All right, welcome to This Week in Cloud Native. So today we have a special occasion, all right? This show is actually gonna be in Spanish. So I'm gonna do a quick intro here to tell all the non-Spanish speakers what we're gonna be all about. Feel free to ask any questions in English and I'll translate. So just a couple of housekeeping items, right? Every week we're gonna bring you a new set of presenters on this show, right? It's gonna be every Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern time. So do subscribe to our Twitch stream, right? This is an official CNCF stream. So please make sure that as you chat, this is subject to the CNCF code of conduct, right? So do not add anything to the chat or questions that would be in violation of that code. Basically, be nice, be respectful to everybody. Now, today we have two very special guests. We have Fatima Elias and Raul Flamenco. They are the ones that organized the Kubernetes community in El Salvador. Now we're gonna switch to Spanish, okay? We have two very special guests. We have Fatima Elias and Raul Flamenco, who are the organizers of the Kubernetes community in El Salvador. So a pleasure to have you here, Fatima Raul. Please introduce yourself. Fatima, if you'd like to start. Yes, a pleasure, Leonardo. I'm Fatima Elias, third-year student of business engineering in El Salvador. And I had the opportunity to be sitting with you in communication with Cloud Native in El Salvador. Nice to meet you. Thank you very much, Fatima. Raul, how are you? My name is Raul Flamenco. I'm the founder of Acopula Networks in California. I'm a Salvadoran with 41 years in the United States. I'm also one of the organizers of Cloud Native in El Salvador. It was one of the organizations that has approximately only four months. But even so, I'd like to invite you to the next meeting, which will be on Wednesday, 24th, at 10 in the morning. We'll discuss the issue of how to ensure that the payments are paid. Okay, fantastic. Well, what we want to talk about today, which tells us a little bit, is maybe we'll start by... Where did the idea of Kubernetes Community in El Salvador originate? Tell us, how did this initiative come about? Fatima, can you allow me to... Sure, Raul. Well, this started in November of 2019. The Cloud Native Computer Foundation has a annual meeting that takes place in Europe and takes place in the United States as well. And sometimes in Asia. It happened in China, for example. Well, in November, it happened in San Diego. And I attracted 12,000 developers from all over the world. So, one of the personal questions I made was from where all the contributors come for these open source projects. And the answer was fast. And it indicates that most of them are from North America, from the United States in particular, from Europe and from Asia. When we say Asia, about 17% come from India. So, the question is, why not Latin America? Why not Central America? Why not El Salvador? Well, it might be because I was born in that place. And if someone comes in later, I'll be able to share the story. I'll do it. Okay, fantastic. Fatima, tell me something. What was your experience through the organization of the Kubernetes Community Day? Tell me a little about your experience. Okay, the truth is, I think that through the whole process, it was able to capture quite a few university students. Which was what caught my attention the most because, well, I really include myself as a university student. We have very few times access to these opportunities. And we have the idea that these opportunities can only be found outside of the country. And right now, with all of this pandemic, this idea has changed a little bit because we can only connect through remote means, right? So, really, we have realized with the Kubernetes Community Day that the preparation, the knowledge that even you are sharing with us, is truly within our reach. And that was what caught my attention the most from the whole process, that the university students were interested in. Even when we contacted the universities, they were the ones who participated the most, the ones who were more involved, the ones who were more aware of the trend to be able to participate in this event. Sure. And tell me something. If it hadn't been for the pandemic, if it had been for the Kubernetes Community Day, and for the virtual, if it hadn't been for COVID, do you think it would have been possible to take the event to the end? Was it COVID and that it was all remote? Was it a facilitator? I can share with you how that theme came about. For example, when we started dealing with the theme, one of the other organizers, Mauricio Quevedo, he was the first person in El Salvador with whom I got in touch. And the plan was, according to us, to have a meeting every day in a hotel. So we needed to set up a whole theme of how to fund capital to be able to finance the project and sponsors. And we worked on the theme in such a way, including with several organizations. But it turns out that as soon as the pandemic was gone, the theme began to change automatically. In such a way that, yes, in CF, we are, as the first organization, which they have tried to do this, virtually, it's like they said, they tried with us, right? So, because suddenly the situation happened. But I think it helped us a lot, because thinking that we would have a budget of $100,000, doing it with almost zero, has been an opportunity that the pandemic has not given us. And I guess it also allowed the audience to be much more broad, because obviously, when you do it in place, the amount of people who can participate is very limited. Where did the participants come from? Well, look, there are two figures. I also want to give credit to Victor Morales, he lives in Mexico, and is now in California. And then, that was the second person that joined the team. Only three of us started working on that. So, the idea of Victor, that he introduced, was good. From my experience, I worked on the theme of OpenStack in Mexico, and it took us four years to get to this place. It will be possible that we need a community to be able to do this reality. So, the community was born. The community has grown to 220 members. Some of them, in their majority, have been written, have attended an event, but there is a large number of them who have attended up to seven different events. So, there is a lot of interest. The number that was written for the community's community in January 30th was 275, which could only attend 146. We had talks, for example, about techniques, and what we have heard about technical talks has clearly told us that the information was above their heads, but that they were going to continue to deal with it. And the other one, with the idea that I think was the most important, was to bring a group of young people who are working, who are collaborators in Cloud Native, but they are native speakers from Latin America. For example, from Peru, we had people from Peru, from Spain, from El Salvador, from Costa Rica, and from Guatemala, even from Mexico. So, I think that maybe was the most important thing to learn. What is what people are looking for? How are we going to incorporate that? Okay. Fatima, what did you think of the assistance? Tell me, what did you expect? Did you overcome your expectations? What did you expect? Yes, I did overcome my expectations, because, as I mentioned, we are not