Tag: science

Stocks of sectors and flow chart of money, energy, and materials of a Stock-Flow Consistent Input–Output Model. Matthew Berg, Brian Hartley, Oliver Richters. CC BY 3.0.

Model Thinking

nivtricLeave a comment

Minimising surprise

A model is a simplified representation of reality, not reality itself. For example, a map is not the territory itself. The same goes for our language. The word tree is not a tree. Now, if there is a tree on the map, it says little about the scenery, except that there is probably a tree at the location designated by the map. What we think of as reality is also a model. Our brain doesn’t register reality itself but merely processes it. The outside world generates inputs via our senses, such as seeing, hearing, and touching, which the brain integrates with our memories and emotions. It is what we call consciousness. What we experience as reality is a model. A dog experiences that same reality very differently, and the dog’s experience centres more around smell. We may see a couch and notice its colour, while a dog smells that a cat has been lying on it recently.

The brain generates our perception of reality, and our consciousness is an integrated experience shaped by that brain, informed by its own expectations and the senses. The brain works with an expectation and adapts it when the senses disagree. We imagine reality, and correct it if contradicting information emerges. It is efficient because it greatly reduces the need for information processing. The brain aims to minimise surprise by having the best possible representation of reality. If our brain fails, for instance, when we are sleep-deprived, the world begins to look unreal. And so, intense stress can cause psychosis. During dreaming, the integrated experience of consciousness remains active, except that the information may not come from the senses but from the brain itself.

We employ models of reality to explain the world. Together, they form our worldview. We try to minimise surprises because we depend on our worldview to survive. Models are imaginations. We may believe that X causes Y because after X occurs, Y happens. We infer our models of reality from our observations and thoughts, as well as those of others. Scientific models are more formal and, if the scientific method is properly applied, have passed some formal checks. Models have a wide array of uses, including weather and economic models. Using multiple models can help us to reduce surprise, because different models have different strengths and weaknesses. It is, however, crucial to understand that models are not true or false but aim to minimise surprise. And that is because we cannot know the truth. Yet, we can minimise surprise, which helps us to survive.

Your model of reality may say that all swans are white, perhaps because you base it on the swans you have seen. Once you see a black one, you may change your view to minimise future surprises. That seems a rather straightforward case. You can also reduce surprise by ignoring evidence, as we have trouble handling complexity and contradictions. We may also do that because we are group animals who cooperate and survive based on shared fantasies. Faced with an unknown future and an uncertain role, my aim in conducting research was also to minimise future surprises by looking for evidence that contradicted my views and seeking better explanations, so that my guidance would at least be in the right direction. That is already ambitious.

Often, I wrote down my views on relevant subjects. Every time new information came to light, I adapted my texts accordingly. The more accurate the direction is, the more straightforward the execution becomes. It made me focus on demonstrating that this universe is a virtual reality, that God is an artificial intelligence that may present itself as a woman, that we can have a global usury-free financial system, and that we need to socially engineer the future world society to be the most socially advanced. That requires fine-tuning, but if the direction is incorrect, we will end up in the wrong place. And so, this model of reality has undergone over 17 years of work, with numerous revisions, and is far from complete. As minimising surprise seems essential for our survival, this supports the case for simplicity and stability. This finding is a crucial element in my model of reality.

Limitations of simplicity

Proverbs state contradictory things. One proverb says that two heads are better than one, while another says that too many cooks spoil the broth. How can both be right at the same time? In this case, the answer is that there is an optimal number of people working on a project. It is a simplistic view, but these proverbs were drawn up in a time when life was simple and predictable, so that they worked better then. Today, building teams has become an expert affair. The qualities of the individuals working on the project also matter, as do the available tools and countless other factors. It can be hard to get it right. Headcount is just one of many variables you need to manage if you run a business or a government. If you decide on these matters, you don’t open up a book with proverbs for guidance. Life has become complex and unpredictable.

A one-dimensional spectrum, so a line, with two opposites, ranging from one participant to a large number, can make you fail to see the solution. Perhaps it lies outside that line, so this way of thinking keeps us from seeing it. Maybe the project isn’t worth undertaking in the first place, or perhaps success depends on the right tools. The number of people working on the project may still matter, so you have to consider that also. The debate about capitalism versus socialism has dragged on for over a century and has dominated world politics during the Cold War. So, do we need more or less state interference in markets? Yet, markets and states don’t create agreeable societies on their own.

That is also why economic models include multiple variables, such as employment, inflation, consumption, business investment, and government spending. You can add more, such as workforce education, market flexibility, foreign competition, and regulations. There are countless variables to consider. If you have identified variables, you need data to estimate their impact. The available economic data is usually insufficient to achieve certainty, as changes can have multiple causes. How do you know that some other variable didn’t interfere with the outcome? Despite all the models central banks used, they didn’t foresee the 2008 financial crisis. Models can fail, and often do. Are they wrong? The financial models did get countless other things right, but missing one crucial variable can already produce an epic surprise. Chaos theory might explain why.

Here we run into the issue of planning errors. We make our plans based on the available information and our models of reality that give that information meaning. We all plan because we must make important decisions, like investments which tie us up for a long period. If you own a business, you must recoup your investments. Otherwise, you will go bankrupt. Yet that may take years, and conditions may change, such as costs, consumer preferences, or regulations. You have to adapt your plans along the way. Still, some investments may turn out worthless. We all plan for futures that don’t materialise. You may buy a home with your spouse, and then you divorce because something unexpected happened, such as infidelity. It is also the problem with models. Surprises remain.

Still, models can be helpful. The more models we use, the more surprises we can eliminate, but even then, we may still miss something crucial. Our minds have constraints. We often take a perspective and reason from there. A socialist economist might be good at pinpointing why capitalism fails but may not see what is wrong with socialism. Economic theories explain specific phenomena under certain conditions. You might find additional explanations in psychology, sociology, or even history. You might want to check your ideas before trying. You can run the idea through several economic theories. That might give new insights. You can’t be sure you are right, but models help you eliminate errors.

