Hello and thank you for joining this tech for good debate as part of the Davos agenda as we continue the conversation today. I'm Karen Cho from CNBC. Globally there was shock and recrimination about the US insurrection on Capitol Hill. It was a violent reminder about the harm the internet can bring the social media fueling the outrage that we witnessed and the former US president posting encouraging a dangerous mob. Meanwhile vaccines the main solution to end the pandemic has also been the subject of lies and deceit. But events in 2020 with advertisers throwing their weight behind campaigns calling for change created a watershed moment for tech giants that have become content gatekeepers. On that note though as we begin our panel on advancing digital content safety. Let me introduce you to your speakers today. Her Excellency Hessa Bint Essa Boone who made Minister of Community Development Office of the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates. Maurice Levy the chairman of the supervisory board publicist's group and A B Albreg Sen the chief executive officer at Plan International. Thank you all so much for joining us. A little bit later on the way in on with some final thoughts on this discussion will be Kathy Lee who is head of media entertainment and sports industries for the World Economic Forum. Just a couple of notes by way of housekeeping before we begin the first 30 minutes will be a live discussion. And this is open to the public so feel free to to post your comments on the chat function which you can see on the screen now. Following this we will close out the discussion to the public and just segue to a more detailed private discussion for foreign members and partners. So we look forward to continuing that for the full hour of the conversation. Let's now begin our discussion as we tackle the topic at hand. Her Excellency if I may just pivot to you first please. In my introduction I highlighted how social media can trigger political instability. The Washington since have highlighted the need for change. What role do you believe the government should play in tackling harmful content online. Thank you very much Karen and a very good morning to everyone. Welcome to our session and thank you for having us. Well the government can play a huge role when it comes to tackling harmful content on the Internet and on online. There are a couple of ways of doing so. And if you may allow me I would go through a couple of ideas that I would like to discuss. So putting in place the right set of regulations and governance around the online content to start with to criminalize the harmful acts and protect the victims right is should be a definitely a necessity. This includes having for example a sustainable law on the legal online behavior which the United Arab Emirates have done that back in 2006 and have went back and amended that law again in 2012. Another idea of how we can tackle that as government is by by putting technical measurements tools and to provide a quick response to such incidents. And when we mean what we mean by a quick response in this world in the digital world we know that the face is the face is much faster. So us as government will need to be so agile very equipped ready to such incidents. We need to ensure that we protect the government services that are being provided to the people. We should ensure that the harmful content is easily and quickly taken down to ensure the less of the spread of any harmful acts. Launching for example a national computer emergency response team is a way to ensure that you act as a government and as in as a country as well equipped to do so. I also believe that building cybersecurity capabilities is a necessity that would be including to analyze and stop any threats and threats and to monitor and protect the digital infrastructure of the government and also to allow governments to respond not only quickly but also effectively to such incidents. Another way to do so we also believe is 100 percent by raising awareness and about the digital and the security to all people of the of the society. And we also would want to focus on the importance of having this awareness at a very early age to the new generations. We have our students now all being I mean having their distance learning which means they are even much more exposed to such incidents. Our seniors as well. Life have changed over the last 12 months. We've all we have all noticed that we are more into ensuring a safe and a very effective platform for people to live through it. My last point if you may allow me and would be to do to really emphasize on leveraging the partnership international and national partnership to ensure that the awareness that the connection is there. Such harmful content will on the Internet will only be acted on quickly if the right partnership is put in place and if the right direction is clear to everyone playing such a role. These threats need to be addressed. People need to be aware about them and also need to be protected. Thank you very much Karen. Minister. Thank you very much for that detailed response. Maurice if I can turn to you less than two years ago you held a fireside with Mark Zuckerberg as European lawmakers were demanding answers around Cambridge Analytica. Fast forward. We've had the twenty twenty election. We've had a watershed year as advertisers demanded that these social media platforms change their policies. The latest election did see some labels with some posts with labels. I read with warnings about the content. But still the platforms allowed Trump to pedal a lie about voter fraud. And then we saw that deadly rampage on in Washington. We finally saw responses as social media giants then blocked the leader of the free world. What's your view on how the social media platforms have performed over the past 12 months. First of all thank you for having me and I'm very happy to be in this very unusual Davos meeting. We have been talking with the platform since more than 10 years. And the very first time that we did it was in Davos in a very heated conversation regarding the safe environment in which our clients should advertise and how the platform should create the content. And to be very honest during a few years they were in a denial. And since let's say the recent years and particularly the last election. Not the very last one but the previous one. They have started to enter into a more active role in moderating or trying to curate the content. Today there is three or four issues which are extremely important. The first one is that we must recognize that the harmful content is huge complex difficult to manage. The minister has spoken about the rules in Emirates and the necessity for a cooperation an international cooperation. But if you look at the rules in the US and the legal rules in the US they are very different from the one in Europe. What is permitted in the US in the name of freedom of speech is not allowed in the European countries. The second aspect is a sheer size. The volume of hatred messages violence messages inappropriate messages. We are speaking about hundreds of million. So we recognize that it's not very easy. And last but not least who should be the custodian. And we believe that the platforms have a role but they should not be alone. That there should be a third party. They cannot decide who has the right to speak and who has not the right to speak. They can obviously eliminate and correct the hatred content. But when it comes to decisions like the ones that we have seen recently on the Trump decision it's interesting to see that as long as he was president and despite the fact that he was issuing messages which were not really very accurate very true and very honest. They have not done anything. It's just when he was a lame duck that they decided that yes they will act which is something which is debatable. And they believe that when it comes to the authority of who should be speaking and who should not be speaking. We should not let them alone making the decision. Maurice interesting points there about the timing of those decisions taken by the social media companies. Let me turn to you because the societal impact of social media is not just important from a political standpoint but also from an individual one. Girls and young women have penned an open letter to the content gatekeepers effectively demanding more ways to report online abuse and more effective tools. Talk us through the scale of abuse that you're witnessing even in 2021. Yes so we at Glenn International surveyed about 14000 girls in over 22 countries and these countries are across the world. There's no difference in the responses and 60 percent of girls and young women that are on social media platforms have experienced harassment and abuse online. I want to just highlight that what we're talking about is not virtual violence. This is violence and violence that has a huge impact on the girls how they feel mentally but also how they feel physically when they are in the public space. About 20 percent of those that have experienced violence never come back to the social media platforms. It's so abusive that they decide this is not a space for them. And what we also see is that it leaves the girls feeling physically unsafe also when they leave their homes. So about 20 percent of them say that they really don't feel like going outside anymore because they may meet the perpetrators of violence. So it has a huge impact in the personal space for for thousands and thousands of girls. Thank you very much for that minister. If I can come back to you the UAE's National Digital Wellbeing Programme that's been unveiled this week aims to protect vulnerable groups as we're talking about young women especially. What is the Gulf State doing differently that other countries could think about adopting at this point. Thank you Karen for allowing us to highlight. It's actually the session comes at the perfect timing three days back. The UAE have launched the digital well-being program. I mean definitely this program this well-being program with its digital format is going hand in hand in our general well-being program. The digital well-being program is actually based on what have been launched by Cabinet earlier this week which is the national digital well-being policy a full policy which is one of its kind that has a lot. I mean one of its main core initiatives that come that came out out of the so-called the digital well-being council. This council is being run by by himself the deputy prime minister. His Highness Sheikh Seyf Benzait Ein Hayyan the minister of Interior with a membership of another 10 federal and local government entities. This policy consists of what we call the four C's four main pillars which we believe holistically will help the digital well-being of the United Arab Emirates.  