used to having these kinds of opportunities, and when they introduced us, all the universities started to sign up, and I really expected a little less participation, but I overcome the expectations that we even had with Raúl, and we really started at a slow pace, but then we really continued with that pace, but suddenly that changed, and we began to receive a lot of subscriptions in the last few days prior to the event. And what media did you use to promote it, apart from the universities? Did you support it on social media? Yes, on social media, Facebook, Instagram, direct messages, even to the universities. Okay. And what do you think, by giving talks, sometimes it's a bit difficult to generate a connection with the people when they do it through a virtual platform. Do you think you managed to establish a good link with all the participants? Until now, trust me, what we have learned is that, for example, we have the option, the baby platform, the one we used, that was another topic, because many people thought they were going to use Zoom, because it would be the most common thing, but otherwise we went through the baby, because this baby is through the Linux Foundation. So it seems that the platform gives us the opportunity to reach a group, to give a follow-up to the conversation. People have also had the opportunity, immediately when you get to the site and you sign up for the event, you also have the opportunity to send a email, if you want, you also have the opportunity to send an email when you visit Cloud Native El Salvador.  We have also established a mail account, which is Cloud Native El Salvador, at gmail.com, and we have also shared the videos on YouTube through that account, so that all the people can see it, which is also in Spanish. Okay, fantastic. And tell me something. Well, I didn't introduce myself, for those who are listening to us. My name is Leonardo Murillo and I am the organizer of the CNCF Community at Costa Rica. Being a community organizer, what advice would you give me, for example, or any other Latino who is interested in taking an initiative of this type, in organizing a community community in their region? Sure, I think the most important thing to start with is to let the members of the community see how they can benefit from that community, what they can receive, being part of it, and we have focused on the opportunities to tell them that they can receive preparation, contact opportunities, with people from abroad, opportunities, even, right now, from Pasantías. We are going to be at 24, giving a talk about Pasantías, opportunity of Pasantías remunerated, and that, that they see how they can have some benefit when they are part of this community. What do you think, Robert? Look, I think one of the things I thought about at the beginning is that if I want to go fast, I have to do this alone, but if I want to go far, I have to do it with many people. We have the number of people, volunteers who participated in this event, who wanted this event in reality, it was 18. That without counting the individuals who are members of the other organizations who supported us, like, for example, SuperAte. SuperAte is a project that started in El Salvador many years ago, in which they have a program where they take young people in the Bachillerato in the year 10, 11 and 12, and these young people are compromised at three daily hours during the school year to concentrate on three themes. One of them is technology, the other one is English, and the other is the values. I personally had the opportunity in 2018 to visit the project and see young people who are in the 10th, 11th and 12th grade and also what they have graduated from. And then those young people shared with us that one of the things of much more value for them was the values, okay? So, there are several people in that group who helped us promote the event with the graduates. The program is also helping us with another group called Class Winner in Azure, okay? So, how do I tell you? I think it takes a lot of people to come back to the topic to make this reality, right? So, the topic begins to gain interest little by little. It would be very nice to be able to, in the next year, have 10 people who have completed a course through CNCF and can share this story. That would be, you know, a great opportunity, right? And that's what motivates us to move forward. Sure. And now, you touched on an important topic, Raul, and language. Many of the talks that I had the pleasure and honor to give a talk in the community were in Spanish. Something that I have noticed is that there is a gap, quite a gap in the content available in English and the content available in Spanish, even in the context of people who are willing to give a talk, for example. What do you think is indispensable, the language, for an event like this to be successful, especially thinking about the students' audience that was so representative? Of course, we decided that most of the talks were in Spanish to go little by little. That's what we talked about with Raul. Going to start introducing the topics in Spanish, since we also know that the difficulty of some topics was a bit, as Raul said, high for the expectations that the assistants had. And, well, they really want to learn, but it's still difficult to learn complicated topics for them along with the language, right? So we prefer to learn them in Spanish and then incorporate English with the topics. Sure. What do you think, Raul? Do you think that the coverage in Spanish was satisfactory? Yes, I mean, I remember the debates that we had in the meetings when we were organizing this, because we thought about the options that if the platform had a translation, that we would have people who would translate and all that. And, well, we all participated in different conferences when that happened, right? But, okay, let's go back to the idea that we had zero budget, right? We didn't have a budget of where... And we wanted, as he says, the important thing. I think the approach that we gave to the project was like entrepreneurship, right? In entrepreneurship, we have to know that we have to launch. We have to do something. We have to translate. We have to see what it is that works and learn from that. So what we have learned with this topic is that we need, as he says, to treat. We invite, for example, a speaker completely in English and I remember that the group, in total, almost felt completely opposed to the idea, right? So we said, I took the place of saying, let's try to see what happens, right? This guy joined us at the meeting at 6 and a half in the morning in India to be able to share with us, right? This is someone who has completed a course through Science Chef, also Google Summer of Code and shared his experience, right? So, although it was in English, I imagine that someone said, I'm going to do that too, right? Mm-hmm, of course. Okay. And now let's talk a little bit about the community. Tell us a little bit about what are the initiatives that the community of El Salvador has and you know, Raul, that at a Latin American level, we are working a lot together to raise the capacity and to focus on the region, right? In El Salvador, in particular, what initiatives are coming forward and what is the best way for other people to join the community and participate? What do I want to answer, Fatima or Raul? Yes, of course. I can start by commenting