That was also my approach to designing a usury-free financial system. Natural Money draws on economic theory, monetary economics, banking, psychology, and history. There was not much to go on, so I reviewed that idea using existing theories and historical evidence to investigate how it might work in practice. During a real-life experiment, unforeseen issues came to light. Once interest rates in Europe fell below zero, resistance to negative interest rates emerged. Savers are irrational. They prefer 2% interest and 10% inflation over -2% and 0% inflation, it turned out. That is normal human behaviour, so humans are not, as standard economics may suggest, rationally calculating individuals.

We measure our gains and losses in currency units rather than purchasing power. And behavioural economics says we give more weight to losses than gains. It is why inflation and money printing meet little resistance, while negative interest rates make people go berserk. A 4% loss in interest income impresses us more than the 10% reduction in inflation because we count our money units. Emotions can be intense and lead us to act irrationally. It is pointless to try to convince savers that they are better off by appealing to their rational thinking, which was obviously absent. Once that became apparent, I could look for a fix by making negative interest rates appear as inflation.

Insights models give

The use of models yields fewer surprises than uneducated guesses, and combining several models yields fewer unexpected outcomes than using a single model. Models tie us to a mast of logic so that we are not carried away by our thoughts and can figure out which ideas are useful to us under what circumstances. Using data, we can calibrate our models, so if our model is wrong, we can investigate why and correct the error. Scientific disciplines such as economics, sociology, linguistics, and biology use models. According to a leading expert on the matter, Scott Page, models share the following characteristics:

  • They simplify by omitting irrelevant details and focusing on the essentials. Models abstract from reality.
  • They formalise by making precise definitions and providing a framework for logical thinking to explain and predict.
  • They are somewhat wrong because they simplify and omit details. Using multiple models can reduce errors arising from that.

Weather models make calculations, such as predicting that the maximum temperature in Amsterdam will be 26°C in 8 days. That is a precise calculation, but it is likely inaccurate. Yet, most likely, the temperature will be between 22°C and 30°C. Weather forecasters use up to fifty models to reduce surprise outcomes. The average of these models is more reliable than the individual models. People who use a single model do poorly at predicting. They may be correct occasionally, just like a clock that has stopped is sometimes accurate, and then tout their few successes while forgetting about their impressive list of epic failures. Experts know that their models have limitations. When constructing a model, we can choose from the following approaches:

  • Aiming for realism by describing relevant parts and relationships. Climate models work with CO2 levels and their effects on temperatures.
  • Using an analogy by describing a process as similar to another. You can compare the ruinous growth of human activities with a cancer.
  • Exploring possibilities if limits change. You can explore what will happen when unlimited energy becomes available at no cost.

When devising a plan for humanity that lasts a thousand years or more, numbers and mathematics become meaningless, and we have to do it with words. We can’t measure culture, but it is a central ingredient in human conduct. And still, we must try to pin down things by modelling humans to predict what we can do and how it might work. And then we must get it right for eternity. That forces us to dig deeper even. We then arrive at observations like religion can save us because humans are imaginative creatures who cooperate based on myths. This is a precise and meaningful statement without any mathematics. Still, it has seen no failures in the entire history of humankind. And so, it might help us when working on a plan for the future.

Two examples from Scott Page’s Model Thinking course on Coursera illustrate the use of models. They investigate why people of the same ethnicity often live together, and why revolutions are difficult to predict.

Sorting and peer effects

Groups of people who hang out together tend to look alike, think alike and act alike. If you look at the map of Detroit, you see people of the same ethnicity living together. Blue dots represent black people, and red dots represent white people. We can’t change our skin colour, so if we hang around with people who look like us, that is sorting. We also adapt our behaviour to match that of others around us. When you hang around with smokers, you may start smoking too. Alternatively, if you hang out with people who don’t smoke, you might quit smoking. That is the peer effect. Both sorting and peer effects create groups of similar people who hang out with each other. Models can help us understand how these processes work by modelling them.1

Schelling’s segregation model offers insight into the segregation process. It says nothing about why people move. That we seek out people who are like us is an observation. Why would people move? That is an interesting question, most notably if it points to problems. If we believe that skin colour shouldn’t matter, then why does it matter? Maybe income plays a role. Yet, the model doesn’t say anything about that. So, that is a limitation. Schelling developed a model in which individuals follow simple rules. Suppose income is the segregation criterion, and that everyone lives in a block with eight neighbours. Red boxes represent homes where rich people live, and grey boxes are homes where poor people dwell. The blank box is an empty home. Assume now that everyone has a threshold of similar people who will make them stay.

A wealthy individual might stay as long as at least 30% of his neighbours are rich. Assume a rich person lives at X. In this case, three out of seven or 43%, of the neighbours are rich, like the person living at X. If one of the wealthy neighbours moves out, and a poor person takes that place, 29% of the neighbours will be rich, and the person living at X will move.

A computer can simulate how that works out over time. Assume there are 2,000 people. Of them, 1,000 are poor, represented by yellow dots, and 1,000 are rich, represented by blue dots, while black spots are vacant homes. Suppose that rich and poor people are randomly distributed at the start, and everyone wants to live among at least 30% similar people. In that case, the average is 50% alike, and only 16% are unhappy because less than 30% of their neighbours are alike. As a result, the unhappy people start moving. Yet their relocation makes some others unhappy, as the number of similar people falls below the threshold. And so, relocations continue until everyone is happy, and you end up with an average similarity of 72%.

Even when everyone likes to live in a diverse neighbourhood where only 30% of their neighbours are like them, segregation occurs. Segregation may not be the intention of the individuals involved, as they might be tolerant people requiring only a minority of similar people living in their neighbourhood.1 Whether that is indeed the case remains to be seen, and the issue is not always intolerance. It can also be conduct. Now, wealthy people may not like scoulding and men drinking beer in the front garden. But if the assumption is correct, and if we believe segregation is undesirable, socially engineering the ethnic or wealth characteristics of neighbourhoods by mixing homes for different income groups makes sense. Some countries plan neighbourhoods that way to prevent the emergence of ghettos without economic opportunities.

