved to frequently rely on heuristics, mental shortcuts that helps us to make quick judgments or decisions.

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Mistakes

English, Otros

I have made many mistakes in my life so far. Mistakes that had negative consequences for myself or third parties. Mistakes that may have led others to think I am a bad person, a stupid human being, or plainly incompetent. I struggle with these mistakes, and I become obsessed at times regretting what I did or said. Sometimes I got the chance to apologize, but frequently the wound leaves a scar no matter what. Many other times I did not even get a chance to apologize, maybe I realized the mistake too late, or it is not possible to get in touch with the person again without risking making things worse. I find it difficult to let go/forgive myself, to accept we all make mistakes, and to move on while keeping the lessons learned.

Life = Risk

English, Otros

I used to have a dear and close friend with whom I would discuss how life is risk. While it is possible to predict the outcomes of many physics experiments with a high degree of certainty, the farther we move away from the fundamental aspects of reality, the more difficult it becomes. At a certain point, our understanding of a system can only be based on informed intuitions and educated guesses. The complexity of a system such as our human society is immense, with countless elements influencing and impacting one another in retroactive loops, irreversible changes, and non-linear responses. We cannot accurately predict the long-term effects of our decisions, including the choice of not making a decision. Uncertainty pervades our human experience at every turn, and it can at times paralyze us.

Born to be forgotten

English, Otros

I find that it is not always easy to accept that I will not accomplish anything in my lifetime that will merit being remembered or taught to future generations. I will not make a major scientific breakthrough, I will not come up with a revolutionary contribution to philosophy, I will not invent a new technology that will change society, I will not be the best at anything in particular.

My contribution to the world will come in tiny chunks, and they will include both small successes that might have made some people’s life slightly better, but also mistakes that may have caused pain and suffering. And there is nothing special about this, I can only imagine that this might also be true for billions of other humans. We are living regular lives that will be quickly forgotten after one, two or three generations.

Why would this be important? It does not have to be, I can see how you can definitely find happiness elsewhere, but it turns out that this is something that seems to matter to me. Not from a rational perspective, but more like a gut feeling. I cannot avoid it, at least not at the moment.

This is not meant to be a justification for inaction. Just a realistic prediction that is not always easy to swallow. It makes me think of Albert Camus and the absurdity of life, where despite recognizing that absurdity, we cannot avoid but just keep living as if it wasn’t.