that on February 24th, we're going to have a chat about the remunerated pastries. There's going to be a person, a girl sharing with us, she already completed a pastry and she's going to give us her experience and we're going to give the steps that people need to follow, the specifications, so that they can also join these pastries, so that they can complete them from the experience she had. Okay, fantastic. And what is the best way for that link that you're seeing down there? By the way, it's precisely this event that we're talking about for those of you who don't have much context, the Linux Foundation and CNCF have a pastry program where there are mentors and mentees that even receive some economic remuneration to learn about these technologies. So that link that you can see down there leads you to where you can learn more about this initiative. Now, let's talk a little bit about the community in El Salvador. From the event, or even at the Latin American level, what are the remaining effects, that is, after the community community day? What effects have you seen in the community? Have you seen an increase in activity? Have you seen any prolonged effect that has been left behind in the event? Yes, well, I can share with you again that we're going to go back to the topic of the participant's number, right? We have, it's supposed to be 220 members, but there's a number of them. Flavio, I think, has attended more than one meeting, four to seven of them, right? So that indicates that there's an interest, right? An interest in moving forward. I think we're using the model, more or less, as we know in the United States, that it ends up having at least one meeting a month, right? So far, the topics have emerged, as someone who says something, as someone who says, if we could compare the topic in terms of demand and demand and supply, they've been more than all supply, right? We're with someone who says, contributing to those topics, but demand is going to emerge when more people, like Fatima, are part of the group and start asking questions, right? What are the things that I want to learn? For example, the first thing that comes to mind is that we have to be able to love, to be able to do this, to be part of this group. No, it's not true. Many times, just write and read is enough, okay? There's an opportunity for everyone. Even the Cloud Native Computer Foundation has more than 800 companies as members. The largest companies in the world, like Facebook, like Google, like Amazon, and it also has more than 200 startups, right? That are at different levels in capacity on their way. So there's a great opportunity for people to be able to incorporate the vision of the community as a contribution. What contribution? That the community of El Salvador can contribute to the community of CNCF that has 103,000 developers, okay? Or contributors, okay? So there's a great opportunity. It was a great opportunity to get together, right? To start making friends, to start asking questions, to start looking for opportunities, and the next year we'll see the difference. Of course, of course. And let's talk about that next year. Does the community of El Salvador or you, Raul, thinking a little bit about Latin America, too, what do you consider to be the next step? Another community day in another country, a wider event in several countries, what do you consider to be the next, the progression of this initiative? And there are going to be several, because the topic is changing. Like, for example, I think we need to try, for example, the topic of Kubernetes, right? Kubernetes is the most dominant project of CNCF. CNCF is like the house where these projects live. And then, CNCF started, one of the things I would like to try to infuse is that every topic starts small, okay? Do you remember the number I was sharing? That 275 people subscribed to Kubernetes? Well, when CNCF started, the first meeting that was in Canada, there were 500, 500 people, okay? Do you remember that I also told you that in 2019, there were 12,000? Well, last year, in 2012, there were 22,000, okay? So, but everything starts small, right? So, the next step for us, I'm not sure we're going to have more Kubernetes community day, because it seems that the organization of CNCF is interested in expanding the topic of other projects too. There are like 80 projects that already exist. Now, the other important thing, I think it's up to now, and thanks for the question, Nardo, because you're part of that too, and you know it very well. The philosophy so far, from the point of view of technological products, I think the idea is, we're going to create products and we're going to sell them in Latin America, okay? Many times, without taking into account the differences that exist in each of the countries, it's very easy to think, I'm going to sell this product in Latin America, okay? And launch it with the reach of all Latin America, without thinking about each one of the countries. Not only that, but there are other topics like, for example, how people who are going to use these products participate in designing these products, okay? So, of course, a company can be very interested in only selling the product in Latin America. But how can we take the opinion of the consumer, the person who is going to use this? The topic is changing a lot worldwide. So, we also wanted to share that feeling with the community, which is the Millenials, as well as Fatima, they are already programmed to play that theme, okay? So, that makes it much easier for them to get into the conversation. Sure, and thinking a little about those generations, without Millenials, we talked about I think in Latin America, both the community as such, as the industry, what you are saying, the products that are going to be integrated in the new economic ecosystem of the region, they are a little reset in terms of what all these technologies are referring to, and it is precisely the opportunity that we have to raise the skills and to agile all these initiatives. A lot at that time revolves around students. Fatima, I think you were in contact with universities and educational centers, I don't know. What is the answer to the chain in Latin America, at least what you all knew about all these technologies? Do you know that they can be members of the CNCF in the academic context? What do you know so much about the academy of this theme that we are talking about? Sure, really, at the beginning, it was very difficult to get to them due to the same thing that they didn't know, this type of technologies, in fact, in our country it is very little common to find opportunities like that, right? So they were, like, in front of something new, and because they didn't know, they weren't part of the activities, but then they contacted them, they explained to them, and after that they also joined different master's courses, career coordinators, to contact them, to the students, to invite them, even, well, at least in my university, also, orientators, psychologists, they invited us, and they, well, it was like, that everyone was giving this information, it was a great invitation, and, well, the truth is, above all, we received participation from certain specific universities that have very technical and well-related careers, and I think that was the most important thing. And in what countries did you have contact with universities? Are they Salvadorans