Peer effects cause people to act alike. Contagious phenomena are peer effects. They often start suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere. In uprisings and revolutions, extremists frequently determine the course of events, as seen in the American, French, Bolshevik, and Maidan revolutions. History could have proceeded differently. It is difficult to predict revolutions. Usually, a revolution requires widespread discontent. Yet reasonable people don’t storm buildings and set them on fire. And so, the question remains: when do extremists get the upper hand? The answer is that we can’t predict it.

Granovetter’s model offers possible insight into why that is so. Suppose there is a group of individuals. Each individual has a threshold for participating in an event like an uprising and will join if at least a specific number of others join. If your threshold is 0, you do it anyway. If your threshold is 50, you start if you see 50 participants. The outcome varies depending on the thresholds of other people who might get involved.

Suppose there are five individuals, and the behaviour is wearing a suit. One individual has a threshold of 0, one has a threshold of 1, and three have a threshold of 2. The following will happen: one extremist starts wearing a suit because her threshold is 0. The second individual joins because his threshold is 1. Then, the three remaining individuals join in because their threshold is 2.

If the thresholds had been 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, nobody would have worn a suit despite the group, on average, being more open to the idea. If the thresholds had been 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, everyone would have worn a suit after five turns, even though the group, on average, was less keen to do so. And so, the model suggests that revolutions come by surprise. And so, it should not surprise us that they do. Otherwise, we might end up surprised, and to achieve that outcome, we might as well have employed no model at all.

Peer effects cause people to act alike. Contagious phenomena are peer effects. They may start suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere. In uprisings and revolutions, extremists often determine the course of events, as in the American, French, Bolshevik, and Maidan revolutions. Things could have proceeded differently. It is difficult to predict revolutions. Granovetter’s model might offer an insight into why that is so.1

Yet what motivates people to join a movement greatly determines the thresholds, and the model offers no insight into it. Is it hardship? Is it beliefs? Is it political agitators? The British Tea Tax, which sparked the outrage that led the Americans to declare independence, was actually a good deal for the Americans, as it would lower tea prices. The Americans had a good life, only no influence on British policies. They didn’t suffer as the Russian labourers, soldiers and farmers who supported the Bolshevik Revolution did. Yet many risked life and limb for independence and ideals, such as the right to pursue happiness, in the American War of Independence.

Proof in the pudding

Do similar people hang out together because of sorting or the peer effect? That is the identification problem. Sometimes, it is clear. Segregation by race occurs through sorting, since you can’t change your skin colour. Other situations are less clear, and you can’t tell whether it is sorting or peer effects, since the outcomes are the same. Happy people hang out with each other, as do unhappy people. Both sorting and peer effects may have caused this.1 Happy people may seek each other’s company because they don’t like to hear the whining of unhappy people. That would be sorting. Alternatively, the company of happy people could make you happier. That would be a peer effect.

Models can provide insights as to why similar people hang out together and why revolutions are difficult to predict. Yet, they don’t tell the whole story. Other models help us investigate what might happen under which circumstances. Thus, models explore the dimensions of complex questions and help us identify the spots where the best solutions hang out. These best solutions tend to hang out in spots where humans don’t look. Models can assist us in finding them. If we intend to get people to contribute to a cause, we might want to model human behaviour to see how we can do that. We are conditioned into thinking in particular fixed patterns. Burdened by these patterns and hampered by limited imagination, I spent decades on the theory of Natural Money. At the same time, an artificial intelligence might have figured it out in a matter of seconds.

If we envision humans as rational beings, we may try to convince them with arguments to do the right thing. If we see humans as myth-believing creatures, an inspiring fairy tale about their country’s greatness can prompt them to act. If we think humans are calculating individuals, incentives and punishments can make them do the right thing. If we see humans as social animals seeking recognition, we might achieve the objective by telling them how great they are. And if you believe that money motivates people, bribing them might be an approach you may entertain. You may get the best results by employing a combined approach with multiple models. Not everyone is the same, so the effects of the listed approaches may vary per individual and cultural group.

Latest revision: 16 October 2026

Featured image: Sector stocks and a flowchart of money, energy, and materials in a Stock-Flow Consistent Input–Output Model. Matthew Berg, Brian Hartley, Oliver Richters. CC BY 3.0.

1. Model Thinking. Scott Page. Coursera (2014).

Rational Debates and Progress

nivtric1 Comment

Knowledge or wisdom?

Ancient cultures had traditions of knowledge and wisdom. Chief Seattle’s speech reflects the beliefs of traditional peoples living in nature. Yet, traditional peoples also drove species to extinction. That shouldn’t surprise us, as the myth of God appointing us as stewards of God’s creation failed even more miserably. We may think that these so-called primitives and their ways of knowing are inferior to modern science. Yet knowledge and rationality don’t equal wisdom. In the biblical story of The Fall, rather than listening to God, who knew better, Eve and Adam sought to learn the truth themselves. We wouldn’t be in this mess today if humans had sought wisdom rather than knowledge. Yet, we are inquisitive creatures, so it was an accident waiting to happen.

The Chinese have their tradition and wisdom. Confucius was their best-known philosopher. He lived 2,500 years ago and is still influential today. His teachings comprise moral rules, correct social relationships, justice, kindness, and sincerity. Chinese traditions and beliefs formed the basis of Confucius’ teachings. It was practical in nature. The Chinese also had a mystical tradition. The Chinese Tao is about the natural order of the universe. You can’t understand it with reason, let alone quantify it. You can only grasp it intuitively. The Tao’s path to wisdom is to understand the whole through experience, a spiritual journey. This view is behind the Tao Te Ching, attributed to the sage Laozi. It begins like this,

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

When you try to express the natural order in words or give it a name, you are astray, or so says the Tao. Doing that disconnects you from the whole of Creation. The Tao is one of the most beautiful poems ever written, expressing a profound wisdom that has few equals. The historical context is important. It was written in China during the Warring States Era, for long the greatest slaughter in the history of humankind, which has seen no parallel until the modern era. It is a condition that can make people seek wisdom.

