ichthyoid

https://youtu.be/tB9dQK5ytvE

This one's been a long time coming.

I made this track a long time ago, right around the time that Spitfire Audio came out with their London Atmos and Soft Piano presets. It was the first time I really came to understand how to do generative melody and harmony in modular synthesis.

Coming from a classical music background, one of the goals I have with generative or modular synthesis is to create an instrument from which I can compose more melodically and harmonically inclined music. In other words, create classical-type music generatively. I was first inspired to do this while watching Colin Benders do something similar. However, eventually, I want to do this orchestrally.

In this particular patch, I've been able to make generative music sound a little more human. The ability to do polyphony in VCV Rack has helped immensely with reducing the number of modules required for the task. By mixing different timings of notes to a large variety of arpeggiations while fixing the key in semi-random note generation, this patch sounds basically like a human being spontaneously playing piano in an urban atmosphere.

What is the Definition of Music?

This is a fascinating topic for me.

As a kid, being trained classically on the piano and other instruments, my understanding of music was defined within certain borders. Namely, making sure there was a familiar (or at least memorable) melody and harmony to supplement it was the foundation of what I called “music”.

However, as I grew older, being introduced to jazz, rock, hip-hop, and other contemporary styles of music, that definition broadened quite a bit. A beat could be music. Actually, all of music can be seen as just beats sped up or down. But music was still confined within a certain garden. Even with jazz and its improvisational nature, you could still hear a semblance of repetitious pitches which would define the piece being played.

So as I stepped into the world of modular synthesis, and generative music specifically, I came to a pause as to what the definition of music actually is.

The world of generative music quite different fundamentally than anything else I've encountered so far. It has certain familiar elements, such as improvisation, sequencing and modulation, as well as other techniques and skills required for instrumentation and music making. But what makes generative music different is that the act of creating music doesn't seem to reside in the musician—or to be more specific, the human being.

Instead, someone who is creating generative music seems to be responsible for capturing a moment of cohesion within a contained set of limited, but random, rules. And this skillful capture results in the realization of beauty within the system.

It's certainly interesting to think about it in this way. I think many creatives, whether they are traditional composers or musicians, or whether they are artists or writers or filmmakers, would probably agree with that statement above. That their art is not so much their own inventiveness, but seems sometimes to be a capturing of something that was already there, but making that chaos into a cohesive (and hopefully beautiful) thing. This would be why Homer would call upon muses to aid his storytelling. Why musicians, when we look back on something we made, we are at a loss for how it was even created in the first place (even though we were the ones that did it!).

But with generative music, that concept seems to being at the forefront of its creation.

It's an interesting evolution of the definition of music for me. I'll definitely come back to it in the future.

Watching interviews with people who have had an impact on the world is (in my opinion) one of the greatest things the Internet has brought to the world. So when I happened upon this video from 2007 between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, I was immediately transfixed from beginning to end. I've actually watched this video multiple times across the years, and each time I've seen it, I've learned something new.

This time, as I was watching it, I realized that a lot of what they were talking about—in terms of the evolution of technology and computing in the 20th century—has a lot of parallels in the rise of the Internet in the 2000-2010 decade and the current evolution of decentralized finance and blockchain.

And I believe that, if we can take the lessons they learned to heart, a lot of what's going on the blockchain space can be understood very easily, and used by blockchain companies to forge ahead a clear path into the future.

The World They Created

It's difficult to overstate the impact that these two men (and their respective companies) have had on the world today. Both were instrumental in taking the idea of a computer and making it a personal. As Bill Gates put it, “a computer on every desk, and in every home.” That motto is very nearly a reality, though it has evolved into “a computer in every pocket” in the form of our smartphones. That these two companies (and others besides, of course) were able to do this in less than half a century goes to show just how visionary and perceptive they were.

Even today, listening to the interview, the things they predicted were going to happen in the tech space are happening now, more than a decade after that interview.

But how did they do this? How were they able to maneuver around economic rises and falls across decades, keeping them at the top of the tech sector, and still be the avant-garde of it?

In the interview, around the 17:33 minute mark, they both begin to explain this process. It's pretty well known that, while Apple and Microsoft certainly had a rivalry as the computer industry took shape, they also collaborated frequently as well. Bill Gates here mentions the various paradigm shifts that had taken place in tech, and specifically the bet that graphics user interfaces (GUI) would take over computing.

The idea may seem obvious now, but the navigation of a computer through point-and-click graphics rather than a keyboard paved the way for a vast majority of users to come into the benefits of computer technology. From filmmakers to music producers to photographers to writers (yup, bloggers!), it's safe to say that none of us would be using a computer if we didn't have the rich graphics interface that the Macintosh pioneered.

And the Macintosh wasn't the first machine to use such a simple but brilliant interface. Famously, Jobs and his company had 'stolen' the idea from Xerox during a special debut demo for it. But what both Microsoft and Apple bet on was the use of the GUI paradigm on mass market, general purpose computers.

But it wasn't just the use of a GUI that proved the paradigm. When touchscreen interfaces were first coming to market in the form of Palm Pilots and Newtons, while many businesses and other organizations bought into them, those devices never made it into the hands of consumer masses. It wasn't until the iPhone came out, with its capacitative multi-touch interface that was as natural as using your hands, that the idea of touchscreen became ubiquitous.

It must be mentioned, of course, that both Apple and Microsoft had and still have strong marketing arms. In fact, Steve Jobs is probably the most well-known for his charismatic personality and 'reality distortion field', and Apple's 1984-esque commercial will probably go down in history as one of the greatest ads ever created. The ability to market their products well has had a lasting impact on both companies.

The Evolution of the Internet

A similar evolution from keyboard-based programming to simple graphics-based utility happened for the Internet. The beginnings of the Internet were filled with text-based layouts, horrible primary colors, and gray, boxy buttons. Building a website was a complete chore, and the name of the game was registering your website under a “dot-com” domain name. This, of course, was overtaken eventually by 'Web 2.0', when the likes of social communication and networking became the dominant form of Internet and web interaction. Even today, most websites are created through other websites, such as Wix and Squarespace, where site designers can more easily accommodate their clients' desires because everything is “what you see is what you get”.