or did they extend to other countries in Latin America? Right now, it's only the Salvadorans, we've reached 11 different universities, because one thing that maybe, you know, thinking about the region, because it's another thing that maybe the rest of the world needs to know, is that one of the things that affects a lot the condition of attracting money or investments to the region is the perception that exists in the region, right? And then, one of the things that I would like to share is that that has changed in a very, very fast way, okay? So, we hope that not only does this happen from the point of view of the Salvador, but also from Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, all over Central America. Yes, I'll tell you a very nice story, it turns out that the community of Guatemala, the Science and Chapter of Guatemala, yesterday, precisely, organized an event for students from a university in Caragüense, in which I also had the opportunity to chat. And the retroalimentation that we received from the same students was, we want connection with other universities. Hopefully, they were present here, students from Costa Rica, from other countries, and that seemed super positive to me. It seems to me that it shows a lot of the value, precisely, of the community. And as, even, the community comes to fill those gaps of knowledge that maybe the academy and the institutions organized by learning have not reached, let's say. So, it seems to me very, very, very nice. Okay, let's think a little bit again in the community day event. When you decided on a theme for the event, which we now realize as learning, which was a little raised for the audience, how much did you debate the level of the theme, or how difficult was it to get people to talk in the event, let's say? How complicated was that? Tell us. Go ahead. Well, the truth is, Raul was supervising that part more, right? But if I made a comment, like another passer-by who was helping us, Felipe, about the level of the talk, right? Our proposal was to make talks that really could attract the community, but that at the same time, I mean, we had a talk, which Raul mentioned, which was in English, and I feel that if some people made me the comment later, Fátima is super cool, very interesting, but I felt lost at some points. And I think that some people felt that the community was not for them. So, if... What do you mean by that? Like, for their level of... Exactly, they felt that the community was not for them, that it was for a more advanced level, that they didn't handle it. So, we tried to adapt the level to their reach. That's what we always had in mind. We even commented on the speakers, the panelists, that they always remembered the audience to whom they were directing. Okay. Yes, it's a common theme, that people consider that to enter the world of contribution in open source, and in these topics, it's about being an expert and getting to know it all. Yes, that's the initial idea. Of course, and something I've learned is that the community is very open. How did you experience the opening, for example, of the CNCF, before this initiative? How would you interpret the position of the CNCF before the opening of Latin America? Look, I can tell you how I saw you from the first conversation I had with Dan, right? Dan was the executive director of the CNCF. He died in November of last year. But during that first conversation, he immediately informed me that this program, the community is a new program, that had been born in 2019. And I immediately told him, why don't we do this in El Salvador? And then he told me, hey, let's do it, and when it happens, I'm going to go to El Salvador. That's the plan, because Dan was one of the people who liked to travel around the world. He liked to travel around the world. So he had traveled for many parts, but he never was in El Salvador. So that was part of the element of emotion, of being able to do this in reality, of being able to invite the community to come here. But as I told you, the rest of the people inside the CNCF have constantly supported us. They have been able to give us the tools, like for example, Bevy, right? At first, they chose to connect to those communities that existed through Miraf, right? So we learned, in a minute, the issue of not having a Miraf yet, a Miraf account, we could go directly to Bevy, right? Which made it much easier for us. So it's like who says, CNCF has been in our hands constantly with us to help us do this in reality, right? Okay, fantastic. And let's see, how much... Well, how much have you had with other communities? We have already talked about that with Costa Rica we have this link, what we are working together, with what other communities in Latin America have made contact? As a community? I think that would still be the next step, right? Why? Because we are very new, right? So we are talking about the Kubernetes community that happened on January 30, right? And we are in February, so they are things that are going to occur, I think, in the community, step by step. I personally, as an individual, I know very well the effort that Sergio has made in Guatemala. He has attended several of his meetings, okay? And at the same time, working with you, Leonardo, because there is also a Costa Rica community, I will learn, I think there is a community in Panama, in Colombia, right? And step by step, I imagine that there will also be a community in Honduras, right? So we already have a Guatemala, there is a Costa Rica, in Panama, in Colombia, I imagine that there will be one in Nicaragua, and there will be another in Honduras. Look, one of the things that I have noticed has been that living in the United States for a long time, the United States has a large number of Spaniards, right? So, for example, I can just tell you the community I live in, okay? The county has 400,000 people who live in this county, right? 20% of those people are Spaniards, okay? So, one of the things that I see, that I have noticed since I was young, that they were born here, right? If they wanted to keep the language, not only the language, but to know a little more about our culture, about their roots, right? But it is difficult for them because they have no reason for why, okay? And at the same time, full of my experience in El Salvador, what I experienced is that when, even, if they ask you to take a class of English, if you don't have a reason to do it, you ignore it, right? You leave it last, and it turns out that it is not so effective, okay? In which English can have doors, right? I can tell you from my experience that when you arrive in the United States, you don't even know a word, a word of English. So, it is quite difficult, right? How to start? So, it seems that there is something that can be established between these young people, right? In El Salvador, in Honduras, in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, that they want to find that connection with the rest of the world, and the people who are also in the United States to be able to establish a relationship, you know? Of course, of course. I'm going to answer a couple of things here that are being asked by the chat that seems valuable to me. José Rodríguez tells us that there are a lot of comments. If you go to community.CNCF.IO that I'm going to ask you to put it here in the video community.CNCF.IO there and you go to Central of South