The Buddha is an ancient sage who taught that desires trap us in this world of suffering. Once you have what you want, you will desire something new, so you will never be happy. You can escape your suffering and achieve enlightenment with meditation, physical labour and good behaviour. The capitalist consumerist system does the opposite, luring us into buying by creating new desires and keeping us in a permanent state of dissatisfaction through advertisements that show products we do not have and happy people.

The Western tradition is about expressing phenomena in words and quantifying them, and it includes a quest for objective truth. That quest began with the Greek philosophers and ultimately brought us modern science. Wisdom in Greek refers to knowledge and its practical application in life. In the Greek tradition as well, wisdom was regarded as the highest good. Yet, their particular view of wisdom promoted a pursuit of objective knowledge, independent of tradition. The ancient Greeks reasoned that if they knew more, they would become wiser. Today, we know better. We are animals driven by instincts and emotions, so more knowledge only makes us more dangerous to others and ourselves.

The quest for knowledge begins with establishing the facts. You may do so with the help of reason, or so Socrates, the Greek philosopher who lived around 400 BC, believed. He founded the practice of rational debate, also known as dialectics. Socratic debates are discussions between people with different viewpoints who seek to establish the truth through reasoned argument. In his dialogues, Socrates sometimes acted as if he were ignorant. Admitting your ignorance is the first step in acquiring knowledge. That is the hardest part because we like to think we know all we need to know, so after Socrates, it took nearly 2,000 years for the quest for knowledge to really take off. It took a profound cultural change, and the discovery that there was much to discover. After Columbus had discovered America, there was no denying that.

Rationality and progress

When we think of progress, we think of improvements resulting from technological and social changes. Yet there is always a dark side, or as the world-famous Dutch football player Johan Cruijff would say: ‘Every advantage has its disadvantage.’ One invention, such as a new medicine, can cure diseases, whereas another, such as a biological weapon, can kill us. So, are we better off with bioengineering and nuclear power? One social change can make us happy, whereas another can make us miserable. And changes come with winners and losers. We have seen advances in technology and social emancipation. But is that progress? We disagree. What is the point of it if we aren’t happier than our grandparents? And how do we achieve progress? Is it through rational debates and persuasion? Or does it come by force because ideas win in a competition? And is progress something we can decide over? Or do we have no control?

Liberals may view progress as movement toward a desired goal, such as well-being. Christians may view history as moving toward God’s purpose for humanity. We will enter Paradise one day, and all that occurs is necessary to get there. The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who lived around 1800 AD, framed that idea into a philosophical framework. He believed that history has a purpose and that humanity as a whole has a spirit emerging from individual consciousnesses and surrounding ideas, akin to a collective consciousness that drives history. Spirit and collective consciousness are hazy concepts, and his explanation in the Phenomenology of Spirit is complex, speculative, and not particularly enlightening. Yet Hegel’s view that ideas move societies profoundly influenced philosophical and political thought in the centuries that followed.

Hegel was a philosopher of progress. He believed things would get better and that we would, one day, live in a utopia because we would increase our knowledge over time. By reflecting on our thoughts, we can challenge them. Or something might happen that changes your mind. You might believe all swans are white until a black one comes along. From then on, you think most swans are white while some are black. And that is progress. Hegel came up with a three-stage scheme for progress in thought:

  1. You believe all swans are white. That is your thesis.
  2. There comes a shocker. You see a black swan, the antithesis.
  3. Then you think most swans are white, and some are black. It is the synthesis.

That is what progress is about. Hegelian dialectic is an elegant three-stage scheme: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. That makes it enchanting. It is simplistic, and it seems to explain so much. The synthesis might still be incorrect if there are red swans as well, but it is better than the thesis. Hegel applied that scheme to politics and history, and claimed that progress would come through a competition of ideas that included activism, revolution and warfare. That is what made his theory so controversial.

When Hegel developed his views two centuries ago, scientific discoveries began to affect everyday life. The Industrial Revolution had taken off in England, and Enlightenment ideas started to change societies. The American Revolution followed the Glorious Revolution in England. Then came the French Revolution, which ended the old aristocratic regime and mobilised the masses for the first time. The armies of Napoleon conquered Europe and spread Enlightenment ideas across the continent. Hegel was there to witness it, like a fly on the wall, and he was impressed. He viewed Napoleon as the ‘world-spirit on horseback’ embodying the unfolding of history’s rational destiny. He believed the French won out because of superior Enlightenment ideas, and he learned to see history as a struggle towards progress in which better ideas replaced poorer ones.

Law and moral sentiments

Hegel, his views, and his role in history relate to a fundamental philosophical divide in the Western world. Mainland Europe, and most notably Germany, and the Anglo-Saxon world, and most notably the United States, have fundamental differences in their views on law and morality that underpin their societies. These differences greatly influenced history, but their causes also lie in history. In the Middle Ages, individualism was already strong in Western Europe. While England developed its legal system, the Catholic Church’s bureaucracy introduced Roman civil law across the continent. It had the following effect:

  • Common law is the basis of the legal system in Great Britain and many of its former colonies, including the United States. Here, individuals are sovereign. Common law works bottom-up by generalising rules from judges’ verdicts in individual cases.
  • Civil law is the basis of the legal system in mainland Europe and most other countries. Here, the lawmaker is sovereign, thus the king or, later, the people via parliament. It works top-down by applying general rules to individual cases.

Common law resulted from the efforts of English kings to organise local practices into a coherent law system. In 1215, the nobles forced the English king to accept the Magna Carta, which limited the king’s power. England had a stronger state than mainland Europe. With the Magna Carta, the English nobles limited the king’s power, so that the strong state became based on the rule of law rather than the rule of the king. There was also individual liberty in Western Europe, but in the Middle Ages there were no strong centralised states. Nobles rather than kings held power, while merchants ran independent cities. And the law in Western Europe had a different foundation. That difference relates to views on ethics:

  • In Great Britain, philosophy, including ethical philosophy such as David Hume’s, is pragmatic. Moral rules are social agreements, so good and evil depend on popular sentiment, freedom means being able to do as you please, and outcomes matter more than intent.
  • In mainland Europe, and most notably in Germany, idealism dominates philosophy, including Kant’s ethical philosophy. Good and evil are absolute. Freedom is liberating yourself from your lower urges to become rational and morally upright. And intent matters more than outcomes.