The first component is is on the digital capabilities. And we mean here by building digital capabilities and expanding on the digital knowledge of different segments within the United Arab Emirates whether it's children youth adults senior citizens and so forth. The second component is about the digital content which is to basically to encourage the usage of positive content and providing solutions to reduce and report harmful content. The third pillar is on the digital conduct. This conduct is basically done and put in place to promote positive behaviors and values in the digital world because it's no difference than the real world. This digital conduct conduct have been spreading since the last three days massively within the United Arab Emirates to all platforms to everyone in the society to ensure that everyone is aware about it. And they actually sign up to this pledge of using the Internet in a positive way in being a good example of a citizen that uses the content and the power of the Internet to the benefits of all. The last pillar is basically on the digital contact which is managing the relationships and providing means of online protection through regulations and laws. And here where a lot of awareness will be happening not only for school students but even to other members of the society caregivers parents you name it. Each each pillar is associated with a number of initiatives which are which are dedicated to vulnerable groups and to ensure that we are continuously building their digital capabilities and literacy to raise their levels of awareness. If you may allow me Karen I do have some examples of how we would want to reach specifically some of our vulnerable groups for example. Let's say children enabling the digital well-being and embedding the digital well-being knowledge in our educational system right from kindergarten all the way to grade 12. And these standards just to ensure that teachers students parents at home caregivers are aware of them. And this type of knowledge is actually being built up for students all throughout while they are going during their years to organize as well regular interactive camps where parents can participate to raise their awareness. The ESF so-called school programs as well to ensure that our online safety policy is not only out there but it's also practiced. When it comes to caregivers as well we want to ensure that we are providing the right educational and material guidance to parents educators caregivers all throughout. We want to make sure that the parents virtual awareness is or is simple and it's out there as well easy to reach senior our seniors our people of determination who we call people of determination who are people of disability are already also included in this holistic national policy. It sounds multifaceted. Maurice let me come back to you because what we saw over the course of last year many big name clients effectively joining a boycott against Facebook. Yet we thought this would have a huge impact on the revenue model for a company that derives about 99% of its revenue from advertising. Then we learned that small advertisers are the ones that are having a dramatic impact on our supporting Facebook still. So we didn't see the revenue hit that we thought we would see from such dramatic action. Fast forward to this year Facebook also picking up subscribers because of these pandemic trends. What is it going to take for the digital media companies to respond to what advertisers are doing and respond to the pressure that they're seeing beyond some of the uses at this stage. The revenue of the platform are climbing simply because we are in a very specific situation due to the pandemic. As you know people are at home and they are most of them they are also shopping on Internet. They don't go outside and therefore they are using massively Internet and that's the reason why we see the revenue of the key platform growing quite dramatically. And this is something which we expect to continue in 2021 and this makes by the way the responsibility of the platform even greater. We as advertising agencies and publicists in particular we have insisted a lot and we have played a crucial role in drawing not only a line in the sand but also defining some 11 categories of harmful content. We want simply that the advertising money of our client is going to a safe environment. We want our clients to communicate in an environment which is reasonably safe. Now you have to see that and this has been mentioned by AB as well as by the minister. But you have to see that the real world is not very different from the platform world. The virtual world with a huge difference is that when you are insulting someone privately it remains private. It is something which is harmful for the person but the echo is very limited. When you do that on Internet the echo is unlimited and you can hardly get it out of the Internet and it takes days before your complaint is recognized. So what we are doing for time being through an organization which is called GARM is an alliance between the agencies the key advertisers and the platform in order to have some strong rules and making sure that they can respect those rules. What we see in nowadays is a clear conscience of the key platforms Facebook, YouTube and when I say Facebook is the whole group we see that they are starting to be extremely conscious of the need to take out some content to moderate some content. What they are doing is quite significant but as I said the complexity and the size make it extremely difficult to route out all the negative content. It's complicated. I don't believe that the kind of boycott or putting a finger directly on some platform will really change the situation. We need to work collaboratively. We need to be in a good cooperation with the platform in order to reasonably take out all these negative content. It's a long way to go. It will not be easy and some strong advertisers will probably lead the way. Maurice, a moment ago you mentioned the role of a third party in regulating the social media platforms. When it comes to the United States seen as the light touch approach, there's a discussion about changing section 230 where effectively the social media platforms have not been on the hook for any of the content posted. Should that change? Is that the third party that you're talking about? There are a few third parties. What Abe is doing is for me considering as a third party. What Brand Guard is, sorry, News Guard is doing is also a third party. News Guard, I don't know if you know, it is an unbiased organization which look at the content of the website, the credibility of the journalist, the owners, and they give a nutrition label from creditables. So you have three red lights. Red is something that should not take into account because it's really negative. Orange is something that you should be cautious about and green is a content that should be respected. You can respect and you can take for granted. So there are a few initiatives. It's not enough. Part of what the U.S. is doing, what the European Union is doing and the new decision which has been taken by Thierry Breton and Margaret Vestager and also a recent declaration of Ursula von der Leyen are all in the right direction, but it takes too much time and we need to act more faster. Abe, we're all raking over the profits from Facebook just reported in the past 24 hours, a profit of 11.2 billion on revenues of $28 billion in the final three months of 2020. So a huge pivot as people were seeking more social media under lockdown and certain parts around the world. How do we align the interests of public and private companies down the track with the wider interest as we talk about protecting vulnerable groups in society? Thanks for that. I mean, let me start maybe in the positive end. As a leader in civil society, advancing social transformation across many aspects, particularly gender equality. We've also got to recognize that the Facebook and Instagram and the social media platforms have had a huge positive impact on mobilizing for social justice. The Me Too movement, Black Lives Matters, others that have started transformations across societies. So we have decided that we need to be both an ally with the social platforms as well as a challenger. So also be the challenging boys for making it a safe space for those that want to speak up. Because what we've also seen, and I mentioned the numbers before, as soon as you as a girl or a young woman take a stand on gender equality, on LGBT issues, on environmental issues or anything, then the harassment and abuse goes up massively. So you can't, as a social media company, be that wonderful open platform for enabling social justice. And then as soon as somebody takes the floor, they're not protect them against the violence and harassment that happens. Fortunately, after we launched our findings and report in