America. You're going to see a lot of communities there in Brazil, there in Chile, there in El Salvador, there in Costa Rica and part of what we are working on is that they are not exclusive, obviously. All Latinos are open to share. They are communities in Spanish. So there you have a lot of people going to community.CNCF.IO Now, Modulosh asks us what previous knowledge you must have to apply to a pasantía. Do you know those details? I can share that because what I said was the following. I don't know if we can share the link where the information is. It would be ideal. There are 15 projects that exist. Okay? These 15 projects, at least the date has already been for which I came. But it comes from the summer and what happens is that they are projects. They are projects that have different responsibilities. There is even one that is called to do interviews to customers. To the people who use Kubernetes. So where do you need technical skills? But it could also be an opportunity to learn. Because it will be with mentors that maybe can show a path that you had not even thought it was possible to start learning something new. And here is an important issue that I think is worth highlighting. Among the initiatives that we have in the Latin community is also to find, because we are a lot of Latinos who are doing important things in the world of open source. So looking for Latinos who are also available to participate as mentors in these types of initiatives. Because there is also a lot of opportunity to support us. There is also the link of the mentorship event. I am going to give you a second to pass the Linux Foundation so you can see the details. The Twitch channel that Maria José Torres asks us about LinkedIn is cloudnative.tv and hopefully everyone go to cloudnative.tv and subscribe. All Wednesdays we have three streams Eastern Time. It would be great if you join. Ok Let's go. Tell us, Raul. Leonardo, I would like to add something more to the topic that you mentioned about the number of people in Latin America involved in the community of CNCF. There are many. And one of the things that I may have have been able to observe is that sometimes it gives us pain to share. Why? Because it can be that in our culture there is something that says if I do this people will perceive me as I want to show off. I want to I want to I want to I want to I want to How do you say that, Raul? Well, we say we want to throw the towel. Yes, well and for example one of the things we wanted to try was to make a channel that we had in January 30 of several people in Latin America who are contributing to the community and if you have the time to see that presentation you will realize that they have reached a different path and little by little we will start to get out of the closet. Yes, totally agree and that's how it should be. I will tell you something interesting that the other day I was talking with Tracy Reagan because we were talking about Latin America and she told me that the Latinos are very difficult to find and I found a very interesting comment and to the conclusion that we reached is that it revolves around the skills of networking that we have like we have to learn to establish more contact, establish more network a wider network and in a certain way also have the clear notion that we are the same, I explain that I think it has something to do with the fact that we are too big so that one participates more because it comes in a much smaller context so realize that as Latinos we are the same and we are all human beings and we all have the same strengths and weaknesses and the same vulnerabilities and it's a matter of raising our hand and if we raise our hand we will pay attention and that's how important I will tell you now at the end of February and I warned you we are going to have a new podcast called Clownary of Latino and the idea of Clownary of Latino is to talk with Latinos that they have opened their way in the world of Clownary of open source to realize that we are all the same that we have common origins and that together we can ok Raul and Fatima, we are in time. What else do you want to tell us with what you would like to tell us about this conversation? I would like to share that one of the reasons we started doing this was the following if people in El Salvador Guatemala and Honduras are exposed to walking from San Salvador to Los Angeles to find opportunities we have opportunities for you opportunities exist in Central America the growth is not going to come from the United States the growth is going to come from Central America ok so do you want to be part of that growth? one of the things we have learned is that things can take place there are key cases of companies such as Hugo in El Salvador there are companies like Rapi in Colombia who are using this technology to grow their businesses so the same need exists in other countries in terms of big systems for education for health for the government they can adapt in any of our countries so if you want to be close to your family and want to have better opportunities join the community of Claude Neyres El Salvador, Costa Rica and Guatemala and Panama and the next one is going to be from Honduras and we are going to do this without a doubt thank you very much Robert Fátima do you want to share something? to expand the invitation below you can find the link with which you can join and have access to all these opportunities as Raul says from the comfort of your homes ok, fantastic Raul Fátima, thank you very much for participating today I'm really glad to see so much energy and initiative Latin American we have a huge potential and I know that together with all of you who joined us thank you for listening don't forget to subscribe to the Twitch channel every Wednesday at 3 pm next week we have Fluent talking about streaming so we hope to see you every week, thank you for being here with us and that's all thank you very much thank you thank you Fátima


So I'm here in my new old hat, as a financial and political advisor.  Why not combine the worst of the two worlds? Why not discuss the psychology of economics and finance? It's a field known as behavioral economics, which is gaining traction and recognition all over the world. Some of its proponents have won Nobel Prizes in the preceding two decades. I've been advocating ever since I remember myself that economics is not a science. It's a branch of psychology and in this sense it's a descriptive taxonomy of human behaviors. Economists observe humans, then they describe their behaviors and they connect the dots sometimes or very often actually using mathematical models. But using a certain language known as mathematics and describing the behaviors of certain populations or even individuals, that's not a science. That's no more a science than botany was when Linus started it 250 years ago. So before we delve in, I want to read to you something that Ludwig von Mies has written. It is impossible to describe any human action if one does not refer to the meaning the actor sees in the stimulus, as well as in the end his response is aiming at. But Ludwig von Mies was saying actually it's impossible to describe any human action if you ignore psychology. Economics to the great dismay of many economies is merely a branch of psychology.  