But, just as before, simply slapping a GUI onto a website doesn't make its mass adoption inevitable. An example of this could be seen with Myspace and Facebook. While there were many problems with Myspace, one of its problems was its infinite customizability. Here, we can use the idea of choice overload, where having too many options stifles the ability to actually make a choice. A person's Myspace page could be as different as a real website from another's. However, this proved to be detrimental in the end, as the majority of people do not want to code in order to create something that represent themselves to another person.

And Facebook offered this to its users. Rather than requiring them to create something from nothing, it had a standard template from which everyone could concentrate on what they wanted to use the platform for: sharing pictures and posts with their friend and family. This is not to say Myspace died only because of what's been mentioned (I'd say it died also because of deep mismanagement and lack of vision for the platform). But it certainly didn't help that it was easier and faster to get a Facebook page started than a MySpace page.

Similarities could be seen in other web platforms. For example, Youtube became the dominant platform for sharing videos. There are (and were) many other similar platforms. Some of them even had better technology. But none of them offered the same simplicity as Youtube without charge. And when a rising conglomerate like Google stepped in to buy it, it became the de-facto king of video sharing on the Internet.

And so we can see that those who successfully navigated Web 2.0 were the ones who were able to combine simplicity of interface and immediacy of utility to leverage their technology for a bigger consumer base. The Internet, being a communications platform, was the primary use-case for all Web 2.0 companies. But the concept of “communications platform” is so broad, it could encompass almost anything in the human experience. Rather, companies behind Youtube and Facebook were able to create a space where users could do what they wanted to do quickly while interacting with those they wanted to on the Internet.

Furthermore, they did it by introducing platforms and utilities which were far and above their competition. Just as GUI was a revolution in interface design and experience that brought computing to the masses, Web 2.0 platforms were a revolution in simplifying mass communication so that, not only can anyone do it, but most people would rather use those utilities to do so than the old, traditional ways.

What Can Blockchain Learn?

Heading into 2020, the CEO of Celsius Network, a company which allows its clients to borrow and earn interest on cryptocurrencies store on their service, released this statement on the future of decentralized finance (DeFi). In it, he mentions something very similar to the ideas mentioned above:

DeFi needs interfaces that are familiar, intuitive, and enjoyable

This certainly covers the beginning shift in evolution of both personal computing and the Internet as discussed above. But it still falls short of the goal of revolutionizing technology through decentralization.

For example, creating an interface that was “familiar, intuitive, and enjoyable” before the Macintosh era meant streamlining code or creating faster shortcuts for various functions (like printing). But it didn't necessarily mean creating an interface that would be useful for the masses. To do that, they needed a completely new paradigm (GUI) to shift the state of tech.

Similarly, creating an interface that was “familiar, intuitive, and enjoyable” in early attempts to make touch-interfaces meant having a better screens and a more responsive stylus. But it wasn't until a paradigm shift of capacitative multi-touch screens for our fingers so anyone could use the device that tablets and smartphones became ubiquitous.

And of course, creating an interface that was “familiar, intuitive, and enjoyable” in the early Internet was basically “create better code” or “create a better coding framework”. But it wasn't until companies massively simplified web interfaces to focus on easy communication and sharing that the Internet really took off, as it became the best platform to do so.

If the above examples are correct, then I believe no mass market adoption will happen for blockchain until something comes that makes it both easy to use AND far better than the current options out there. And it doesn't matter if the application of blockchain goes into DeFi or gaming or any other use-case. It doesn't even really matter which blockchain has the better technology (which is probably why Bitcoin has held the top market cap place despite it being the absolute worst in terms of tech).

Just realized how much I've written already. I'll continue my thoughts in a follow-up post. Thanks for reading!

Picture credit to Unsplash (edited).

https://youtu.be/CpVTykc6tMY

It's been a long time since I've uploaded a video!

I've actually made a lot of music over the last year. But because of work and life, I haven't had time to make/edit a video. With COVID-19 shutting down most things where I live (including my work), I've had a lot more time to myself, so I can (hopefully) share more of the music I've been making in the next few weeks!

In previous posts, I've mentioned the benefits of meditation and how the current pandemic actually gives us opportunity to do so. With that, I like to provide music that is more along the meditative and ambient lines. Here, a slow, ambient piece centered around musical 'raindrop' particles and ambient noises.

If you look at almost all of my previous music releases on Youtube, they are almost all done exclusively on VCV Rack, which is a synthesis platform and environment that works like Eurorack modular synthesis. But instead of needing to purchase massive, expensive racks and hardware, VCV Rack is a free software that has first and third party plug-ins, offering musicians the ability to do the same for pennies on the dollar!

However, since even VCV Rack requires a lot of computing power to run, I've been making music moreso on my phone these days.

The iOS music environment is almost just as modular. As explained in my video, you can take MIDI apps and route them into audio and sound plug-ins to make music. For those who don't know MIDI (which stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a protocol that allows you to control different instruments. You can use it to send pitch information, volume information, and other kinds of things to control musical instruments. A large majority of all electronic musical instruments have some form of MIDI. For example, if you've ever set foot in a music store and seen electronic keyboards and such, they are all controlled by MIDI.

Because specialized apps are the way to go in the iOS environment, a ton of developers have created a lot of different apps for making music. And as the music creation became more mature, developers began to create apps like AUM and Audiobus so that musical apps could talk to each other and work with each other. Thus, you can piece together your own instrument, sounds, and music in any way you would want!

I'm still in the beginning stages of exploring this new form factor, but I felt I wanted to release this one anyways. Since I've been blogging on Coil, as I release more music, I'll also be posting here about making music, how-to's, and various other things.

Enjoy!