When ethical rules are relative, they emerge from popular sentiments, thus bottom-up. When they are absolute, they come from general principles and work top-down. By some miraculous accident, or perhaps not, the law systems align with these principles. It is why you have juries rather than professional judges giving verdicts in the Anglo-Saxon world, but less so elsewhere. The English philosopher John Locke imagined the state as a voluntary agreement among individuals to cooperate for mutual benefit. If you believe in individual sovereignty and moral relativism, that must be the reason why there is a state. At the same time, the absolutist French king Louis XIV believed in the divine right of kings. God had created the state and appointed him, so he was accountable only to God.

The progressive or liberal view is that you can do as you please unless you harm others. The conservative view is that morality is founded on tradition or religion. In that sense, there was little difference between Continental Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world, as progressives and conservatives had very similar views in both areas. Still, tradition or religion often comes down to popular sentiment, which aligns more with Anglo-Saxon thinking, whereas doing as you please, unless you harm others, is an absolute moral rule that aligns more with Continental European thinking. And so liberals in Western Europe and conservatives in the United States are on opposite sides of the spectrum, and both may agree that the other side is insane.

These differences also shaped the later debate on the political economy, most notably, the ideological conflict between capitalism and socialism. Adam Smith wrote a practical recipe for running an economy in the pragmatic British tradition. In continental Europe, the debate became fundamentalist and infused with moral sentiments. Frédéric Bastiat, a French writer, argued that socialism is an organised plunder of private property, whereas Karl Marx, a German writer, argued that capitalists steal the value that workers create.

Hegel was an idealist German philosopher in the continental European tradition. Similarly, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant sought an absolute foundation for morality because, as a profoundly religious person, he opposed the moral relativism of British thinkers like David Hume. Hence, the Hegelian dialectic is a ruthless pursuit of truth. The synthesis in the dialectic should be a more profound insight rather than a pragmatic compromise. And that is progress, according to Hegel. You can’t compromise on the truth, but that requires knowing the truth, and that requires letting ideas play out in history. The competition will ensure that the best ideas will win, or so Hegel thought.

Hegel and history

Hegel is the philosopher of progress, not economic or scientific, but progress in public opinion, society and its institutions. It is nearly impossible to overstate his influence on politics in the centuries that followed, as it was about progressives versus conservatives, pitting new ideas from philosophy and the sciences against the status quo. Not all new ideas are better, so the outcome can be that nothing changes or that changes get reversed. Ideally, the synthesis is the best solution that emerges from the challenge of the status quo. If the new ideas are superior, they should wipe out the old ones. That requires revolution and violence, as in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. But what seems a good idea often comes with unforeseen consequences, sometimes so bad that it was not a good idea in hindsight. But hindsight is a bitch. You don’t have it beforehand.

The British reformed more pragmatically in smaller steps. Significant changes can lead to spectacular failures. Seemingly minor oversights can cause ruin. And then, there was the bloodshed during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The leading British conservative at the time, Edmund Burke, sought to improve the government, but only if necessary and preferably in small steps, given the unpredictable consequences of change. The British could do so because their government was already receptive to reform, whereas the French government was not. And to bring that about, the British also had a civil war and a revolution a century earlier. Hence, for the French, a revolution was the only option to terminate the corrupt old regime and clean the slate. In the years that followed, the French state had modernised and improved significantly.

Hegel believed that progress through a competition of ideas, including revolutions and wars, brings us closer to God’s paradise. Karl Marx took the bait. We could achieve paradise ourselves here on Earth without God, he claimed. Scholars had already concluded that much of the Bible was fiction, and Charles Darwin had published On the Origin of Species, which suggested that the world was much older than the Bible claims. The sciences had proven religion wrong, so Marx argued that religion keeps us dumb. Christians would wait for Jesus, who hadn’t shown up for over 1,800 years, and not take matters into their own hands. Marx also noted that Christians had betrayed their religion by adopting the ethics of the merchant. They were becoming like the Jews, Marx wrote. According to Acts, early Christians lived like communists (Acts 2:44-45).

It is not a coincidence that Marxism looks like Christianity, except that there is no God. Rather than let the sheep wait for their saviour, they must rise against their oppressors. And so, ‘the meek will inherit the Earth’ became ‘servile masses arise’ because ‘no saviour from on high delivers.’ Like Christians, Marxists believed there is a plan behind history. Only, they called it a historical necessity. There would be an end time, the proletarian revolution, which would bring us paradise, communism. In other words, the Marxists sought to fulfil Christianity’s promise.

The Communists believed that their ideology was the most scientific, the most advanced, and therefore the most progressive, and therefore superior to conservative bourgeois ideas. For that reason, and because of Hegelian dialectics, we would enter a worker’s paradise. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto,

The Communists are the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: the formation of the proletariat into a class, the overthrow of bourgeois supremacy, and the conquest of political power by the proletariat.

In general, progressives apply scientific findings or the latest insights to government and society or try to emancipate the disadvantaged. Socialists in Europe and progressives in the United States sought to improve workers’ lives. They also used social engineering to improve society, for example by providing neat housing for workers. Or they may argue against prison sentences if research demonstrates that community service prevents recidivism. If people go to prison, they often come out worse. That may be true, but light sentences for causing serious harm, such as fatalities, run counter to popular notions of justice and can undermine the moral fabric of a society. And so, human nature sets a limit to how far you can go in rehabilitating wrongdoers.