Humans behave, at least economically. Many have yet to see chimpanzee with a credit card or a dog with a mortgage. Humans are the only ones who engage in advanced sophisticated and complex economic behavior. Many of the practitioners of economics seek to disguise its nature as a social science and they do this the same way psychologists do. They apply complex mathematics where common sense and direct experimentation would have yielded far better results. And the outcome of all this camouflage is an embarrassing divorce between economic theory and its subjects, we, the people. The economic actor in economic theory is supposed to be constantly engaged in the rational pursuit of self interest. The economic actor, the player, the economic agent is busy all the time maximizing his benefits, his income, his profits, pursuing his self interest, etc. And he does this rationally, totally objectively. Of course this is rank nonsense. This is absolutely counterfactual. That's not how humans behave. This is not a realistic model. It's merely a useful approximation and mind you a flattering one. We all would like to consider ourselves rational agents or rational actors, even if we rarely are. And so according to this letter day, rational version of the dismal science, dismal science is another name for economics. So according to this approach to economics, people refrain from repeating their mistakes systematically. People seek to optimize their preferences. Altruism, for example, can be such a preference. And that's why people engage in altruism. And there's a forest of complex mathematical formula, which seek to explain why people donate to charity, tax benefits, and write offs aside. We like to believe, all of us like to believe, that we are rational. We like to believe that we make sense, that our actions and inaction are imbued with meaning. And such self perception is eco-syntonic. It makes us feel comfortable in our own skins, makes us feel even flattered. There's a bit of grandiosity there. Yes, the truth is, of course, that many people are irrational or non-rational or nearly rational in certain situations. And the definition of self-interest as the pursuit of the fulfillment of preferences is a tautology. It's just saying the same thing using different words. It's meaningless. It's not a real definition. Bounded rationality is more like it. We're going to come and discuss it a bit later. Most economic theories fail to predict important phenomena such as strong reciprocity, the propensity to irrationally sacrifice resources in order to reward forthcoming collaborators and punish free riders. Current economic theories, most of them, not all of them, but most of them fail to account for simpler forms of apparent selflessness. What about reciprocal altruism motivated by hopes of reciprocal benevolent treatment in the future? All these fall outside the remit of rigid classic economics and even monetary economics. Consider inflation, for example. Inflation is a universal regressive tax. When the value of your money depreciates when your money can buy less and less, it's a tax. It's exactly like a tax. When you pay taxes, you have less money left to buy things with. When there's inflation, you have the same amount of money, but you can buy fewer things. So inflation is a tax. It is a regressive, a regressive universal tax. Everyone, rich and poor, end up being subjected to the same rate of inflation. Inflation facilitates, though, a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich and from the poor to the state. Inflation inflates. Asset values and rich people have many assets. So the value of their assets increases. We're talking about stocks, real estate, bubbles, asset bubbles. Inflation also erodes the obligations of the state and the value of unilateral transfers such as social security payments. So you get the same amount of money, but it's worth less. Inflation is the rich man's friend and the state's friend and the enemy of the poor. But inflation involves cognitive distortions and cognitive biases such as catastrophizing. Oh my God, prices are going to go up tomorrow. I should buy things now. Both inflation and its mirror image deflation. In both cases, individual behavior may be rational, but collective action must behavior definitely is not. Because collectively, we bring about inflation by purchasing everything now.  And collectively, when there is deflation, when prices are going down rather than up, we postpone purchases. We postpone consumption. And by doing this, of course, we create a recession or even a depression and prices go down even more. Our irrational collective behavior brings about the worst economic nightmares we fear. We create none of this, catastrophizing, irrational collective action, cognitive dissonances, cognitive distortions, cognitive biases, defense mechanisms. None of these are mentioned in economic literature. These are the main drivers and engines of economic decision making, and yet they are nowhere to be seen. Our student of economics studies any of these. It's not to be found in any textbook. Even the authoritative and mainstream handbook of experimental economics by John Hegel and Alvin Roth, even this book admits that people do not behave in accordance with the predictions of basic economic theories. Standard theory of utility, theory of general equilibrium, they are nonsense. They're not realistic, they're counterfactual, and yet these are the pillars of modern economics. Modern economics is delusional, fantastic, anything but real or helpful or useful. Irritatingly for economists, people change their preferences mysteriously and irrationally, and this is called preference reversals. Economists are really pissed off at people for not conforming to their models. The models are right and true. Something's wrong with people. Moreover, people's preferences as evidenced by their choices and decisions in carefully controlled experiments are inconsistent. There is a replicability crisis in economics. We can't repeat most of the experiments and get the same results. People tend to lose control of their actions or they tend to procrastinate because they place greater importance, greater weight on the present and the near future than on the far future. And this makes most people both irrational and unpredictable, because if you are so near-sighted, if your horizon is so short-term, you are incapable of rationally planning for the far future and your behavior is bound to be erratic. Either one cannot design an experiment to rigorously and validly test theorems and conjectures in economics, maybe there's a design problem, or much more likely, something is very flawed with intellectual pillars and models and pivots of this entire field.  Finally, what is rational on the level of an individual consumer, or household, or firm, or saver, or investor, may be detrimentally irrational as far as the welfare of the collective goes, I mentioned inflation and deflation earlier. Take for example the famous thrift-thrift paradox, it's a case in point. In times of crisis, it makes sense to consume less and save more if you are household or firm. So people and companies save more, invest less, and consume less, which makes the situation even worse. The recession becomes depression. The good of the economy as a whole requires you to act irrationally in such situations.  So as an individual, you should save more and consume less when there's an economic crisis in recession, in a recession for example.  