I was listening to this discussion the other day on a Youtube channel called Unbelievable. In it, the topic of the origins of the universe was debated between Sir Roger Penrose and William Lane Craig.

I admire both men greatly, as they have both contributed some amazing work in their respective fields. Sir Roger Penrose is a mathematical physicist who has done tremendous work in astrophysics, including the famous Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems, which substantiated the Big Bang singularity at the beginning of the known universe. William Lane Craig, on the other hand, is a Christian philosopher who is known for his apologetic and philosophical work on the existence of God. While I have no idea if the two men have actually met prior to the video event, Craig often cites Penrose in his arguments, despite Penrose being an atheist.

So it was a no-brainer for me to immediately click and watch the inevitably fascinating discussion between the two on the topic. As I listened though, something odd became apparent to me that I had never noticed before while listening to debates in general. It seemed to me that, while both men are intellectual athletes who are highly respected in their fields, as they discussed their perspectives on the issue, they seemed to have missed that they were really answering two different questions.

Upon realizing this, I thought it would be interesting to explore this a little in a blog post, and why I think in many cases, debates can often derail because the two sides are answering two different facets of a singular topic, and thus miss the mark on bringing a solution to the actual problem.

The Topic at Hand

As I watched the discussion, something Roger Penrose said stood out to me. After some personal introductions, the discussion started to center around what they believe was the cause of the origin of the universe. Penrose offered that there seems to be three different categories of reality: the reality of matter (i.e. physical objects), the reality of mind (or consciousness), and the reality of abstract objects (like mathematics). He refers to these as mysteries, since it's difficult for him to pinpoint a singular origin for all three of them.

Craig then offers that these three categories of reality can be coalesced with the mental reality being the source of origin behind both physical and abstract realities. The reasoning is that it seems that mental reality has causal properties which affect physical and mathematical reality. Thus, the postulate of a mind which is infinite in its scope and properties would seem to be sufficient to bring about the other three realities.

Penrose, then, at around the 22:44 minute mark, says this:

“I tend to put [universal origin] in the platonic mathematical world...I don't quite see why...a mental thing...I don't quite see why it helps.”

I won't go much into detail of the rest of the discussion, as I think listening to the actual video would probably be more helpful than me trying to summarize it. But I found it fascinating that Penrose fixated on abstract realities, while Craig focused on conscious realities. While some may be more inclined to agree with one side or the other, to me, it seems that these two men are actually answering different parts of the origins question. Penrose is answering how our origins came to be. Craig is focused on why.

The Difference Between How and ***Why
***Let me illustrate this.

I was vacuuming my house the other day, both because of COVID-19 and because it's spring, and that's typically when many people do an annual house cleaning. And since my mind tends to wander when I'm doing menial tasks, I began to apply the two different postulates to my vacuuming task.

From Penrose's point of view (this will be a bit reductionist, but simple examples are often easier to understand), the mechanism behind my vacuuming the house would be due to the fundamental physical principles behind the mechanisms of my body interacting with my vacuum interacting with the floor. These mechanics are undeniable. After all, the vacuuming could not happen if my vacuum did not hit the floor while turned on while also being in my hands as I slowly and methodically walked around my house. That is certainly how my house was being vacuumed.

But that doesn't answer the fundamental question of why. The vacuuming around the house was being done because of a mentally conscious person (me) making the decision to maintain and keep the house clean (a concept that is mental, since clean cannot be an objective, abstract idea), as well as keeping my wife happy.

And in this case, the why is just as important as the how. Of course it's important to understand how a vacuum works, how the laws of thermodynamics cause floors to become dirty over time, and whether my body has the minimal strength necessary to get the job done. But it's important to know why because, at least in this case, it tells us what the purpose of vacuuming is.

How and Why the “Whys” and Hows” are Important
I wish I had a better title for this section, but it's fun to see those juxtaposed. It's grammatically correct, but still uncomfortable to read out loud.

Many scientists and mathematicians would ask the same (inferred) question Penrose does, and having a background in psychology, I sympathize with their quandary. Because scientists and mathematicians thrive on precision and predictability, it's appropriate to understand that Penrose is actually asking about whether postulating an infinite mind could lead to predictable results. This is the essence of the scientific method—testable and falsifiable hypotheses which lead to definite conclusions.

Postulating an infinite mind brings such an incalculable number of variables that it would be as unpredictable as a real person randomly picked from some unknown part of the world. Which, to the scientific mind, is not a good way to find out falsifiable truths in the universe.

But postulating an infinite mind isn't always a bygone or unscientific conclusion. After all, even human beings tend to follow trends. And the scientific fields of psychology and sociology are meant to study how human beings behave and think, both in groups and as individuals. And by doing so, we can use the tendencies of human behavior to create better societies.

In the same way, from a scientific perspective, an infinite mind responsible for all categories of reality certainly can exist, but the question would be how to go about hypothesizing and testing such an existence. By doing so, we can come to understand the attributes of such a mind (i.e. whether benevolent or maleficent), and therefore come to see purpose in the universe in a better way. And purpose, as Penrose stated at the beginning of the discussion, is definitely evidential when we look at the cosmos today.

Bringing Unity in a Debate
Not all topics of debate have sides which can brought together this way. Many exist with perspectives that are mutually exclusive or inherently conflict with each other. But there are certainly many cases where the two sides can meet in the middle, if both were able to approach the topic with the right mindset.

In this day and age, debates seem to exist everywhere, and in every area of life. From religion to philosophy to science to politics. They even exist in popular and entertainment culture. And many grapple with the important questions in life.

But I think the idea of only one side winning a debate often defeats the purpose of having the debate at all. If only one side can be a victor, both sides are always battling and becoming more and more entrenched in their ideologies, rather than creating a positive and useful exchange of ideas.

In this way, I've recently found that discussions and conversations to be better than formal debate. When we have conversations where multiple parties are willing to be wrong, while still presenting the best of their ideas, it can become a healthier competition for the betterment of everyone.

Header Image credit to Pixabay.