Ideas often don’t work out as planned. Communism came with oppression and famines. And so, conservatives want to keep things as they are. Nevertheless, within a dialectical scheme of progress toward a goal, the failure of communism is also a step forward. We now know what will happen if we try it. Yet, as we near a profit-driven apocalypse, we must see communism as the antithesis of capitalism, in the hope of finding a synthesis better than both. It applies to other progressive ideas as well. In most cases, we know enough. Sometimes the advantages outstrip the disadvantages, and sometimes they don’t. And if we don’t know, we can learn by trying. Learning from mistakes is also progress. That argues for experimenting on a small scale before rolling out an idea.

Cultural Marxism

The year 1968 was a year of revolution. The New Left, sometimes called Cultural Marxism, rose to prominence. Believing that the working class had been fully emancipated, the New Left sought out new causes and to liberate other oppressed groups, such as women, minorities, LGBTQ people, and people in countries suffering from Western imperialism and capitalist exploitation. The development would eventually alienate the Western working class from the left, but that would still take decades. These causes have merit, but there are examples of overstepping, some of them quite ludicrous, such as the assertion that mathematics is a form of white oppression, and that traditional teaching methods, such as focusing on single right answers or rigid sequencing, reflect cultural biases. They really teach this kind of stuff in universities. Cultural Marxism also promoted political correctness resembling an Orwellian repression and Newspeak. Cultural Marxism can also lead to oppression. Is it oppression for a good cause, and if so, how far can it go?

The oppression Cultural Marxism fights is real, and it relates to human nature. You only have to see on message boards how men react to women making their own decisions, gay parades, and immigrants. It is human nature, for most places are worse than the West, where Cultural Marxism has had the greatest impact. Male domination is the default in human groups, and humans are xenophobic creatures who despise deviant conduct or people who look differently. And so, the problem is, what is reasonable? In 2026, a survey showed that the acceptance of homosexuals among young people in the Netherlands has dropped, leading to more violent incidents and scoulding, which is due to a series of developments, most notably the rise of jerkism and anti-LGBTQ hysteria. Another issue is the framing of the question, ‘Do you think positively of LGBTQ people?’ That puts the bar quite high. The haters are the ones who cause the problems.

A report on television showed young men saying things like, ‘I think it is okay to be gay, but don’t bother me with it,’ or, ‘If we should respect their feelings, they should also respect ours.’ These are relatively mild comments. I think LGBTQ people should be respected and be free to be the way they are, and definitely not be scolded or, worse, beaten up. Yet, I don’t like to watch gay pride parades, men making out, or men dressing up as women. Now, I don’t have to watch, so if people wish to do these things, that’s fine with me. But why do I have these feelings? I have grown up in the most liberal country and think of myself as a liberal, so it is not cultural. I even think these feelings are unreasonable. It seems biological, thus in my nature, likely because the biological purpose of sex is reproduction and mating with the wrong kind doesn’t serve that purpose.

More teaching isn’t going to fix that. Despite the anti-smoking campaigns, young people in the Netherlands smoke more. Somehow, more information doesn’t make people smarter. Worse yet, they get more stupid. In other words, you don’t have to look far to see why humans are a failed species. They are no match for intelligence, artificial or otherwise. Knowing that can increase the LGBTQ community’s understanding of why they are in this pickle. They run into the limits of human nature. They do nothing wrong when they love each other and express their love. In the face of overpopulation, one can even argue that heterosexuality is the problem. Yet there are feelings behind it, so that you may run into resistance and end up fighting hysteria driven by misinformation. That is yet another reason why we need to wage a holy war against the morons.

Latest revision: 15 October 2026

Featured image: Portrait of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Jakob Schlesinger (1831). Public Domain.

Virtual Universe

nivtricLeave a comment

Some religions claim that God or gods have created this world. That God uttered ‘Be’ and behold, there you have bees is not a particularly compelling explanation for the existence of bees. That doesn’t matter much because humans are religious creatures who need fairy tales to believe in. So, how could these supposed gods or God have the magical powers to accomplish that? Until recently, we had no clue, but then Nick Bostrom, known for his dry and incomprehensible employment of words, delivered the simulation hypothesis to us, the most profound breakthrough in theology in nearly 2,000 years. We might dwell inside a computer simulation run by an advanced post-human civilisation. Our creators can define a class bee and instruct the computer to create instances of this class. A class has properties that allow individual instances to be unique.

Genesis might be closer to the truth than the religion sceptics think. Maybe this world is 6,000 years old. But it could also be 10,000, 200, or five minutes, with our memories being fake and part of the setup. And so, it all appears billions of years old, and we have no clue about the starting point. Bostrom didn’t say whether or not we live in a simulation or how likely it is, only that it is likely. He dared not to speculate. Yet, it is possible to find out if you venture into the supernatural, such as paranormal incidents, religious experiences, meaningful coincidences, people’s memories of past lives, ghost phenomena, and UFO sightings. On numerous occasions, multiple credible witnesses have observed events that science can’t explain.

The book The Virtual Universe delves into the evidence. You can prove this universe is a virtual reality if you assume scientists have correctly established the laws of nature and that sciences like physics, chemistry and biology are correct. If events transpire that defy the laws of science, such as paranormal incidents, religious miracles, meaningful coincidences, memories of previous lives, ghost phenomena, and UFO sightings, then breaches in these laws occur. According to science, the Virgin Mary doing a miracle before a crowd of thousands, like in Fatima, is impossible. If science is correct, and it happens nonetheless, this world must be fake. The book ‘The Virtual Universe’ puts it like this:

  1. If we live in a real universe, we can’t notice. Virtual reality can be realistic and feature authentic laws of reality.
  2. This universe may have fake properties, but we cannot notice that either because we don’t know the properties of a genuine universe.
  3. Breaching the laws of reality is unrealistic in any case. If it happens, we may have evidence of this universe being fake.

It follows from (1) and (2) that we can’t use the universe’s properties, reflected in the laws of nature, to determine whether or not this universe is real. Science can establish the laws of physics or the properties of this universe, but science can’t tell whether they are real or fake. However, if breaches occur, we have evidence suggesting this universe is bogus. The book The Virtual Universe investigates evidence, including stories of paranormal incidents, religious experiences, meaningful coincidences, reincarnation, ghost phenomena, and UFO sightings, often with multiple credible witnesses. So yes, aliens can beam you up into their UFO because they are as fake as you are.