Neoclassical economics has failed on several fronts simultaneously, and this multiple failure led to despair and to the re-examination of basic percepts and tenets, and in the longer run to the rise of behavioral economics. I have a video dedicated to behavioral economics on this channel, it discusses the psychology of sales. Consider this example of the sample of outstanding issues. Unlike other economic actors and agents, governments are accorded a special status. They receive special treatment in economic theory. Governments are not like other agents. Government is alternatively cast as a saint, a savior of last resort, seeking to selflessly maximize social welfare. Or, in other economic theories, the government is the villain. The state seeks to perpetuate and increase its power ruthlessly and callously. These are known as public choice theories. Both views are unreal and untrue. Both are caricatures of reality. Of course governments seek to perpetuate their clout and to increase it, especially in democratically elected countries where public opinion matters. But governments also do so, mostly in order to redistribute income to the poor. It's rarely for self-enrichment. They are of course corrupt individuals, but governments as a whole are corrupt in very few places. In most places they are doing their best to balance scarce resources with social and economic priorities. Governments' bad reputation is often justified. Don't misunderstand me. In imperfect or failing systems, a variety of actors and agents make arbitrage profits. They seek rents of the public purse. They use taxpayers' money to enrich themselves. And they accrue income derived from facilitation, brokerage, mediation, and other venally rendered services. But this is in imperfect or failing systems, or systems in transition, or systems in crisis. Not only do these functionaries lack motivation to improve the dysfunctional system that so benefits them, they have every reason in the world to obstruct efforts at reform and block fundamental changes aimed at rendering the system more efficient. And all this is true. But these are outliers. These are extreme cases. This is not how governments mostly function. We have cases of privatization where the private sector was much less efficient than governments. At certain things, for example, utilities, hospitals, prisons. Economics also failed until recently to account for the role of innovation in growth and development. The discipline often ignored the specific nature of knowledge industries and currently the attention economy. In these industries, returns increase rather than diminish. Network effects prevail. And so current economic thinking is industrial or even agricultural. It's 18th century thinking. It's woefully inadequate to deal with information monopolies, path dependence, pervasive externalities. Don't ask. Look it up. Classic costs to benefit analysis fail to tackle very long term investment horizons and periods. The underlying assumption is the opportunity cost of delayed consumption. If I don't consume now, I have money and then I can use this money to invest so that I'll be able to consume more in the future when I generate profits. And this is the opportunity cost of delayed consumption. But this underlying assumption fails when it is applied beyond the investor's useful economic life expectancy.  This is because predictions concerned with the far future are highly uncertain. And investors refuse to base current decisions on fuzzy what if scenarios. And this is a problem because many current investments such as, I don't know, the fight against global warming or climate change. These investments are likely to yield results only decades hence, maybe in a century. And there's no effective method of cost benefit analysis applicable to such time horizons. In short, economics, almost all the theories in economics definitely also behavioral accounts. They're all short term. They cannot account for coordinated globalized efforts with an economic nature such as fighting climate change. Or investing in very long term infrastructure. Or financing innovation which will mature and yield any outcomes, any perceivable economic outcomes 50 years from now. Economic theories don't deal well with these situations because they are based on very primitive short term thinking. How are consumer choices influenced by advertising? What Louis Althusser called interpolation? What about pricing? Believe it or not, shocking as it may sound, no one has a clear answer. No one knows. Yes, of course we have the famous graph, you know, where demand and supply and how prices affect demand and supply. The equilibrium points and all this. This is a myth. This is a myth. It's not real. It's an obstruction, an idealization. Pricing does have an effect. What about, but it's not the one described in economic models. Advertising has an effect. It shifts the demand in highly specific ways. Uncertainty has an effect. Externalities have an effect. First mover advantages have effects. Innovation has effects. Fashion and fads have effects. So many effects that are nowhere to be seen in economic theories. Poverty, I mean nowhere to be seen. No one seems to have clear answers and models which we would recognize instantly as laymen consumers, laymen investors, laymen households. Economics is so divorced from daily experience that it might as well be referring to another planet. Advertising is concerned with the dissemination of information, for example, but it's also a signal. It's a signal sent to consumers that a certain product is useful and qualitative and that it advertises stability, longevity and profitability are secure. If a company has enough money to invest in advertising, it can be trusted to survive until it delivers the product. Advertising communicates a long-term commitment to a winning product by a firm with deep pockets. And this is why patrons react to the level of visual exposure to advertising, regardless of its content. And this is only one example. The problem of economics is the problem of psychology and perhaps the problem of all social sciences, the raw material, the subject, human beings.  They change all the time. They change even in reaction to a study. And so the human beings cannot be usefully captured by economic models or econometric models. And these models and economic theories either lack predictive powers or lapse into logical fallacies such as the omitted variable bias or reverse causality. Don't ask. The omitted variable bias is when important variables remain unaccounted for in a model, but I mean crucial variables. And the reverse causality problem is reciprocal causation when every cause is also caused by its own effect. And the fact that we're still arguing about all these issues, the fact that we're still getting things catastrophically wrong, except when it comes to very, very basic issues. For example, you print a lot of money, you're going to have inflation. You raise interest rates, you're going to suppress consumption and investment. Okay, big deal. Why do you need to study seven years to get this straight? My grandmother knew this. So with the exception of such tried, trivial sentences, economics doesn't offer any shocking, amazing insights into reality. It's an all-pervasive malaise. Economists are simply not sure what precisely constitutes their subject matter. Is economics about the construction and