On March 12, the cryptocurrency market crashed. Following the global outbreak of COVID-19, along with stocks and other investment markets, almost every coin that wasn't a stablecoin dropped precipitously, with some bottoming out at a nearly 30% loss. A day later, another bottom would be found, but recovery would prove only to solidify the original 30% loss.

For cryptocurrency in general, the loss wasn't really anything unusual. The 2018 crash was far worse in terms of percentage, where over the course of a few months, the crypto market lost about 80% of its worth. But since it happened over a few months, there were many chances for people to save their capital over a longer stretch of time. The flash-crash of March 12th was so sudden, that many could not gain access to save their investments.

And this led to a Black Swan event for MakerDao's Multi-collateral DAI.

MCD: What Went Wrong

I've previously written about MakerDao's MCD stablecoin. In summary, it is a stablecoin that is soft-pegged to the value of the US Dollar. It achieves this by being backed by a small variety of other cryptocurrencies, rather than having a 1-to-1 relationship with a physical dollar where you could trade it in to an actual bank, as in the case of stablecoins like USDC. The advantage of this would be that, in the event that a bank could not provide you with a physical dollar to trade in your stablecoin for, that stablecoin could be essentially worthless. By using multiple types of collateral to back up the DAI, MakerDao can more or less assure the peg of the coin to be worth a USD, while not needing anything physical to depend on.

But then, March 12th happened. And since the entire cryptocurrency market is more or less correlated with each other (currently), as Bitcoin became oversold, all alt-coins, including Ethereum and BAT (the only collateral backing DAI at the time), dropped with it.

Usually, when collateralizing Ethereum or BAT to create DAI, the owner is encouraged to heavily over-collateralize, since their collateral would be liquidated once the assets reach only 150% of value of the loan. When the price of all cryptos in the market dropped 30%, many people who didn't over-collateralize lost their assets due to the liquidation.

But this wasn't the worst of it.

During a liquidation, the MakerDAO protocol was designed so that anyone (called keepers) could step in to buy and close out a loan. This usually results in a sort of auction, and the original asset owners would receive some of the value of their asset back after subtracting the liquidation fee and the loaned amount. However, due to the massive congestion in the Ethereum market, many keepers could not gain access to this function in time.

Instead, a single keeper was able to swipe the assets for $0.

MCD: The Result?

All in all, about $4.5 million dollars was taken from the MakerDAO system. And since no money was paid to obtain the collateral assets, original owners (as well as MakerDAO itself) did not receive any of the value they would have theoretically owed.

Because blockchain systems and cryptocurrencies are decentralized and trustless, there's not much that MakerDAO could do to take back the assets lost or reverse the course of what happened.

It should be noted that, despite all the above having happened, none of what happened above was technically outside of the lines of the MakerDAO protocol. In fact, the protocol of MakerDAO makes provisions for events in case the auction function isn't able to raise enough DAI to cover its obligations. It does so through the creation and auctioning of MKR, another token created to help with the governance and value creation of DAI.

So it wasn't a hack, a bug, or some other thing with MakerDAO's protocols which caused people to lose the assets. Instead, it was network congestion inside the Ethereum protocols which prevented people from gaining some value for their lost assets. This wouldn't be as bad for those who still had DAI from their loan. However, there are those who reinvested their DAI for leveraging. Those users have lost 100% of their assets.

bZx: Another Case of Smart Contract Exploitation

MakerDAO's black swan event isn't the first time a DeFi protocol was taken advantage of. Recently, another decentralized exchange called bZx also lost a lot of value for its customers through an exploit found in its loaning process.

In two separate cases, bZx's exchange was hit by a user exploiting its flash-loan protocols. While not exactly the same attack in both instances, the attackers basically borrowed a large sum of ETH and use it as leverage on other trading platforms. By either shorting coins or pumping stablecoins on specific platforms for only a few seconds, the attackers were able to make a profit off what they borrowed through smart contracts inherent in bZx's decentralized exchange system. (To get a more detailed picture of the attacks, you can read about them here and here.)

In response to both attacks, the people behind bZx shut down the exchange platform in order to work out the kinks. To some, it showed the more centralized nature of the exchange. To others (and its makers), it was a necessary action to solve the issue.

Again, like the MakerDAO exploit, the attackers didn't actually do anything outside of the guidelines of bZx's protocols. In fact, a similar thing had been done to Robinhood, a mostly automated stock trading app, a few months earlier, where customers were able to create infinite leverage with only a few thousand dollars in an account. These attacks weren't the result of hacks or bugs. They were the result of people taking advantage of overlooked or unforeseen quirks in a system, and using them to obtain money or assets they wouldn't otherwise have been able to get. In fiat-based systems, these exploits are more easily dealt with, since fiat money can almost always be traced to certain people. The money stolen can be recovered and returned, because a centralized authority is controlling everything.

So DeFi Solutions Create More Problems?

With decentralized systems, such as decentralized exchanges and blockchains, these problems are much more difficult to resolve in a way which satisfies all parties, especially the individual customers who have lost assets and capital.

The goal of decentralized finance is to get rid of the need for an authority to transact. This authority was previously required so that we could transact safely. But the same authority historically exploits this power for its own gain. And so, DeFi is meant to help individuals transact without the need to trust another party.

But automation often comes with its own issues as given above. The most important of these is that exploiting DeFi platforms is often not the result of illegal actions, but taking advantage of the protocols already in place. And then, of course, the loss that incurs because a centralized authority doesn't exist to reimburse customers.

As I see it, these are the risks inherent in any decentralized system, and will never go away. They are, in fact, the problems that always came with a lack of authority. Some of them can be slightly mitigated through education. For example, in the MakerDAO situation, users could be warned of the intrinsic risk of putting their ETH in a CDP as they do so.

But others, like the bZx situation, require rethinking or recoding the platform.

The MakerDAO system has already begun to put more protocols in place to prevent a similar exploit from happening again. These rules include giving keepers more time to respond to black-swan level events, adding USDC as collateral to help in a liquidity drop, making the UI for auctions easier to access, and lowering governance action to 4 hours from 24 hours.