October, both Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, they've all come to the table and said, listen, you work with these young activists, we don't really have access to them in the same way. So they've decided to sit down at the table with the young female activists to really understand what is the particularity of the abuse that especially girls and young women feel. And what can they do about it in terms of their reporting requirements, how they publish data about their harassment, and what kinds of support that they can provide for their users to ensure that harassment goes down. But can I just say, I mean, I really welcomed what the minister was saying, because this has to be a whole of society approach. And it has to start at home with the caregivers in schools, etc., to make sure that we have the necessary education of children, boys and girls in terms of what's good behavior online, as well as we need the legislative changes because we cannot have legislation on violence against women or domestic violence, for example, that doesn't acknowledge the violence that happens online because the consequences in terms of self esteem in terms of preventing girls and young women from aspiring to leadership is tremendous. And we're potentially losing out on a whole generation of future female leaders. And just quickly before we wrap up, let me ask you there, NAB, about this patchwork regulation. While we applaud the efforts of the UAE, do we need to see more leadership from the Biden administration because these are platforms that are housed headquartered in the United States? Absolutely. No doubt about it. We need every leader with a voice. But yes, certainly in North America, that would be great. Minister, do you want to weigh in on that? Thank you. I'd love to. Well, I'd love to say that we are ready in the United Arab Emirates to collaborate, to extend our arms, knowledge, and to work collectively to ensure that the whole world is a better place. If anything, this year have taught us or the year before have taught us that we're not only connected, but we are all everyone is affected by the other. If you can just imagine how our lives on the online platforms and the digital life that we have is even much more connected. Therefore, there's a lot of area for collaboration, for voicing out the people's voice to ensure that public and private companies are working in alignment together.


Welcome back to the Agora cafe for more coffee and philosophy. This is part two of what I think is probably going to be a three part version of this expanded edition of my talk on the, the on austral libertarian themes and three Prague authors, which I, I hope to get about around to writing a more detailed version of at some point and publishing it somewhere. But in the meantime, I want to share this expanded version with you. So part one was on Carl Chopek originally I thought I was going to do all three parts and one but turns out that when I'm not limited by time I will take all the time I need. And so that's that expanded into entire episodes worth. Well good I need more need more episodes since my, my backlog is running a little thin. Because I haven't had time, I haven't had time to do any more interviews since the last one. I've got several people who are sort of tenderly down for doing interviews but I just haven't had time to do them. And where's this since it doesn't require interacting with anyone else I could just do it this anytime but I fit in. But I'll be going back to interviews about you know I've got several people lined up. Anyway, so part one was on Carl Chopek. He's one of the major prog writers of the first third of the 20th century, roughly. There's plenty more to say about topic that I didn't say that I covered more in the paper but I think I hope that what I said about topic was enough to intrigue you and get you interested in in tracking down more of his work as I said a lot of his work is without a front in English but not all of it. So, in this video I'm going to talk about Kafka. Franz Kafka is the most well known, obviously authors he also wrote in German not check, which probably helped to make his work more accessible to translation. A lot more people can read can read and translate German that can read and translate check, although most of Kafka's works, I mean sorry most of topics works are in English translation not all of them. But they're harder to find whereas Kafka's works you can find that can many multiple additions and he's sort of a favorite of the literary scholars to a degree that the chopic and hashtag aren't. And I really think that all three of these writers deserve a lot more attention than they get. Anyway, I'm going to talk about Kafka now so I'm going to go back to our slides. Okay so and this is the section of the talk that of the sex this is a part of the slides that is the most revised compared to the revised for the comprehensive political economy, the most compared to the version I gave of the music institute. Seven seven years before that. Kafka also often presents his work often presents individuals who are in the grip of some kind of incomprehensible bureaucracy and it's helping me with Kafka is the most famous for and one dispute among readers of Kafka is is are we supposed to take this as a literal political meaning. You know is this a critique of insisting political institutions, or is this some kind of metaphor for the human condition which is really sort of a metaphysical description not a critique. Also there's some passages that seem to condemn this power system. There are others that seem to portrayed as justified how do you reconcile those. I have a view about that which I'm not going to be able to defend in full. In this presentation, probably not going to be able to defend it and fall in the, in the final paper version either release I will have more to say, but I will, you know I will gesture in the direction of it. Now Rebecca West interrupt the court in the castle actually interprets Kafka as a defender bureaucracy on the basis of those passages that seem to say that they seem to represent this bureaucratic power structure is justified there's some passages that seem to. But there are other passages that seem to go the other way so for example, Kafka himself who worked as you know worked as a bureaucrat. He, you know he worked for this insurance office, and he used to say how humble these people are. They get our feet, instead of taking the building by storm and stripping a bear. Now, so that doesn't suggest that he saw the bureaucrats to say, that's a great thing. You know, I like Rebecca West and I think the court in the castle is really an interesting book, but I think that her. Her interpretation of Kafka is, you know is screwy is also interpretation of Hamilton there which I think is also screwy. She's a great writer even when her interpretation is just really she's always worth reading. My mother wrote her thesis on Mary Wilson craft and Rebecca West, which is sort of interesting as interesting combo. Anyway, then there's also this this line, and the sub dispute about the authenticity of this line because it was recollected by someone who may not be completely reliable. But anyway, allegedly Kafka said, the anarchists all sought thanklessly to realize human happiness. I understood them. But I was unable to continue marching alongside them for a long. So that suggests that he was marching alongside them for a while and he had some kind of anarchist sympathies that he was sympathetic to them but that, you know, he couldn't be completely consistent with them but doesn't say exactly why you know so figuring out where Kafka stands is often a cryptic matter. There's also a line in someone of his private notes so he's just written, don't forget Kropotkin, which might be pointing to some, you know, some important concern about Kropotkin as someone whose idea should be remembered. I guess it might just mean that might just be short for don't forget to return the Kropotkin books to the library or something like that and we don't know what it means it's, you know, in terms of sort of cryptic one line notes I guess it goes. It can take its place beside Nietzsche's one line things scribbled on a piece of note paper. I have forgotten my umbrella in quotation marks. No one knows what he means by that although I didn't stop Jerry Dow from writing an entire book on it, which actually sort of enjoyable to read in a strange way. Anyway, so the book is called spurs. I think I believe that's the one which is just what you would call a book that's about Nietzsche forgetting his umbrella isn't it. I think the grammatology is worth reading. I think that he comes more and more self indulgent over time with the grammatology I recommend spurs is fairly self indulgent. I don't know if I'd recommend it exactly but I just sort of enjoyed seeing the insanity of it, but grammatology I think actually makes some valuable points but anyway this that's definitely a digression from anything going on here. That's a photo of a of a sculpture of Kafka and Prague, and each of those individual those individual slices move around relative to each other so it's constantly displaying different different aspects and constant motion. I've seen that in Prague it's pretty cool. Anyway, so I've got this interpretation of Kafka, which you know in the written version I would hope to defend more fully though, I don't know how fully I can do it. But a lot of Kafka stories are intended to be read on two different levels on a theological level and a political level. And the theological meaning and the political meaning are at odds with each other they go in different directions. So, on the theological level, the elusive and incomprehensible authority that that is the so much the theme of many of his writings is meant to represent the inscrutable justice