How Dutch is the Dutch King?

A few weeks ago, I was reading about prince Bernhard (1911-2004), who is the grandfather of the current Dutch king: King Willem Alexander (born 1967). Going through Bernhard his history, one can't help but notice that he is very much German. His name is Bernhard von Lippe-Biesterfeld which means that he is from the Lippe-Biesterfeld family. Then I went through some other family of the Dutch royals. King Willem Alexander's father is also German: Claus-Georg Wilhelm Otto Friedrich von Amsberg (1926-2002). And the husband of his great grandmother was too: Duke Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1876-1934). This region Mecklenburg-Schwerin is where the family of prince Claus was allowed to keep the royal predicate "von". So it seems that the royals have some strong ties to the Mecklenburg-Schwering area.

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The Social Media Good, Bad, and Ugly

Recently, I had some realizations about social media that I think go to the core of the issue.

First of all, of course social media is not all bad. It can be really nice for example to find experts who discuss the news such as the blancolirio channel on YouTube, which is a channel by an experienced pilot discussing aviation crashes and mishaps and what to learn from the mistakes.

What’s bad about social media is that it’s fake social. You usually don’t make real friends and if you do it could usually be done faster in real-life. For example, if you have spent 100 hours reading and interacting with someone’s social media posts. What is the chance that this person will do anything for you like watering your plans when you go on vacation? What is the chance if you would have spent 100 hours in real-life with a person?

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Printing a Book at Home with Minimal Equipment

While writing a book, I wanted to get some feedback from other people on it. To make the feedback process easy, I therefore ordered a few copies at a local printing house. This wasn't too expensive so seemed like a good deal. However, after having to wait a few days on the result, it all didn't seem like such a good deal after all. Having to wait multiple days is a waste of time, as is having to order a batch for a better price. That got me thinking whether it is possible to print a book at home.

After having looked at BlueprintDIY on YouTube, it turned out not to be difficult at all. I think this is pretty cool. Especially in the current day and age where everything on the internet moves at a breakneck speed, there is some peace in just printing things out. Put differently, what is the chance that your social media posts, your backup disk, or your website are still available in 50 years? Not so high I'd guess. Even with the Internet Archive, I'm just not so sure that your data will still be there in 50 years unless you put in a lot of work. On the contrary, a book will probably still be around in 50 years. Apart from floods or fires (which could also damage a disk), there is no virus or hack that is going to destroy or modify the data.

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Does Whitney Webb fear for her life after exposing corruption?

Whitney Webb wrote A Nation Under Blackmail, which exposed blackmail rings in the United States. She gave a great answer to the question on whether she now fears for her life:

I ultimately think, you know, to paraphrase a line from the sci-fi book Dune: "fear is the mind-killer." [...] I think fear is the ultimate tool that benefits [the elite] instead of us.

Full quote from Dune:

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

Some Defenses Against Misinformation

According to Chase Hughes, one of the best defenses against misinformation, psyops, propaganda, or whatever you want to call it is to be very good in spotting logical fallacies.

He reports that you should first remember that "emotional response suppresses critical thinking". So teach yourself to stay calm when you see the news. Furthermore, train yourself to spot the following fallacies:

1. Appeal to emotion. Our brain is more inclined to believe information if it looks scary. So be careful around scary looking pictures or words since they might override your rational brain.

2. Strawman Argument. This is misrepresenting the argument of the opponent. For example, summarizing the argument of a politician in a simplified way so that the argument makes no sense anymore.

3. Bandwagon Fallacy. This is claiming something is true just because everyone says it is.

4. False Dilemma. The world is very nuanced. With a false dilemma you pretend that you are right by claiming that it must be right because the opposite is wrong.

5. Ad Hominem. Attacking the person and not the argument. I see this all the time on Reddit. For example, Person X has said that we should buy more buildings because we have a housing shortage. Then a commenter says that is false because person X is just a ********.

6. Appeal to Authority. This is claiming something is true because an authority figure like a politician or scientist says it is true.

7. Slippery Slope. A claim that says "if we don't fix X now, then extremely negative outcome Y will happen". For example, if we allow this, we will lose all of our freedoms.

8. Hasty Generalization. Making giant claims from a tiny bit of evidence. For example, one athlete cheating doesn't mean all do. Another way to spot this is to remember "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

9. Red Herring. This is when someone introduces a irrelevant topic or argument to divert attention away from the original issue.

10. False Equivalence. Pretending that two things are equal even when they are not. For example, both political parties have extremists so they are exactly the same.

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A joke and antisemite refutation told after the first world war

From The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) by Hannah Arendt:

An antisemite claimed that the Jews had caused the war; the reply was: Yes, the Jews and the bicyclists. Why the bicyclists? asks the one. Why the Jews? asks the other.

"Let's get real about free speech"

Great talk by Greg Lukianoff on TED. The presentation is only 12 minutes, which I can recommend anyone to watch.

First he clarifies that not all speech should be free. Some speech acts like incitement of violence should not be protected. But opinions should always be free.

The main four points of the talk are that

1. Free speech makes you safer. If you ban free speech, you can't hear who the Nazi's in the room are. You are not safer for knowing less about what people really think.

2. Free speech cures violence. Some people say speech is violent. Real violence is being punched in the face or being stabbed. "We insult the victims of actual violence by equating words with violence. Free speech is not violence. It is the best alternative to violence ever invented."

3. Free speech protects the powerless. Some say that free speech protects the powerful, but in fact they don't need that because they are powerful. It is people that are not powerful that free speech protects. That's why people like Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela were all in favor of free speech. Free speech is the best check on power ever invented.

4. Even "bad" people can have good ideas. And "good" people can have bad ideas.

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The Most Difficult Part of Investing

I’ve been investing some money for a few years now. One thing I noticed though is how it is a kind of character building if you follow Buffett’s strategy.

If you follow Value Investing, you basically estimate a company’s fair value and then decide whether you decide to buy or not based on that. After this point, the crowd may be ignoring you, going with you, or going against you. The stock will jump up and down each day. And somehow you just have to sit there and take the psychological beatings. If the price goes up, you have to remind yourself that that doesn’t guarantee you were right. If the price goes down you have to look through your reasoning again and hopefully you realize that your reasoning still holds. If not, you have to learn from it.

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About

Contact: email.

Publications

• Storopoli, Huijzer and Alonso (2021). Julia Data Science.
  ISBN: 9798489859165 (html, pdf)

• Huijzer, Blaauw, and den Hartigh (2023). SIRUS.jl: Interpretable Machine Learning via Rule Extraction. Journal of Open Source Software, 8(90), 5786, (html, pdf)

• Huijzer, de Jonge, Blaauw, Baatenburg de Jong, de Wit, den Hartigh (2023). Predicting Special Forces Dropout via Explainable Machine Learning (html, pdf)

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Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant

Quoting Alasdair S. Roberts:

Louis Brandeis is credited with writing that “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” But why did Brandeis say that sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants? Because he was referring to a statement by James Bryce in his 1888 book, The American Commonwealth.

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