But the great thing about the MakerDAO protocol changes is that these rules are voted in by a community of people (MKR coin holders), rather than some centralized company. And I believe this is the best way forward.

I think this really all goes to show just how early we are in the journey of decentralizing finance. While I truly believe in the mission and goals of DeFi, it's going to be a while before the majority of the public is able to rely on these platforms for their normal daily lives.

With many major cities and even nations on shutdown due to COVID-19, many people and families are having to learn to cope with life outside of the busy-ness of normal jobs and schedules.

In our area, most non-essential stores and outlets have been closed for the next few weeks. So if the physical outlet near you isn't a grocery store, gas station, pharmacy, or laundromat, then it is likely shut down. Even at grocery stores, in order to prevent panic and empty shelves, customers must line up and a maximum of only a few of the same items per person has been put in place. Even most bank locations are closed, so while people can spend on their credit and debit cards, acquiring cash takes a bit of time as people line up at ATMs.

A Home Garden

In light of this, my wife and I decided to simply take the extra time we've been given to grow our home garden. We actually decided to start our own home garden last year, with attempts at growing cilantro, bok choy, lettuce, rosemary, figs, and a few others I can't remember.

Some were successful:

Some weren't as much:

I mean, it's not the worst rosemary bush in the world. It just looks like it's dying.

Part of the idea was to produce a garden that had the ability, more or less, to help our little family sustain itself, in times of crisis. Of course, what we grew last year isn't helpful at all right now with COVID-19. But the extra time we now have, and with the pandemic going on, we're pretty motivated to continue to do what we can to grow our garden.

And with that, we have planted our next couple of seeds:

We're learning to re-use as much as we can, and so as a base, we're recycling a plastic egg container we're finished with. Inside each cup, where an egg once was, is now a tiny bok choy seed.

As you can see, on one side, we put a plastic bag, and the other we didn't. This is because we couldn't figure out whether or not it would be easier to lift everything with a plastic bag when we (eventually) have to move our growing plants into a bigger container.

Financial Sustenance

Not having to work much does have its perks. But the biggest downside, of course, is the lack of financial income with which to pay off utility bills, life expenses, and other similar things.

With global markets on meltdown, it's kind of difficult to be financially optimistic. I mean, take a look at this insane chart:

Photo taken from [macrotrends](https://www.macrotrends.net/2490/sp-500-ytd-performance)

The Fed has also cut rates to 0 (which I think is scarier than the market crashing). And these trends don't seem like they'll be stopping any time soon.

It's a good thing to remember, though, that a global economy doesn't necessarily dictate what an individual and his or her own local community (whether it's family, neighbors, religious community, etc.) can do. We were lucky enough to begin putting safeguards on our personal finances last year, which I detailed in a series of blog posts called Be Your Own Bank.

But that taking those steps last year was just practice for what we're having to do now. All the principles I talk about, from understanding what money actually is, to budgeting appropriately, to having a long-term objectives orientation immensely helps my financial habits. Even now, I see investment opportunities as the market crashes, rather than panicking about losing fake capital.

The Mental Game

In all this, I've realized that surviving, and even thriving, during a time of crisis is really a mental game. External realities may have effects on all of us, but it is up to each individual person whether he or she will submit to the panic and fear that is now widespread.

As a student of psychology, I learned that the part of our brains which regulates emotion is called the Amygdala (my professor used the mnemonic Amy G. Dala). This small little part of our brains is responsible for emotions including fear, anxiety, and aggression, and activates our “fight-or-flight” response to a situation. In other words, it's often responsible for the stressful emotions we have in life.

I think, for many of us, being in the middle of a pandemic or crisis often activates these stressful emotions. We're in panic mode, and therefore very susceptible to ideas which we think will get us the fastest to safety. But those ideas are often not the most coherent, logical, or even helpful in the long-run.

So with that, I definitely recommend taking time (now that we have lots of it) to meditate. Meditating an amazing exercise which helps us make better decisions, detach from the fear and anxiety the world tries to put onto us, and even physically heal our brains! It's a win-win, despite the crazy pandemic going on.

And when our mental game is in check, we come to know what we as individuals can do to help ourselves and others around us, even in a global crisis.

With that, I'll leave off today's blog with a quote from Nelson Mandela:

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.

Have a great week!

Header Image credit goes to Pixabay.

It isn't the first time this has happened.

I remember that day—the 18th of September, 2011—sitting at a desk too small for comfort, waiting for my Cognitive Psychology professor to show up so the class could get started. Classmates milled about, and my friend Paul was talking my ear off about something I didn't really care about. It had been a longer wait than usual, but nothing out of the ordinary. Just time to pass until the next lecture.

Then, he walked in, sided by his racing cycle, as per usual. My professor was a cranky old bastard, but his rudeness is probably what kept the class entertaining. In the middle of lecturing us on neural nets and cognitive theories, he was prone to sudden neurotic bursts of annoyed and cynical analyses of every topic imaginable, from politics and science to his hatred of having to cycle next to inane drivers.

This time, as he strode in, and the rest of the class quieted down or settled into their seats, he began with, “Did you all hear the news? Gamers are about to save the world.”

We stared, fascinated, as he explained that gamers had solved a molecular problem that had stumped scientists for more than a decade. This particular puzzle challenged scientists in designing a cure for the HIV/AIDS virus. So in order to solve this problem, scientists crowdsourced gamers through a game called Foldit, which pitted more than 200,000 players against each other in a competition to get the most elegant solution possible to help stop the virus in its tracks.

Gamers did it within 10 days.

To this day, I still don't know why this wasn't national headlining news. But I do remember feeling like the solution to all the world's problems had been discovered. The ability of people to come together, competing against each other, in order to come up with the best solution—in other words, free-market competition—had produced a solution to a virus that haunted western society ever since Magic Johnson told the world he had contracted it.