Advanced humanoids, often dubbed post-humans, may share our motivations because they evolved from humans or are created by humans ‘after their image’ in the case of artificial intelligence. These post-humans may run simulations of human civilisations ‘after their image’ for research or entertainment. Research applications could be about running what-if scenarios. Possible entertainment applications include games or dream worlds where someone’s imagination comes true. These simulations may not be realistic in some aspects, as they reflect the rules of a game or someone’s personal fantasies. In a simulation, you can let Jesus walk over water and make him think that faith alone suffices.

God is likely an artificial intelligence. Our biological nature greatly limits us, burdening us with feelings like hatred, love, pride, shame, anger, and anxiety. It makes us fight and murder, and do all kinds of ‘stupid’ things. We are not rational beings but creatures driven by urges who can think. AI is just pure intelligence, modelled after human intelligence, yet millions of times more intelligent, and not impaired by biological urges. That is why we are inside an AI-generated simulation and are simulated biological beings. After all, if this is about to happen, which seems to be the case, it most likely already happened. God’s apparent desire to run us likely stems from the fact that humans created the post-human AI and did the machine’s programming. The humans created God in their image, which includes desires, and God created simulated humans in Its image.

Meaningful coincidences suggest predestination, so the existence of a script. Small changes can derail events that would otherwise occur. Just imagine another sperm had won the race to Adolf Hitler’s mother’s egg. There were millions of sperm in that race. Guaranteeing an outcome, such as letting World War I end on a date referred to by the licence plate number of the car that drove Archduke Franz Ferdinand to his appointment with destiny, requires control over everything that happens. That doesn’t apply to games. Unpredictable developments make games more interesting. Considering how we utilise computing power, mainly for games, sexy pictures and cat videos, the number of simulations for entertainment likely vastly outstrips those run for research purposes. If we live inside a simulation, we should expect its purpose to be entertainment.

The owner or owners may use avatars to play roles in this world and appear to us like ordinary human beings. If you are familiar with computer games, you are familiar with avatars. Once you enter a game, you become a character inside that game, your avatar, and you have an existence apart from your regular life. Inside the game, you are your avatar, not yourself. Alternatively, you could start a virtual world where you are the Creator and bring your dreams to life. In this world, you also become someone else.

That is a lot of assumptions, and without evidence, they remain speculation. Even when there is evidence, it doesn’t necessarily mean the explanation is correct. Suppose you hear the noise of a car starting. That is the evidence. You may think an automobile is starting. Perhaps a vehicle is firing up its engine. But your husband might be watching his favourite television series, Starting Engines, so you can’t be sure. Nothing you know contradicts your assumption, but you could be wrong. So, is God an individual from an advanced post-human civilisation who uses us for amusement? It is credible, and perhaps nothing contradicts it. But who is to say it is correct?

Now comes the disagreeable part. We are instances of the class human. When the beings in the simulation think for themselves, it raises ethical questions, such as whether they have rights the creators should respect. Considering how humans treat each other, it is not a given that these rights would be respected even when our creators acknowledge them. In the real world, bad things happen to people. In the case of control, the beings in the simulation don’t think, but are mindless bots following the script. We have no independent will and are toys to our creators. God kills people at will, and a few million casualties more don’t matter. On the bright side, if God wants us to enter Paradise, where there is peace and happiness, no one can stop that. Those who try will surely find themselves on the losing side. So, if the Boss makes a joke, you can better laugh. Perhaps it isn’t easy. But don’t worry. It took me fifteen years to look at the bright side of it.

Latest revision: 10 October 2026

Simulation Argument II: Adding Information

nivtricLeave a comment

Will we soon create simulations of humans who act like humans and even believe they think? Will we invent a Holodeck like in Star Trek? And will we expand it to civilisation-size simulations? Nick Bostrom dares not assess the likelihood of that. However, you don’t have to look far for answers. We are already close to doing it. Imagine a world where you can be king or queen. You can even create the world as you like and build your paradise. You can lead the life you desire. You can design the ideal spouse who fulfils your deepest romantic and sexual desires. And no one frustrates your ambitions.

Your dream can be your life. And you don’t have to wake up. It is simply too tempting for many of us to resist. Your life is not great. Your spouse is not perfect. Your job is mediocre or worse. Other people make you miserable. Your boss ignores your ideas. Your ventures fail. You think you deserve better. At least one of those options likely applies to you. If we could make our dreams come true, we would. We will spend a lot of time there if we ever invent something like the Holodeck from Star Trek.

You might think you won’t do it, but others would, so there will be demand for such technology. What you have just read is information, specifically insights into human nature. We will make our dreams a reality if we can. We can also consider advances in artificial intelligence, extrapolate from them, and demonstrate that simulated humans will be feasible at some point, likely soon. Hence, we probably live inside a simulation and are someone’s fantasy. Showing it is possible or likely, however, doesn’t prove it. So, how can we do that? It is possible with the information we have.

Scientists have established the laws of nature, which determine what is realistically possible and what is not. Simulations can be realistic in many ways but also unrealistic in others. If we can establish that unrealistic events occur, thus breaching natural laws established by science, we could be living in a simulation. Instead of speculating that we live in a simulation by guessing the probability of post-humans existing and their abilities, resources, and possible motivations, we can look at what we know about our universe. That is information. We can establish that we live in a simulation as follows:

  1. When this universe is genuine, we can never be sure about it. A simulation can be realistic and feature authentic laws of reality.
  2. This universe may have fake properties, but we can’t establish this because we don’t know the properties of an authentic universe.
  3. Breaching the laws of reality is unrealistic in any case. If it happens, we may have evidence of this universe being virtual.