of God and so it's been justified. Now some of his early writings. The authority that's danger is not an elusive or incomprehensible or distant one. It's a very visceral in your face one and seems to represent his classes with his father. But over time who moves to this more idea of this distant elusive authority you can never get your hands on. Which definitely does not describe his relationship with his father his father was present all too present in his life in mind. But so I think it sense for God and to that extent, the bureaucracy is justified, but but I think on another level, the same bureaucracy is also describing what goes on in the human world. Because that doesn't have a divine sanction. That's condemned. So I think that's why Rebecca West gets, you know, I think she miss reads Kafka, and seeing him as a defender of bureaucracy, because she sees the passages where he seems to be treating this as justified. But I think that's where he's treating it as the, as the human condition based on the elusive divine justice, which we can't legitimate the question. I think that when you get a reproduction of that same kind of elusive and incomprehensible authority at the human level. That doesn't represent divine justice that's just humans doing shady stuff. And so I don't think that Kafka has the same kind of reference for that. So that's why I think that Kafka works really having. He really is operating on two levels here which again is kind of like what I said about topic in the previous video that would that both the robots and are you are and the newts and more with the newts operated as metaphors at more than one level. They are sympathetic. They can be the stand for certain sympathetic things. They also stand for certain things to be wary of, you know, Chopin and Kafka both complicated writers.  Anyway, so that's my reading of Kafka guess what's going on. So here's an example. So he has this story in the penal colony where there's this punishment device that carves written messages into the prisoner's body in order to instruct him. But in the story the device malfunctions, leaving the body butchered and the message indecipherable. I think on a theological level this is about the inscrutability of divine justice. And there's a, there's a nice article by Peter Neumeyer defending this interpretation in detail, called do not teach Kafka's in the penal colony. And the reason he takes that, the reason he gives that advice, you know, his advice to teachers and professors don't don't teach this don't assign this story. Because this story is about systematic parallel has systematic parallels with aspects of Christian theology.  Therefore they're not going to understand the story. But I think it's, you know, I think it's a strange moral is first of all, you know, there are plenty of students who do understand Christian theology. A lot of philosophy majors at Auburn are, are intending to go on to divinity studies that one of our best majors is now, now placed at Yale Divinity School. So we've got plenty of, we've got plenty of students who can understand this stuff. They're not all the uncultured morons that Neumeyer seems to be envisioning. But second, you know, if they don't understand the Christian theological references in the, in the story, then, you know, if you're teaching it, you explain them. That was an interesting question why so many of Kafka's references seem to be Christian, given that his own background was Jewish and not Christian. But of course that's true of a lot of Jewish writers who seem to be in love with Christian metaphors and analogies and, and how much this actually implies a, any kind of actual commitment to Christianity is almost clear. I mean, Leonard Cohen would be an example of his, his songs and his poems are filled with Christian imagery. Does that mean he was tempted by Christianity?  He was a very temptable man, including Buddhism, of course. I don't know what to say about Leonard Cohen. Except you should remember him because he brought your groceries in. But anyway, so I think that apart from this weird moral that you shouldn't teach this work, as opposed to saying that you should teach it and explain the Christian references. I think non-Miami makes a very strong case that, that, that that work and, you know, in relatively a number of other Kafka's works really have a theological meaning and that these, you know, this device is not being condemned at the theological level. It's talking about the inscrutability of divine justice. But I also think that a political level, it has the opposite meaning. It's about the pointless barbarism of punishment. And if I don't have it on the slide, if you want to read an article about, about how to, about defending the political rating. There's an article by Bill Dodd called The Case for Political Rating. You can find in the Cambridge Companion to Kafka. I think it's also very valuable. So if you look at the people who are defending a theological rating and you look at the people who are defending a political rating, I think they both have a really strong case. And that's part of the reason I think this is operating at both levels. What's interesting is the way in which the levels are opposite to each other. You know, I don't think that Kafka is the only writer to do that kind of thing. I've got a number of writers who will be using some kind of metaphor that operates at two levels and the levels are, and it has opposite valences in the two levels. An example would be Seneca's version of Medea. Seneca has a play in Medea that is based on Euripides' play in Medea, which in turn is based on the traditional legend of Medea. And I think that the Seneca's play of Medea is operating at two levels. One as a one where Medea stands for the unbridled nature of passion that stoicism is supposed to curb and cure. At another level, Medea stands for stoicism itself and for the kind of breaking of ordinary human ties that you have to do if you follow stoicism so that Medea is simultaneously a stoic symbol and an anti-stoic symbol but operating at different levels. Not necessarily anti-stoic symbol but sort of a, well anyway, she's simultaneously represents the evil that stoicism is supposed to combat at one level and at another level she represents the problematic though in the end justified from Seneca's point of view, aspects of stoicism itself. Anyway, that's my reading of Seneca's Medea. I don't know anyone else has given that interpretation. I tried to convince Martha Nussbaum of it once, which she wasn't buying it. I've never written that up. I don't know if I'll ever have a chance to write it up. But anyway, you should read Seneca's Medea. It's an interesting piece. Once again, a digression. That's the reason that these videos take so long as I keep talking about other things, but you know, can't help but everything reminds me of something else. Anyway, so I think, you know, so I think that Kafka stories operate in both levels. On one hand, it's a few logically about the human condition, or another level it's political, it's political. Sometimes there's a, you know, there's a third level where it's about his relationship with his father. I wouldn't rule out there being other levels to because Kafka is a complicated guy. For the purposes of this lecture, if lecture is exactly what this is, this meandering thing. You'd think that if I have a PowerPoint, I should keep me on the straight and narrow and keep you from wandering, but you know, I cannot be restrained from going up on digressions. Anyway, so the purpose is that this lecture is about the Austro-libertarian themes in Kafka, so I'm going to focus on the political interpretation where the bureaucracy is something that's condemned or questioned or in some way problematic. And I'm not going to focus on the theological level, but you should keep in mind that I think there is this theological level, and then it's more often points in the exact opposite direction from the political one. And so there's this, there's this famous story that gets told in the trial, in the trial, in his novel The Trial, there's this story that often gets excerpted separately the story about the law and the lawkeeper, where this guy goes, By the way, this clip is from in the April 1982 issue of Epic Illustrated, which was a giant size comic book or magazine. The giant size ones didn't have to be bound by the comics code authority so they could make it a more mature content. It was black and white, but this one was actually in color, though this particular story isn't. But through those, you know, through those giant size Marvel comics, I, that was my introduction to, you know, everything from Arthur Conan Doyle to Lovecraft and Kafka. So there was an adaptation of these two stories by Kafka the before the law was one of them, and and an imperial message was the other. So anyway, this, this guy go wants to see go to the see the law there's a wants to go to see the law, and there's a door, we can go and see the law, but there's a doorkeeper who's guarding it. And he says, you know, he says I cannot let you in at present. Perhaps in the future it might be possible for you to be allowed in, but not at present. And so the guy waits outside he never tries to get past the guard. And he thinks about it, the guard says I know you're thinking about trying to get past me but you know, it can be very hard even if you do, you know the next garden side is even scarier than I am. And the one after that is scarier yet. So the guy doesn't try to get past him. And so he, he gets older and older as he sits there. He's not as bribed the guard and the bright guard says, I'm only taking these from you to keep you from feeling you're leaving anything undone. But you know, I'm not going to let you in. And so over time, the, the man shrinks and shrinks or maybe the gatekeeper grows and grows, or anyway, as