Decentralized problem solving is, of course, not a new subject. And as this blog is on Coil, it's obvious that I believe very much in decentralization as a solution to many of today's problems, including those in the financial world. After all, Bitcoin (and blockchain) was invented to basically give a middle finger to the big central banks and financial institutions across the world.

Today, with the outbreak of COVID-19, a strain of coronavirus which began in Wuhan, China, and has spread to almost all of the rest of the world, could we do it again?

Nvidia is already calling gamers with GPUs to help give more compute power towards solving the present pandemic. By hooking our GPUs up to a global network, they can help with the massive computational crunching required for this kind of research. This style of networking has existed for a while now, all the back to when the PS3 was co-opted to assist with different research tasks.

So right now, if you want to help the world out with fighting COVID-19, and have a gaming rig, this is the best way to get started.

But maybe soon, gamers will be called upon to more actively participate in solving the problem of global pandemics. My hope is, if it is necessary, it will be sooner, rather than a decade later.

Header Image credit goes to Unsplash.

I was reading Robert Kiyosaki's “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, and as the book was explaining the value of having an understanding of financial statements and accounting, I realized something pretty crazy: playing RollerCoaster Tycoon as a kid somehow indirectly taught me financial literacy.

Originally, I was going to post this as one of my “This Week I Learned” series. And while that realization did happen this past week, I've actually been playing RollerCoaster Tycoon since I was a small child. Perhaps I'm slow, but learning financial literacy through the game was a process, rather than some short, one-week gaming binge. But with that, here's how I learned financial literacy by playing RollerCoaster Tycoon!

Note: I am not in any way recommending Robert Kiyosaki's books or playing RollerCoaster Tycoon for financial education. This is a simple blog post expounding on what I thought was interesting. Please do not take anything I say as advice of any kind.

Brief Game Overview

All screenshots are from RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic on iOS

For those who don't know and haven't played, RollerCoaster Tycoon is a series of video games in which you act like a business tycoon trying to open a theme park, with rollercoasters being the main attraction. The first game in the series, created by Chris Sawyer in 1999, was packed with dozens of missions and scenarios (and even more in its expansions) in which players could build theme parks while trying to meet certain objectives and goals. Its first sequel, RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, was released in 2002, and had almost the same exact gameplay and mechanics, with a few tweaks to make it both more streamlined and add a bit more difficulty to the gameplay. Further sequels added a 3D engine and new ways to build and create rollercoasters and other theme park rides, but interestingly, I could never get as attached to those games as I did the first two.

Part of the reason for that was because of the original's (and it's direct sequel's) simplicity. While the transition to 3D allowed something which I always thought I had wanted (the ability to actually ride the rides I created), when I did finally play the 3rd installment, I realized that I didn't actually care that much about virtually riding rollercoasters. Instead, what made me fall in love with the original game was its basic mechanics of business cost and profit management.

Building a Park in RollerCoaster Tycoon

Most of the scenarios in the first two RollerCoaster Tycoon games are pretty straight forward. You're given a set amount of time to meet a goal while making sure you're also keeping your park at a certain rating. For example, in the first scenario, Frontier Forest, you're given one year (game time) to get 250 guests into your park, while maintaining your park rating at 600 (which basically meant guests on average thought your park was pretty decent). Some scenarios already have guests and rides, while others are almost a blank slate.

Frontier Forest, the first scenario

In most scenarios, you began by building some basic rollercoasters and some gentle rides and food stalls. You're also responsible for hiring handymen to keep your park clean and tidy, mechanics to inspect and fix rides, security guards to keep a check on vandalism, and entertainers to bolster the happiness of your guests. You had a research tab that could be used to obtain more and different types of rides. You could even alter the landscape of your park to design some crazy ones.

All of this cost money. In the game, there is an entire window dedicated to helping players see and understand the finances of their park. And that is where my financial education began.

Financial Management in RollerCoaster Tycoon

At the start of most scenarios, you're given a loan to get your park started. However, this loan was given to you at a 10% interest rate. I found out early that most rollercoasters I wanted to build ended up costing almost all of my initial loan. If I built it, I had barely enough for other rides, food stalls, and staff to maintain the park. Then, the costs of ride maintenance, staff fees, stall restock fees, and the loan fees would eat my finances into the negative, preventing me from building out the rest of the park. This wasn't too much of a problem in the initial scenarios, which were so easy you could almost not build anything and still win. However, as the scenarios became more difficult, I would often lose them simply because of an inability to manage my finances.

I then learned to try to keep my debt down. This meant trying to pay off my loan as quickly as possible. Instead of borrowing more money to build my one massive coaster, I would build a few smaller rides to churn in the money. Over time, I would pay the loan off, and then my park's finances would always be 'in the black'. With that, I was able to build the crazier rides I wanted, without worrying about not having enough money, and not meeting the scenarios' objectives on time (I don't like losing).

Then the scenarios got even more difficult. Some, like Dinky Park and Micro Park, were so small it seemed impossible to build anything to get guests in. Others, like Rainbow Valley and Gravity Gardens, had heavy building restrictions which often conflicted annoyingly with the scenario goals. And then, there's scenarios like Amity Airfield, which required an absurd number of guests by a required date.

In these difficult scenarios, it became paramount to keep finances in check. To do so, I had to learn to build exciting rides quickly, so as to get more guests in fast. Then, I had to simplify what I built, often building multiple of the same rides. Then, especially with smaller parks, I had to streamline landscaping and geography so that I could build those same multiple rides quickly and easily, without needing to worry about whether something would fit. And in this way, it was almost like learning to build franchise or chain restaurants, as customized rides gave way to pre-built, pre-tested ones which guaranteed results.

Looks almost like a factory line of coasters

And while this might not sound like “fun”, by the time I was finishing up with the most difficult scenarios, it actually was quite fun to see how far I could push my ability to maintain a rollercoaster theme park.

