Yeah. Guess what Skype will be doing in August.

The author, Eduardo Galeano, seems to be arguing that the great wealth, which European conquerors extracted from Latin America, was mostly just squandered as opposed to being used to assist in the development of Latin America.

As an example of this squandering Galeano describes, among other activities, lavish parties held in cities on the Latin American continent.

But wouldn’t that have actually helped? I mean, money doesn’t simply disappear when you spend it. Money exchanges hands. Parties and rich people need servants and the servants usually get paid. The construction of large cathedrals and other buildings require builders, usually local people, who tend to get paid as well. Money spent on buying lands or awesome titles doesn’t disappear. It goes to the seller. Who then uses the money to buy all kinds of goods and services.

I could be wrong in my understanding. Is anyone here among my readers more familiar with this book and the history of Latin America?

Here’s the post in full. Click the link above if you wish to read the comments. (Emphases in the following are mine.)

As a gamer & a procrastinator, I had a curious question: Why I always seems to be able to do what’s best for my in-game character but not in real life? My in-game character achieves more in game-life than me in real life.

I pointed out to myself that in games, my character listens to my every command, but in real life my body doesn’t, even when I know what’s best for me. Instead of my mind, I let my body decided my actions. (My body screams slacking on the the couch for a while won’t hurt.)

That’s it! That’s the reason why I procrastinate.

I’m convinced that if I if I just strictly follow and take action on what my mind thinks is best for me, just like my in-game characters, I can achieve a lot too.

Believe it or not, this particular series of thoughts instantly gave me +100 Motivation to do things. Now, my mind takes control and my body obeys. My body is my “player character”, my mind is the “player”. Every time, I starts to procrastinate, I just need to repeat the series of thoughts to myself and I’m okay.

An analogue here (copy-pasted from a comment I made below): An Overlord wants some Zerglings to go take down the enemy Terran’s expansion, but the Zerglings say, “I rather be chilling by this rock over here”. You know this match is as good as over. Knowing that who you choose to take orders from determines your success in life, are you still so damn willing to let you body take control?

Procrastinators, ask that question to yourself. Seek productivity enlightenment now.

TL;DR – Are you not as good as your in-game counterpart? Let your mind control you, not your body.

I wished to share the above with you, because I think it’s a bit of a breakthrough in understanding how the human mind works. At least as far as the current gamer generation is concerned. Future psychologists, take note. People who’ve been conditioned by games to think like that will be your clients one day.

The other reason for sharing the above observation with you is this: it reminds me of the Bicameralism theory:

In psychology, bicameralism is a hypothesis which argues that the human brain once assumed a state known as a bicameral mind in which cognitive functions are divided between one part of the brain which appears to be “speaking”, and a second part which listens and obeys.

…

According to Jaynes, ancient people in the bicameral state would experience the world in a manner that has similarities to that of a modern-day schizophrenic. Rather than making conscious evaluations in novel or unexpected situations, the person would hallucinate a voice or “god” giving admonitory advice or commands, and obey these voices without question; one would not be at all conscious of one’s own thought processes per se.

…

Jaynes asserts that until roughly the times written about in Homer’s Iliad, humans did not generally have the self-awareness characteristic of consciousness as most people experience it today. Rather, Jaynes argued that the bicameral individual was guided by mental commands believed to be issued by external “gods”—the commands which were so often recorded in ancient myths, legends and historical accounts; these commands were however emanating from individuals’ own minds. This is exemplified not only in the commands given to characters in ancient epics but also the very muses of Greek mythology which “sang” the poems: Jaynes argues that while later interpretations see the muses as a simple personification of creative inspiration, the ancients literally heard muses as the direct source of their music and poetry.

…

Jaynes theorized that a shift from bicameralism marked the beginning of introspection and consciousness as we know it today. According to Jaynes, this bicameral mentality began malfunctioning or “breaking down” during the second millennium BC. He speculates that primitive ancient societies tended to collapse periodically, (as in Egypt’s Intermediate Periods and the periodically vanishing cities of the Mayas) as changes in the environment strained the socio-cultural equilibria sustained by this bicameral mindset. The mass migrations of the second millennium BC, caused by Mediterranean-wide earthquakes, created a rash of unexpected situations and stresses that required ancient minds to become more flexible and creative. Self-awareness, or consciousness, was the culturally evolved solution to this problem. This necessity of communicating commonly observed phenomena among individuals who shared no common language or cultural upbringing encouraged those communities to become self-aware to survive in a new environment. Thus consciousness, like bicamerality, emerged as a neurological adaptation to social complexity in a changing world.