Kafka puts it, the difference in size between them has increased very much has increased very much to the man's disadvantage. Anyway, as he's about to die, he says, everyone strives to reach the law. How does it happen then that in all these years no one but me has ever begged for admittance. And the the drawkeeper says, no one else could ever be admitted here. This gate was intended solely for you. And now I'm going to shut it. You know, exactly how you interpret that, whether you go follow the theological interpretation or the bureaucratic interpretation, it's sort of puzzling but anyway there's this idea that this door was intended for you, but we never let you into it. But on the other hand, you know, you never really tried to get past me. So, who knows what it would have happened. And I don't have a very certain interpretation of that. Oh, that passage there are so many different ways you could interpret it, but really is fascinating. Okay, for the last one I had a stamp, a Czechoslovak stamp, a Czechoslovansk stamp with topic on it. So here's one with Kafka on it. And Kafka is interested in the problem of information flow and bureaucratic hierarchies, which is also something that everyone from in the libertarian movement broadly understood everyone from Robert Anton Wilson to Kevin Carson has written about. So in the trial, he writes, their remoteness kept the officials from being in touch with contemporary life. In this case, they were excellently equipped, such a case proceeded almost mechanically, yet confronted with quite simple cases or particularly difficult cases, they were often unrelated to loss. They did not have any right understanding of human relations, since they were confined day and night to the workings of their judicial system, which is reminiscent a bit of what topics that about, you know, we might be very efficient if we were on wheels except you'd never be able to go anywhere before you're already a path. And Kafka seems to making a similar point. They're both talking about the, I think they're both inspired by the, by bureaucratic control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which controlled Czechoslovakia for a long time. A brief period of independence before first the Nazis and then the communists took over. The period of Czechoslovak independence, where there was neither Austro-Hungarian rule nor Nazi rule nor communist rule. So that was the, that's the period that that the Chopec was a big fan of. Of course the Chopec was a friend of Thomas Mazarek, the president. So that for him that was like the best period in Czech history. For Kafka as someone of German background and Jewish background, he wasn't quite as jazzed about it. He was more of an outsider to that too. I mean he didn't like the other things either and he wouldn't have liked. He would have liked more communism if he had, if he had lived to be subjected to them. But he, he wasn't too, he was less enthusiastic about the period of Czechoslovak independence than Chopec was by the way if you look at that stamp. Right now on either side of his head, you can see these tipping, these tipping gravestones, which are with Hebrew letters on them as that's reference to the old, old Prague cemetery in the Jewish quarter in Prague, which is not the Bishop Rod cemetery I showed you before where Chopec is buried, but it's also not where Kafka is buried, either Kafka is buried in the, in a newer cemetery out on the outskirts of town. Well, not the outskirts of town that's the outskirts of town, if Prague's pretty big, the outskirts are pretty far away. It's farther away from the center of things. That's a, anyway, I mentioned, they're like, they're like multiple different cemeteries so those three the cemetery Bishop Rod, the Jewish cemetery, the old Jewish cemetery in the, in the old ghetto quarter, and then the new Jewish cemetery out, out sort of past the main train station. Those are all really fascinating cemeteries in completely different ways. But anyway, they don't have a cemetery where he's buried they have a cemetery that's sort of most emblematic of, of the Jewish community. And then of course that's, I think that's prod castle behind him on the hill behind him doesn't look quite right. A prod castle but I think that's what it's supposed to be. Anyway, so here I've got a pair of quotes from Kafka and Rothbard, which might initially not seem to have much to do with each other but there is an important connection. So Kafka says that people were were offered the choice between being kings and being loyal envoys like children they all wanted to be envoys.  You might think this doesn't have much to do with the Rothbard quote, but I think it does it's another example of this idea in Kafka of authority, as being simultaneously omnipresent, get elusively absent and then definitely deferred. It's just supposed to be representatives of some authority, but the authority is never is nowhere to be seen it's all just the envoys. And I think that that connects with this Rothbard quote, a tyrant is but one person that could scarcely command the obedience of another person, much less of an entire country, if most of the subjects did not grant their obedience by their own consent. Every tyranny must necessarily be grounded upon general popular acceptance, which of course is an idea that goes back to attend to La Boetie whose book Rothbard famously wrote an intro for and also explained this to be pronounced La Boetie and not La Boetie given when and where the dude was from. Also, it's a theme in Hume, and the theme in William Godwin although those three thinkers all go to different directions with it. But, you know, I think that was in this idea is that it's not the tyrant it's not the king who controls things whether there's actually King or not. That's not what controls things it's the people who are who are the representatives of the king, the people who follow the king. They're the ones who are responsible for the government's power, the king's just one guy, he's not responsible for it. It's solving you know all the royal envoys and Kafka's point of view so that's what I see as the connection between these two quotations even if initially they don't seem as if they're on the same topic I think there's a connection. And then there's another passage where Kay, who was the the hero of a hero and all heroes throughout the red word. He's the central character, the trial. And he complains behind all the actions of this court of justice.  And that irresistibly reminded me of this quotation from Mises, government is in the last resort, the employment of armored men of policemen, Jean dame soldiers prison guards and hangman. You know, so Kafka saying, you know, all this stuff with the court of justice seems so seems so August and magisterial, but really just a cover for this army of people who are using force. And presumably those would be the same people as all the people wanted to be royal envoys. In the previous quotation. So Kafka is, when case is protesting that he is innocent, he's been arrested he's innocent. And there's a big dispute among interpreters of the trial as to whether Kay is really innocent or not. Of course, I think that that hooks up with this theological versus political interpretation, you know, on the theological reading, he is not innocent, we're all fallen. And so he deserves this all the stuff that's happening to him. The political reading. The things that happen to or not justified and he is innocent. That's my reading. Anyway, so someone says to him. The high authorities we serve before they would order such an arrest is this must be quite well informed about the reasons. That is the law. How could there be a mistake in that. And Kay replies, I don't know this law, and it probably exists nowhere but in your own head. So, one of the themes of Kafka's later writings is that this authority people appeal to is elusive mysterious it's not clear it's really there people, lots of people are are putting themselves forward as representatives of it. If you try to get your hands on it, it's elusive, which again that probably connects to the story about the, the guy arguing with the doorkeeper to the law. The door is just only for you but I won't let you in. If he had gotten in who knows what he would have found on the other side. Was the law really there shining this majesty. You know, there's some suggestions that there was something glowing and beautiful behind the door, you couldn't get to. I think that might be the theological reading on the political reading.  