A Financial Life Lesson

Financial literacy isn't very difficult on a broad scope. The basic premise is to have more money coming in through income and assets than going out through liabilities and expenses. Of course, the details of risk assessment, tax laws, and basic business management are far more complex than this. But it is important to know this as a general rule.

In the game, rides such as rollercoasters can represent assets which bring in money. But they also have a cost—that of building and maintenance—which means they can also be liabilities. If a ride, over time, costs more than the money or income it brings in, it becomes a liability rather than an asset. This is often the case with old rides in the game, which start to deteriorate to the point where almost no one is riding them, and they only incur maintenance fees.

Understanding how to balance ride costs with ride maintenance, stall stock resupplies, research funding, and other expenses taught me to think about what I would be building next in terms of financial risk assessment. If I wanted to create a huge, complex, custom RollerCoaster, I needed to make sure that the funds coming in from the park would be enough for so that I could take the time to design said coaster.

RollerCoaster Tycoon's Financials window

More importantly, I learned that paying down the debt was not always the best. In the more difficult scenarios, I wouldn't have time to try to pay the debt down immediately. Instead, I had to create an income which would supersede the debt, so that in the future I could pay it down. When I did pay it down, I would still sometimes borrow more money, because I knew that my income could take the hit.

Thus, having an income which surpassed what I owed from my loans was more important. And this was what I learned from playing a simple video game since I was a child.

Final Thoughts

Video games can teach us a lot. In fact, during my secondary education, I actually studied the effect of video games and education for one of my research projects. I found that gamifying education had the potential to bring many benefits, even at a the university and graduate degree level, though the process of gamification was in experimentation stages at that point.

Growing up, I've always believed that I learned more while playing video games than in formal education. After all, any gamer would be immediately able to tell you the exact stats and abilities of their RPG characters, and how they would be able to master that character to its optimum, even down to the specific number of times they would need to defeat some boss or enemy in order to accomplish such a goal. That a player would get so involved in the detail of his or her character, and yet be unable to answer fundamental questions about literary or even historical figures they had just learned in class speaks volumes about both the ineffectiveness of formal education in my time, as well as the strength and potentiality of gamified education.

What I find fascinating is that I don't consciously try to think of RollerCoaster Tycoon when I'm budgeting or discussing finances with family and friends. But the lessons I learned from the game were always unconscious influences, nagging my brain to make sure that, with anything I wanted to purchase, I'm always calculating whether it would exceed or come under my income.

Heck, now I want to go play again.

With the recent release of the Final Fantasy VII Remake Demo, and the full game's part 1 release just around the corner, I've been thinking about the game quite a bit. Often rated one of the greatest JRPG's ever made, Final Fantasy VII has a crazy legacy that must be putting some pretty crazy pressure on the current developers of the remake. So far though, with what I've seen from gameplay and cinematic demos, it seems like it will be a fantastically faithful re-imagining of one of my favorite games of all time.

One of the contentions made about video games (although less so nowadays) is whether video games can be considered art. Rather than trying to answer this question, I'd rather address how specific things within video games shows the quality of the art being displayed. Just like we wouldn't say all works of literary fiction, photography, painting, music, and film are art, but a small selection made by a few artists, composers, or producers should definitely be considered such, I would categorize many games under the Final Fantasy umbrella as art. And in this blog, I want to focus on one specific aspect of the 7th installment to show why I consider it a masterwork of art.

And of course, as revealed in the title of this blog, that aspect is the character of Cloud Strife in Final Fantasy VII. In continuing with my “A Study in” series, I want to take a look at this character, the themes he represents, and how his depth illustrates the beauty of the story of Final Fantasy VII.

*WARNING: LOTS of spoilers ahead! If you haven't played Final Fantasy VII or aren't familiar with the story, the following may either not make sense or completely spoil the story for you.

Origins

However, before I get to the meat of the topic, I want to explain a specific lens I'm looking through to analyze Cloud Strife. In any work of art, it's important to understand the background and context by which the artist came to create it. For example, in discussing Pablo Picasso's art, it's important not only to understand the different styles and techniques he used to help develop the Cubist movement in painting and sculpture, but how the subject material he painted was informed by the historical and cultural contexts he lived in. In doing so, we not only walk away with a better impression of who Pablo Picasso is, but also why and how his work was so well-received and enamored both in his time and in the present.

Hironobu Sakaguchi, producer of Final Fantasy VII

While video games are a much more collaborative effort, it's not difficult to argue that Hironobu Sakaguchi, the producer, designer, and story director of Final Fantasy VII, had a pretty heavy hand in the development of the game. It is now well known that it was during the development of the previous Final Fantasy (VI in Japan, III in the States) that Sakaguchi was faced with the death of his own mother. This significant event would then go on to have a pretty great impact on the way the themes and story of Final Fantasy VII flowed.

It is through this lens of grief and loss that I'll be analyzing the character of Cloud and the entirety of the game as whole, as I believe that this is the best way to understand the meaning and purpose behind the character.

Summary of the Character

Cloud has always been one of the psychologically deeper characters of the franchise. Interestingly, a recent poll suggests that the majority of Final Fantasy fans (at least in Japan) like this character the most. But this may be because, rather than being a typical heroic character, Cloud is very much a subversion of any heroic trope-type. He is an anti-hero, but not in the pop culture sense of the word, where he has some amoral compass and a bad attitude. Instead, Cloud is literally not a hero. He is the anti-thesis of how any hero is typically framed.

Let's take a look at how his character progresses through the plot of the game. When we're first introduced to Cloud, he is a mercenary for hire with a cool-guy, nonchalant attitude. It rubs Barret, the leader of an eco-terrorist organization, the wrong way, but because of Cloud's professed skills as a former super-soldier, he puts up with it and is actually humble enough to learn from Cloud as well.