Bicameralism, if you believe the theory, is still alive in some parts of modern human life:

Jaynes further argues that divination, prayer and oracles arose during this breakdown period, in an attempt to summon instructions from the “gods” whose voices could no longer be heard.[2] The consultation of special bicamerally operative individuals, or of casting lots and so forth, was a response to this loss, a transitional era depicted for example in the book of 1 Samuel. It was also evidenced in children who could communicate with the gods, but as their neurology was set by language and society they gradually lost that ability. Those who continued prophesying, being bicameral according to Jaynes, could be killed.[5][6]

Leftovers of the bicameral mind today, according to Jaynes, include religion, hypnosis, possession, schizophrenia and the general sense of need for external authority in decision-making.

A strange phenomenon I’ve noticed is that entrepreneurs and other business-people who take giant risks tend to believe in the supernatural, at least here in Estonia. Some consult witches and fortune tellers. Some merely believe that they are special and favoured by Fate. Whatever the form, the underlying current seems to be the belief that some powerful external authority is blessing their actions.

It does not seem to be about a Machiavellian show of piety for these people — it’s not an external image thing. Often it’s even done in secret.

So it would seem that the people who are most successful and most driven in the modern world (by virtue of taking big risks) are ones who rely on an “external” authority to make their decisions, even if the voice of this peculiar authority resides in their own brain.

The description of what is essentially self-discipline that the user “redditonian” gave above seems to be a conscious effort to invoke the old bicameral model of the mind. He reports that forcing himself to think like that — his mind giving commands to his body — boosted his motivation tremendously, making him capable of tackling more complex and more tedious tasks. Essentially giving him the mental tools he needs to achieve success in life, however he defines it, without excessive luck.

I have been using essentially the same model of thought that he describes to motivate myself, though I’ve not been able to verbalize it as eloquently as he just did and I’ve not been aware of it as much as I’ve perhaps needed to be to apply it more consistently. Still, much of the success I have today comes from semi-consciously invoking the bicameral way of thinking.

Today I make roughly 4-5 times as much per month from all my ventures combined as I used to last year. A large part of it is thanks to the success of Mobwe, my new iPhone venture, which was launched after a hostile takeover at Indilo Wireless. (Yes, folks. The despicable human beings there who wilfully left me destitute right before Christmas still owe me money.) I’ve been building the company because I’ve had to. Because I’ve told myself that this is what I must do. In much the same way as quoted at the beginning of this post.

So far this approach has worked out great. Recently Mobwe, with a staff of three people, became profitable.

Success feels good.

Notice how the URL part says www.bloomberg.com/earn ? Well, there’s no such site. Try it out yourself if you don’t believe me.

When you click on the ad you’re redirected to a website which recommends a bunch of online casinos and tells you about a betting strategy that’s certain to win big. I shall not mention the name of this website nor shall I link to it. If anyone needs to know, then drop me an e-mail.

If you’re wondering about the betting strategy, then it’s one of those things that only works in theory (you could even write a beautiful mathematical proof showing that it works!), but not in real life. How do I know? Years ago when I first heard about it, I wrote a computer simulation to try it out. You’ll go bankrupt pretty quickly should you try this in real life.

For comparison, this is what a real Google Ads advertisement with an authentic URL looks like:

Clicking on it actually takes you to the domain being advertised.

Anyway. It’s kinda unexpected that Google would let something like this slip past them. Faking affiliation with Bloomberg to advertise online casinos and a broken betting strategy is probably one of the least nefarious uses for this vulnerability.

For example, I get quite a lot of e-mails from Swedbank where I have several accounts, so if anyone buys an ad for the keyword “Swedbank”, then that ad is highly likely to show up in my GMail. With this bug, the ad could easily appear to be from the bank itself. The target website could easily appear to be from the bank itself. And it could ask for my e-banking login details…

It’s just a matter of time, I guess.

P.S: If anyone knows anyone at Google, please let them know. I’ve tried contacting a human being at Google through their website in the past and it’s fairly impossible.

The touchscreen input is so unresponsive that the memo writing functionality with an on-screen keyboard is simply impossible to use.

Can anyone recommend a good e-reader? Preferably one that would support the Adobe epub format.