And K finds the spectators in the courtroom who seized them from behind the collar and stretched up their arms to block his way are all wearing badges of various sizes and colors. They were all colleagues these ostensible parties at the right and the left. Hey man jack of you as an official I see you are yourselves the corrupt agents of whom I have been speaking. So it's not just the officials of the court but the spectators who are all part of the power system, even though they're all supposed to be on different political parties. The spectators not officials, they are all part of what sustained the power system. Then in the, the, the other of his two major novels so he has, he has three novels, the trial and, and the castle usually regarded as his two major ones. One is called either America, or the man who disappeared though in German is just like the disappeared or the disappeared one because he liked the short titles, the trial the castle that disappeared, but the disappeared looks odd and English. So it's usually given either as the man who disappeared, or as America because he seems to have played around with him at that title too. But anyway, the, the, the trial and the castle have gotten a lot more attention than America. So America is, you know, well he didn't finish America I mean he doesn't wish he didn't really finish any of them, but the other two are more finished than America is. But anyway so in the in the castle it's the castle that represents this authority and of course there's partly an inspiration from Prague Castle this castle looming above the town, although Ralph himself actually lived for a while in the grounds of Broadcastle. You can go and visit his, his little apartment there in the, in the Golden Lane in Broadcastle. Now, by postcards. But in the, you know, in the castle, the main character who wants to get his name K. He managed to get to the castle the castles the authority he cannot get in touch with he keeps trying to get there. And is never even clear whether the castles even inhabited the castles veiled and missed and darkness without even a glimmer of light to show that the castle was there in the illusory emptiness above him. And that had case seen there the site slightest sign of life. The gaze of the observer could not remain concentrated there but slid away, the longer he looked the less you could make out and the deeper everything was lost in the twilight. Of course theologically you can interpret this as meaning, you know you never get positive evidence for the existence of God, but nevertheless Kafka's solution does not seem to be a reflection of rejection of religious faith. You know I think the moral is, is the reverse that this is kind of hollowness or emptiness to political authority. There's really nothing there.  All these contacts have been illusory. There's no fixed connection with the castle. No central exchange which transmits our calls further. There is no difference between the peasant tree and the castle. Yeah, so I think this is another way of saying, maybe the authority, you know the authority is just everyone everyone acting as though there's an authority that's what creates the authority. Kind of like Gustav Landauer's line that the state is a pattern of interaction among people and you abolish the state just by interacting differently. I think that maybe what Kafka is getting at here. In his, in his essay, well essay short story it's not clear what it is. In his work, in his short work, Great Wall of China. He has the, you know, he has his people supposedly residents in China saying this although a lot of it seems really to be more about residents of Prague. Or residents of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. So vast is our land that no fable could do justice to its vastness. The heavens can scarcely span it and pay King is only a dot in it, and the imperial palace less than a dot. Although we are always trying to get information about the emperor it is almost impossible to discover anything. We do not know what emperor is raining or even the name of the dynasty. Many tidings even if they did reach us would arrive far too late, would have become obsolete long before they reached us. If from such appearances anyone should draw the conclusion that we have no emperor. He would not be far from the truth. Now of course as you know we're taking this literally of course said Kafka as a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor, Austro-Hungarian Empire knew exactly who the emperor was and it wasn't that far from from Prague to Vienna or wherever the emperor was at the moment to get there. It was like a four or five hour train ride, which I've taken from Vienna to Prague from Prague to Vienna and back very pleasant. But anyway, but again I think the idea is that again questioning whether this authority really exists or really is a genuine authority.  There's a little other story called The Imperial Message, which is also adapted in that comic book where the dying emperor is sending a message to you. And so the messenger is trying to get his way there he's trying to fight his way through the imperial court. But the multitudes are so vast the numbers have no end. If you could reach the open fields so fast you would fly doubtlessly you would soon hear the welcome hammering of his fists on your door. Instead how vainly does he wear out his strength and still he's only making his way through the chambers of the innermost palace. Never will he get to the end of them. And if he succeeded in that nothing would be gained he must fight his way down the next stair. And if he succeeded in that nothing would be gained the courts still have to be crossed. And after the courts the second outer palace and once more stairs and courts and once more another palace, and so on for thousands of years. This might remind you of those paradoxes of motion. And so the emperor can never get to you the emperor's message if the emperor's got a message, it can never reach you. And again there's so theological worries about the silence of God but also this question about you there's any real political authority. And yet subjects are commanded. You know, back in the great wall of China again subjects to come in to leave our homes, the stream with its bridges our mothers and fathers are weeping wives are children who needed our care and depart the distant city to be trained there to build a protective wall against barbarians who no one has ever seen except in the books of the ancients with keeping mouths and great pointed teeth, in other words sort of an imaginary or imaginarily scary enemy. And of course, this was this, this story is written in 1917 at a point when checks were being sent by distant imperial capital to fight for poorly understood reasons against foreigners with whom they had no quarrel. And it seems like it's a kind of a comment on the first World War. Here's another one of these sort of elusive elusive authority stories from from I don't know whether to call this a short story or an essay or what the heck it is. A lot of couples were sort of defy literary categorization the same way that some of topics do as well. The laws are not generally known to us. They are kept secret by the small group of nobles who rule us. The laws were made to the advantage of the nobles from the very beginning, they themselves stand above the laws. The very existence of these laws is most a matter of presumption. Some say the laws whatever the nobles do and see everywhere only the arbitrary acts of the nobility. Well, others hope that one day everything will become clear. The law will belong to the people and the nobility will vanish. But nobody would dare to repudiate the nobility and thereby deprive ourselves of the soul visible and indudable law. So there's this idea that the rulers will claim to be representing some law. We can never quite get our hands on what it's supposed to be. But we have this kind of respect for the law whatever the heck it's supposed to be such that even if we have doubts about whether they really represented we don't dare overthrow them because there are the closest we can get access to the law. Okay, well before going on to Hasek I want to, which I'll probably do in the next video. As I mentioned before, I want to supplement these slides with the material that I have drawn from the unfinished written version of this talk. And so here's a little bit more from the Great Wall of China. Perhaps the, you know, we're wondering about whether the emperor really exists or not and if so what he's doing is he reclining a luxury there is he on his deathbed. How should we know anything about that thousands of miles away in the south. The government has not yet succeeded in developing the institution of the empire to such precision that its workings extend directly and unceasingly to the farthest frontiers of the land. You know, hence the only emperor that the people know anything about is the emperor as such, who was mighty throughout all the hierarchies of the world, in other words the ideal or imaginary emperor, but as for the existing emperor. In other words the actual human being as opposed to the occupies that role. We would think about him if we knew who he was and knew anything definite about him. Yet they never are able to find out anything about him they never find out anything what really goes on in the imperial capital, like tardy arrivals like strangers in the city. They stand at the end of some densely throng side street peacefully munching. In front at the heart of the city the emperor perhaps totters and falls from his throne. So, again, there's this ill of this elusive alienation of authority. You know, the authority that support the distant ideal authority that supposedly represented by the local authorities. It's not clear whether there's any connection. A few years later a Kafka wrote kind of follow up to the great wall of China called the refusal, in which he returns to something like the same vision of an it's not clear where there's the same empire is in the people of China or does something similar. The students said in the village he describes as being so far from the frontier across wild fertile plains and desolate highlands that no one from our town has ever been there. And to imagine even part of the road makes one tired, yet even further than the frontier is the capital. For while we do get news of the frontier wars now and again of the capital we learn next to nothing. In this distant capital great rulers have superseded each other and dynasties have been deposed are annihilated, and even the capital itself was destroyed and a new one founded far away from it. It was destroyed in its turn in the old one rebuilt, yet none of this had any influence on our little town. And soldiers in the empire do so nice past through the village. And from the conference description of them, the soldiers of the empire supposed seem to be the same people as the scary northern barbarians, against which the empire was supposedly protecting people on the Great Wall of China. The narrator at the refusal says he is constantly being surprised by the way we in our town, humbly submit to all orders issued in the