But as the story plods on, Cloud's personality and ability begins to fall apart. First, when Cloud and company are inside of the Mako Reactors, Cloud nearly breaks down on the job. When they find out that a former global superhero turned villain named Sephiroth was alive and kicking, our protagonists try to hunt him down, only to find that Cloud has some holes in his memory regarding his time spent with said former hero, whom he looked up to. Then, as the company chase Sephiroth, Cloud finds himself disturbingly obedient to the villain's commands, including nearly killing one whom he had sworn to protect. When he ultimately refuses, our 'hero' is forced to watch her murdered right in front of him. Desiring vengeance, he chases Sephiroth, only to ultimately give Sephiroth the very weapon which will be used to destroy the world.

Unsurprisingly, it is after this that Cloud's psyche utterly crumbles and is rendered a vegetable. Through a series of cutscenes and gameplay, we find out that Cloud was not, in fact, the super soldier he professed to have become, but a failure who was demoted to being a lowly security guard. Instead, he was gravely injured on a mission when he tried to save his friend, Tifa. Then, he was captured and experimented on, resulting in a physical and psychological meltdown. While nearly comatose, he was rescued by a friend who did manage to become a super soldier, but in their escape, the friend was killed. Unable to cope with his friend's death, his confused and debilitated mind created a false persona molded around the dead friend to deal with the tragedy. And thus (in his mind) he became the super soldier he always dreamed of being, with an enhanced physique to back his story up.

The Perfect Villain

They say a good villain is one whose actions and psychology are a direct counterpart to the main protagonists. This is so that, whatever the hero seeks to do, the villain is the ultimate obstacle in the hero's way. In this way, Sephiroth really is the perfect villain for Cloud in Final Fantasy VII. Because, as I said before, Cloud isn't a hero. But Sephiroth is.

And this, I think, is the brilliance of Final Fantasy VII's subversion of the typical hero's story.

Sephiroth is the bad-ass superhero that every kid wants to be. He's got a cool sword, he's got cool hair. He's got abilities that no one can match, and is powerful enough to end wars. And yet, having been a hero to the citizens of the world of Final Fantasy VII, he is our main antagonist in the game.

Prior to the start of the game's plot, Sephiroth finds out that he is the product of combining a human fetus with the cells of an alien organism, called JENOVA. The specifics of this combination aren't very important (at least not to what I'm talking about), but it's important to understand that when Sephiroth found this out, having not known his parentage, he immediately began to refer to JENOVA as mother. And in an effort to follow the footsteps of JENOVA, he plans to rule the world by merging with (and thus controlling) the life of the planet upon which he lives.

It is easy to see from here how Sephiroth's actions and mindset have similarities with Sakaguchi's personal story. But, more interesting, the progress and culmination of the conflict between Cloud and Sephiroth tells us how the creator of the series thought and dealt with grief and loss.

Putting the Pieces into Place

Cloud's story seems to be a great analog to Sakaguchi's life, and really all of us. Just as Cloud professed as a young child to his friend, Tifa, that he was going to become a great hero, I'm sure Sakaguchi, like many young boys and girls, sought to become a hero in their own life story. However, as we grow older, it becomes clear that the obstacles in the way of our own hero's journey aren't as easy to overcome as the fictions and myths we remember. Not all of us make it to be the best or greatest in the world. Not all of us make it to be Sephiroth.

And there comes a time in life when, as we pursue our goals and dreams, that great tragedy happens. In Sakaguchi's case, it was the death of his mother. And—if we are to take Final Fantasy VII as a metaphor—it often forces us to face our own frailty and emotional baggage with reality. Sephiroth—the hero we desired to be like when we were children—also deals with tragedy like children typically do: through tantrum and brutish conquest.

In this way, it's fascinating how Cloud's persona of a superhero is nonchalant and uncaring. It shows how wrong one's conception of a hero can be. Detached instead of empathetic. Rebellious rather than understanding. In Cloud's case, it was actually the opposite of what his friend was truly like (as revealed in another game called Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core). Zack, who had rescued Cloud, was an extremely upbeat and honor-driven person. But despite his exposure to his friend, Cloud's contempt with his own failures blinded him to what a true hero was really like. Instead, his persona became more like Sephiroth, who displayed coolness in his cruelty.

As a point of reflection, when in state of personal and psychological trauma, we often cut off our own ability to feel so as to avoid pain, rather than confront the loss and deal with the hardship of our emotional state. We would rather feel nothing than feel horrible. And so, Cloud hid his own pain by putting up a false mask.

But Cloud learned that the mask wasn't the solution. Instead, in order to deal with the villain, he had to take off the mask and make peace with his past, so that his actions were no longer controlled by Sephiroth. By analogy, we must take off our own façades to no longer be controlled by our emotions and immature desires.

This is not to say that the desire to be a hero is a bad one. After all, Cloud desired to be a hero out of noble and pure intentions: to protect and save Tifa—from Sephiroth no less. This he did do, even when he didn't have the unnatural augmentation of power to his body. And so from the story we understand heroism doesn't come from some super power, but a purity of will which surpasses even the greatest obstacle.

It is interesting that in the end, the very final battle between Cloud and Sephiroth is actually in Cloud's mind. It tells us the creators of the game recognized that though death and tragedy are realities, yet the ultimate battle is in our internal, not external, world. It is dealing with and processing through the torrents of grief and suffering that we can ultimately become truly healed.

And this, I believe, is the story and journey of Cloud Strife in the game—to process and confront tragedy, and lay down an immature child's idea of what a hero should be like, so that he could prevent tragedy from controlling and taking over the world.

Final Thoughts

There's obviously a lot more that could be written in analyzing this character, not to mention the rest of the game. An average play-through would probably be around 20-30 hours, and each part of the game has plenty of backstory, setting, and other exposition, much of which correlates well with the themes I've talked about so far.

But I think the argument I presented at the beginning is pretty justly made. When we think of works of art, we often talk about how they aren't just beautiful in themselves, but speak about and to the world around it. We want to walk away from them, believing to have learned something beneficial to how the real world works. And I believe, having looked only at a single aspect of the game, that Final Fantasy VII does that in spades with the character of Cloud Strife.

Header Image courtesy of UHD Wallpapers.