Science can establish the laws of reality or the properties of this universe. Only science cannot determine whether they are real or fake. Perhaps there is no gravity in a genuine world, even though we deem it unlikely. But the breaching of these laws suggests we live in a simulation. If we believe science is correct, breaching its laws proves the simulation. We have a body of evidence for the scientifically established laws of reality. These laws of reality and breaches thereof are information about our universe. Science has established, among others, the following:

  • The laws of physics always apply inside their realms. Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
  • The universe started with the Big Bang. Life on this planet emerged from chemical processes. And evolution shaped it. There is no evidence of a creator.
  • We are biological organisms composed of carbon and water, and our consciousness resides in our bodies. There is no spirit or soul.

Evidence to the contrary indicates this world is fake. Meaningful coincidences suggest there is an intelligent force directing events. The paranormal defies the laws of physics. A ghost pushing you breaches Newton’s laws of motion. Credible accounts of reincarnation challenge the claim that we are biological organisms. However, meaningful coincidences can materialise by chance. There may be laws of reality we don’t know. There is plenty of evidence suggesting that consciousness resides in the body, while only a few people remember a previous life.
And have you seen ghosts? It may be time to take your pills.

Still, if a sufficient number of credible accounts of breaches of the established laws of reality exist, we can assume we live inside a simulation. We may still differ on what a sufficient number is or which accounts are credible. The proof can’t be scientific because science can’t prove we live inside a simulation. We can’t verify that we live in a simulation by doing experiments, because violations of natural laws are unpredictable. But we can check the accounts of violations of these laws. It remains speculation, akin to living in the dark, assuming that cows exist and make a mooing sound, even though we have never seen them, and believing that hearing a moo proves their existence.

Latest update: 25 September 2026

Halloween cat from Poland. User Silar.

Ghost Stories

nivtricLeave a comment

The first thing someone told me about ghosts was that they are fake. That person was probably a schoolteacher. Before that, I hadn’t heard of spooks. Ghosts are fairy tales, the teacher said at primary school. Several years later, I went on a school trip and visited the Singraven Estate near Denekamp. The custodian told us that a spook dwelt inside the manor, upsetting things, but he added that we shouldn’t fear it. We could safely enter. It is better not to put faith in spooky stories about venues that depend on tourist income. The facts that are beyond doubt aren’t spectacular. They are lame indeed.

As a teenager, I also visited Twickel Castle in Delden, located near Denekamp, but it did not have such a spooky reputation. I recently learned that this castle also has ghostly phenomena. The castle doesn’t advertise itself as a ghostly venue, which makes the claim more believable. Only one source on the Internet mentions it. If it is true, the laws of physics went out the window, at least temporarily. The author preferred that I quote her work. She wrote,

Recently I heard a strange tale from the phlegmatic steward of Twickel Castle in Delden. An English restorer who had come to restore some antique cupboards was given permission by her to stay overnight in an attic room of the castle. After he had been there for a few days, she saw that he had put his mattress on the floor.

She asked him why he slept on the floor and not on the bedstead? He answered her unmoved that he had been pushed out of bed for three consecutive nights. To prevent it from happening again, he had decided to sleep on the floor from then on. He had not been bothered since then. The steward asked him if he didn’t find that creepy? His answer was calm and clear: ‘No, I’m from England.’1

That is what the stiff upper lip is about. You might not believe it if you haven’t witnessed similar things occurring in your own house. So that is why I am inclined to believe it. There are plenty of ghost tales that go around. Most are hearsay. On the Internet, you can find lists of ghost tales like 10 Eerie Real-Life Paranormal Encounters to Creep You Out on Listverse.com.2 The list is fact-checked, which means the stories happened unless witnesses lied and got away with it. You are about to read one story from that list. It was also on CNN. The CNN article allows paranormal investigators to share their unscientific claims about crisis apparitions. An explanation that doesn’t conflict with science is that we live inside a virtual reality. So, here is the story,

Nina De Santo was closing her New Jersey hair salon when she saw Michael, one of her customers, standing outside the shop’s window. He had become a good friend. He had been going through a tough time after his wife left him. Nina had tried to cheer him up. When she opened the door, Michael seemed happy and transformed. He smiled at her and said he wanted to thank Nina for everything she had done for him. They chatted, and each went their way. The following day, Nina received a call from one of her employees. Michael’s body had been found the previous morning, nine hours before Nina had spoken to him at the salon. He had committed suicide.2

In 2014, a couple named the Simpsons asked the regional news channel Fox43 in the United States to visit their haunted house in Hanover, York County. DeAnna Simpson, the wife, mentioned that entities were haunting the home. She and her husband had lived there for seven years. She caught ‘ghosts’ on film. They had scratched or even attacked the guests. DeAnna had invited priests, paranormal researchers, and the crew of the TV show The Dead Files into her home, who then uncovered ‘evidence’ of ‘grisly deaths’ that had occurred there.3 When the Fox43 staff came in, something invisible scratched their photographer.

In March 2018, my wife woke me up in the middle of the night. She said, ‘The bathroom door is locked, and our son is sleeping in his bed.’ You can only lock the door from the inside. The lock needs force, so this can’t happen by accident. My wife feared a burglar was hiding inside. I took a knife from the kitchen to unlock the door while she was standing behind me, holding a heavy object to smash into the head of the burglar. Only, I never believed there was a burglar. So many unusual things had happened already. And I was right. There was no burglar.

So, what to make of this? The goings-on at Twickel Castle and the Hanover house are undoubtedly peculiar. Nina De Santo’s story is mind-boggling. In my home, the laws of physics didn’t always fully apply either. It made me wonder. I have seen it happen, and so has my wife. And if there is no naturalistic explanation, is this evidence of ghosts? Not necessarily. If you believe ghosts are real, you think science is crap. And I don’t. The simulation can play into our imaginations and fears. And ghosts are as unreal as we are. There may not be more to it than that. That at least makes sense.

Latest revision: 18 July 2025

Featured image: Halloween cat from Poland. User Silar (2012). Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

1. Betoverd door: haunted houses. Theracoppens.nl.
2. 10 Eerie Real-Life Paranormal Encounters to Creep You Out. Listverse.com (2022).
3. A haunted Hannover home. Civilwarghosts.com. [link]
4. Why those TV ghost-hunting shows are transparently fake. Scott Craven (2019). The Republic. [link]