capital. But as he portrays that the town is actually run by an aging colonel, who holds the office of chief tax collector, and Kafka says he has never produced a document entitling him to this position, and likely does not possess such a thing. But if he really is chief tax collector, no one is quite sure why this has taken him entitled, taken to entitle him to rule over all other departments in the administration as well. One is almost under the impression that people here say, now that you've taken all we possess, please take us as well. Not he who sees the power, nor is he a tyrant, rather it has simply come about over the years of the chief tax collectors automatically a top official, and the colonel accepts the tradition just as we do. From time to time the townspeople petition this official for a year's tax exemption, or a subsidy because the poorest quarter of the town had been burned to the ground. What happened now and again that minor petitions are granted, nevertheless in all important matters the citizens can always count on a refusal. And even when a petition is granted and very blue looks as though the colonel had done it as a powerful private person on his own responsibility, and had to be kept all but a secret from the government. And those eyes as far as we know are also the eyes of the government, though there was a difference which is which is impossible to comprehend completely. You know, so there's some kind of there's something puzzling going on there. And this the un-clarity of the connection between the local authorities are actually have to deal with, and this ideal authority that they supposedly represent. In the trial we also get this claim that it's that it's pointless for an attorney's clients to just reforms and legal systems since any benefit arising from that would profit clients in the future only. While one's own interests would be immeasurably injured by attracting the attention of vengeful officials is kind of a, you know, a public choice problem there. And as the protagonist of the trial, although he's the victim of bureaucracy, he's a kind of bureaucrat himself and he treats his own clients in much the same way that higher officials treat him. So as an anxious client is pleading his case before Kay, we're told that Kay soon ceased to listen and really nodded now and then, and confined himself to staring at the other's bald head bent over the papers, and asking himself when the fellow would begin to realize that all his business was being wasted. It's difficult said Kay person his lips, but he doesn't seem to recognize it doesn't show any sign of recognizing the similarity between the way he's treating his clients and the way he's been treated by the bureaucrats above him. That's why I don't think it's the protagonist quite the right term for him or hero certainly is not. And Kay is warned by one source that it sometimes happened that the first plea was not read by the court at all, but simply filed or even mislaid or lost altogether. But another source tells them no document is ever lost the court never forgets anything. So an acquittal may be reversed at any time if some official happens to take up the documents and recognize and in this case the charges still valid. You know we've got sort of two visions of government of government bureaucracy area near there. There's the incompetent government bureaucracy is incompetent when they just lose that stuff. And there's government bureaucracy has this all pervading surveillance.  And of course those, those are sort of different, different ways of conceiving of criticism of bureaucracy. Now here's the passage from Rebecca West I mentioned, as an inhabitant of the Hopsburg Empire, Kafka had great reason to feel gratitude to its bureaucracy, which did in fact protect the interests of most of the population and met nearly all eventualities. Because I said I'm not convinced that that was Kafka's view. And West also thinks that Shakespeare was pro monarchy and I'm not convinced of that either although that's, that's a very common view of Shakespeare that monarchy represents the reestablishment of order. The proper monarch back as a reestablishment of order I'm not convinced that that's the right interpretation of Shakespeare but at least that there's more support for that then I think this interpretation of Kafka. So we're going to go a bit here about the shift from Kafka's early writings for authority is a terrifying presence influenced by his father and it's an art in short stories like the judgment and metamorphosis to authorities and absence or an indefinite deferral which I think is what's going on in the trial and the castle and the Great Wall of China, which I think connects to sort of the anarchist criticism of this idea of a final arbiter that the Randians believe in, or the anarchists argue that there's no a final arbiter that can never be a final arbiter that's not how society works. Or Wittgenstein's idea that people are looking for self applying rule and you can't have one, which is something I published on in the in the Prog Journal of political economy. I'll have one to that in the description. Also Daniel Dennett, who I rarely cite favorably but I think on this point he's correct that when people think about the way the brain works they think of there being some place in the brain where it all comes together. There's a little person inside the brain. And he says no that's not how it works that you get this interaction parts of the brain but there's no central authority. In the brain. You know, there's also this. This nice line from his surau aphorisms. The animal twists the whip out of its master's grip and whips itself to become its own master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by new not in the master's whiplash. That sounds like something out of Foucault would you take us as liberation is just a new form of domination. And then in his in the novel was called either America or the man who disappeared. There's this case where this is a boy who's supposed to be monitoring the elevators. This acquaintance of his shows up drunken and vomiting. And so he has to hustle my way out there but sort of a dilemma because if he doesn't hustle him away. He'll be blamed for letting his drunken vomiting friends stay there. When he does us away he'll be you know he'll be getting trouble for abandoning his post. So he decides to hustle him away and sure enough he gets accused of abandoning his post. We tries to explain. Everything he everything is denied. People refuse to listen to him on the grounds that how can you possibly take seriously the judgment of some elevator boy compared to his superiors, the superiors are more to be trusted than some elevator boy so there's a connection of class here to in fact the the movie version of of this book is called class relations. And in fact I have another piece on that which is not completely complete but it's it's much more written up. It's a piece on the idea of the problem of other minds as a political problem in Shakespeare's a fellow and William Godman's novel Caleb Williams and in Kafka's novel America. And I will have a link to that in the description anyway here's a here's a quotation from that from from Kafka's final novel America. Although he had worked here for two months as well as he could. And certainly better than many of the other boys. He had to recognize that such considerations were taken into account at the decisive moment in no part of the world, neither in Europe nor in America. The verdict was determined by the first words that happened to fall from the judge's lips and an impulse of fury. So here's sort of complete skepticism about the objectivity of both of the legal system politically, and of the employer employee system and also is the fact that no one will take seriously the what the, what the employee says is an example of this, this principle that information doesn't travel well in hierarchies. Which is something as I said before that both Robert Anton Wilson and Kevin Carson have made a big deal of. I think I'm going to snip this here as well, and make the the final poor part on Yaroslav Hasek, a separate part three. So, until next time, like, share, subscribe, consider supporting on Patreon and PayPal if you're so inclined, and I'll see you next time.


Okay, so it's it's two o'clock. Let me introduce the session. So welcome everyone. We are in the very last day of our meeting. We have three talks now, three 15-minute talks. I will try to be strict with the timing. So if you agree, we can start this one past two. So let me introduce you, Neda, I won't try to produce this. I'm sorry, from the Institute of Foreign Retirement Science. So the stage is yours, please. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. So hello everybody. My name is Neda, Rafael Hosseini, and I would like to talk for you about the thermal conductivity of the cell membrane. So all of us are aware of the importance of temperature in chemical and biochemical reactions and in biological processes as well. But we might have thought less about the thermal gradients or heat transport at the cellular level. So I will start with a very nice application of this field. If you assume that we want to have a selective therapeutic method for cancer therapy, you can refer to this very nice paper, which is a recent experimental paper in this field. And the picture here at the bottom show you some nanoparticles. Actually, they are called up converting nanoparticles that produce heat after being radiated by an external source. So these nanoparticles are dispersed. Actually, they are covered by a lipid bilayer, and they are dispersed in water. And there is a thermocouple in the water that measure the temperature of the water and solvent environment. So by giving radiation with nanoparticles, they produce heat, and we expect that the heat transports through the bilayer and be transported to the water, to the environment. And this way they can measure the thermal conductivity of the lipid bilayer. Actually, it's interesting that they found that thermal conductivity of the bilayer is a function of power density of the source. And at a specific threshold, they see the lowest possible thermal conductivity of the lipid bilayer, and it means that lipid bilayer acts as a thermal barrier at this threshold. But after that, it shows a higher thermal conductivity and can transport heat very well. So if you want to look from an application point of view, we can say that without having any understanding of the behavior of membrane in thermal transport, we cannot get a high efficiency in this method. So with this introduction, I will jump into the computational studies that are done before, and actually one of them is done by Muller-Paleth. And actually it's the base of the method that we use in our study. Muller have devised an algorithm, actually a reverse non-equilibrium molecular dynamics algorithm to compute thermal conductivity through a biological membrane. And as you can see in the right-hand side, this is the simulation box. There are two lipid bilayers parallel to each other, and there are water molecules between the bilayers and at the top and bottom of the box. So I will explain the Muller algorithm in the next few slides in more details, but I just want to mention some of the findings of this work that they calculated the thermal conductivity profile very locally, and this is what someone cannot do in experiment on only in computation. It's possible and they found very low drops in thermal conductivity profile at the interface between two lipids and also between water and lipid head groups. And I will come back to this in the next few slides. Okay, I used a method that I explained for you, a reverse non-equilibrium molecular dynamics, and why it is called reverse, because actually in experiment we have a cause and a effect, an effect. So the cause is usually a temperature gradient in thermal conductivity field. We have a temperature gradient and as a result of that gradient, we have a heat flux throughout the system, but here we do the reverse. We impose a heat flux to the system and we calculate or actually obtain a temperature gradient that let us calculate thermal conductivity using the Fourier formula. So here you can see our simulation box in the right hand side and I can explain for you the Muller-Palette algorithm in detail. Actually we have two membranes parallel to each other as I explained to you, and we divided the whole box in the z direction into several boxes or several slabs. We did it in 100 slabs and the middle slab or middle layer of our box will be the hot region and the two upper and lower parts will be the cold region. So there is a reason to do like this because of the parity boundary condition in the direction of z axis. So we create an energy exchange this way. First we explore in the middle layer the coldest particles and we try to exchange their velocity with the velocity of the highest particles in the layers in the upper or lower parts of the box. So this way we create a non-physical heat flow from the cold to the hot region because we are actually exchanging energy in this way which is not usual in nature. But after a while we reach to a steady state in which a physical heat flow will be created and be formed through the membrane and the rate of physical and non-physical heat flows becomes somehow equal. So you can see in the bottom plot that after a while, after starting our NEMD algorithm, we reach to this steady state. Actually the exchange rate that we use here is 0.1 picosecond and we use lambs molecular dynamics package to do our simulations. Here you can see that the density... Excuse me, may I ask a question? Yes, sure. In the previous slide, in the direction of the temperature gradient do you use periodic boundary condition here? In the direction of temperature gradient, you mean in the z direction? Yes. Yes, yes. Okay. So then the hot end of the box is periodically bound to the cold end of the box. Am I right? Can you ask again? So if the particle exits through the boundary which is hot, re-enter the box from the boundary which is cold, am I right? The boundary of the box? Actually I don't get your question, Val. Well, okay. I assume that it is periodic as you tell. Maybe this looks a quite technical question. You could go ahead and maybe ask later. Yeah, sure. Yeah, okay. Here in this figure you see the density profiles of the water and lipid. I show the density of water with the dashed blue line and the density of lipid with the yellow line and through the z direction. So here is the slab number and here is the density. After imposing the heat flux to the system and creation of these two heat flows, we got a temperature profile like this which shows that if we compare temperature profile with density profile, it provides us with this information that we are always above the phase transition temperature of the lipids. That is 314 Kelvin. Okay. We looked into different model membranes specifically for membranes. I had a question for you. The phase transition temperature of the lipid you said is 314. Exactly. From the APP. From experiments or from force field? Okay, it's a very good question. But actually it is mentioned in the literature in computational works. So I assume that it's from computational. Okay, because the two may not be the same. Yeah. Okay. They don't match. Exactly. Okay. And which force field did you use? We used Charmin. Charmin. And for water also Charmin? SBE. Yeah, SBE, SBCE. SBE. Exactly. So we looked at four different concentrations of cholesterol in membrane because we know that cholesterol has a very significant role in the membrane composition and it was and has not been investigated so far. We also know that thermal conductivity is a structure dependent property. So we guess that we might have found an interesting relation between these inclusion of cholesterol into the membrane and change in the membrane structure and as a result in membrane thermal conductivity. So the model membrane we use here is DPPC lipid molecules with different concentrations of cholesterol and in all the membranes we have the 36 lipid molecules in each leaflet. So our results suggest that there is a decrease in the area per lipid of the of the lipid bilayer as a function of cholesterol concentration and this is somehow in correlation with the increase in the thermal conductivity. So yeah, so a decrease in area per lipid and an increase in thermal conductivity as a function of cholesterol concentration. And this is interesting for us because we also refer to the previous studies and we saw this similar result in this paper previously. Actually they investigated different archaeal lipid membranes and they saw that in the type of archaea that has a lower area per lipid the thermal conductivity is higher at two different temperatures actually. And what actually I understood from this seminar two days ago from Ali Rajapur's presentation, I understood that they looked at the density of water around some nanoparticles and they saw an increase in thermal conductivity there. They have a higher concentration of water, so a higher density of water. And we also know from the literature that inclusion of cholesterol has an effect on the hydration of the lipid head groups and the more the concentration of cholesterol in membrane the more hydrated the lipid head groups. So actually it came to our mind that okay if Mueller suggests that there is a very high drop in thermal conductivity in the interface of water lipid, so we can see this in our simulation and we can test if we get a higher density of water near the lipid head groups. And so this way we can somehow explain an increase in the thermal conductivity profile. If you want to compare... Never, you should finish in one minute. Okay, okay I'm almost finished. So I just refer to this previous study to compare our results which is an agreement and I want to tell you about the important effect of asymmetry of cholesterol in membrane. And actually the way we study this is that we impose the heat flux in two directions, in the forward and backward direction and we obtained almost the same results. So the difference was not significant, it was not statistically significant, but in the case that we include protein, amyloid precursor protein in the membrane and we obtained this forward and backward thermal conductivity coefficients. We saw a statistically significant difference in both systems and this guide asked that maybe this protein or this protein membrane mixture can be a thermal rectifier with the thermal rectification factor calculated this way. So the thermal rectification factor that we obtained here is in agreement with the values obtained before in the similar studies. So at the end I would like to show my gratitude to my PhD supervisor, Professor Isaij Tahadi. I'm also thankful to Ali Hassan Ali for his very good advices through the project and also because he's our collaborator in another project. I'm thankful to the staff of Instinct for Research and Fundamental Sciences in Iran that I did my project. We are not seeing again your screen. Your screen was locked in the results slide and also your time is over. Okay, it's just my last slide. But we are not seeing your slide. Sorry. Okay, can I share it again? Okay, I just try to do it again. Is it okay? Yeah. Okay. So yeah, I was in my last slide which is, yeah, that I want to thank ICTP for hosting me during my last visit. They are the organization in Germany that grants me with a one-year research grant and the University of Duisburg-Essen in which I'm doing my college project. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Very nice talk. I'm sorry. There is no time for