testing of models in accordance with certain basic assumptions? Or should economics revolve around the mining of data for emerging patterns, rules and laws? And these rules and laws, are they like rules of nature? Or are they subject to change at the moment's notice and the drop of a coin on a dime? On the one hand, patterns based on limited or worse, non-recurrent sets of data from a questionable foundation of any kind of science. This is not rigorousness, this is not methodology, this is not the scientific method. When you mine data and you place it in beautiful mathematical models with very impressive equations, that's not doing science. That's not what science is all about. So I repeat, patterns based on limited or non-recurrent sets of data. This is questionable science. On the other hand, models based on assumptions are also in doubt because they're bound to be replaced by new models with new, hopefully improved assumptions in due time. And this is not the same as replacing one, the Newtonian theory in physics with Einstein's theory. It's not the same. Because both Newton and Einstein were referring to the same templates, to the same raw material. But in economics, we transition from one theory to another, as if we were discussing different species. One way around this apparent quagmire is to put or introduce human cognition, psychology, and human emotions at the heart of economics. Not as a veneer, not as polish, not as a coat of paint, but as the engine that drives economics. Humans, their hopes, fears, preferences, priorities, wishes, dreams, plans, irrationality, crazy making, defense mechanisms, cognitive distortions, cognitive biases, prejudices, upbringing, cultural context, social context, this and only this should be the heart and the engine and the pivot and the pillar and the axis of economics. Assuming that being human is an immutable and knowable constant, this should be amenable to scientific treatment. So if we pretend that humans are objects subject to laws of inertia, or I don't know, laws of nature of some kind, laws of the economic universe, it's not going to work because it's not true. So we need to delve into the core of what it is to be human and begin to build models and theories around this, not in opposition to this. Prospect theory, bounded rationality theories, the study of hindsight bias, other cognitive deficiencies or distortions. These are these are the outcomes of this budding approach in economics. More and more economics is converging with psychology. In a way, economics is an affinity with some private languages. It is a form of art or literature. And as such it is self-sufficient and self-contained. It's self-referential. Economic theories discuss economic theories, which discuss economic variables, which come out or emanate or hail from economic theories, which are about other economic theories. It's a closed universe, as I said, self-referential, very often tautological. If certain structural internal constraints or requirements are met, a statement in economics is deemed to be true, even if it does not satisfy anything in the real world. Even if it doesn't meet external scientific requirements, if a statement in economics sits well and validates other statements, it's considered to be true for some mysterious and bizarre reason. And so the standard theory of utility, for example, is considered valid in economics despite overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary. Why? Because it is aesthetic and mathematically convenient and is on good terms with other nonsense in economics. So what are economics theories? Economic theories, what are they good for? Why do we need them? Economic theories and narratives offer an organizing principle, a sense of order, predictability, justice, determinacy, certainty, meaning. Economic theories and narratives postulate an inexorable drive toward greater welfare and utility, the idea of progress. In short, economic theories are ideologies in disguise. Economic theories render our chaotic world meaningful, make us feel part of a larger whole in transition towards something desirable. Economics strives to answer the whys and the hows of our daily life. It is dialogic and prescriptive. It provides behavioral prescriptions. In certain ways, economic theories are religion, a form of religion. In the catechism of economics, the believer, for example, a politician or the head of a central bank, the believer asks why and here follows an economic problem or an economic behavior. Why do people consume more when there's inflation? So there's a question here, why? And the economist answers, the situation is like this, not because the world is whimsical or cruel, irrational, arbitrary, unpredictable and uncertain. No, not because of any of this. The situation is the way it is because, and here there's a model, an economic model, or a causal explanation based on an economic model. And then the economist says, but if you were to do this or refrain from doing this prescription and prescription, if you were to behave in a certain way or to refrain from behaving in a certain way, then the situation is bound to improve. The believer in economics, because it's a faith, the believer in economics feels reassured by this explanation. And by the explicit affirmation that there is hope, hope, providing he follows the prescribed guidance. His belief, the believer, the believer's belief in the existence of linear order, justice, structure administered by some supreme, transcendental principles which are like laws of nature. This belief is restored. Economics pretends to be physics, the physics of money, the physics of wealth, the physics of scarcity, the physics of assets and liabilities, pretends to be physics. Of course it's not, but the believers in economics pretend together with it that it is physics. The believers in economics proclaim the rules of economics or the laws of economics or more precisely the mathematical models of economics to be the exact equivalent of gravity. Gravity, it's an objective thing out there. All you have to do is find it out, study it, and then follow the inevitable prescriptive behaviors. This sense of law and order is further enhanced when the theory yields predictions which come true, either because they are self-fulfilling or because some real law or pattern has emerged. Alas, this happens very rarely. And again, I'm not talking about grandmother's wisdom. If you print money, its value goes down. If you increase interest rates, people will consume less. Big deal, you don't need a degree for this. I'm talking about more profound alleged insights and discoveries in economics. They rarely work.  It's not a science. If this is the test, falsifiability, it's not a science. As nothing less than the economist, the economist noted gloomily, economists have the most disheartening record of failed predictions and prescriptions. That's not some vacuum, let's say economists. So what are some of the major problems that economics faces today? Neoclassical economics, as I said, has failed on several fronts simultaneously. This multiple failure led to despair and the reexamination of basic perspectives, tenets and issues. And I'll delineate nine of them, because I couldn't find ten. I could find a hundred actually, but I'll delineate nine. Let's start with government. We mentioned it before. Government was accorded a special status and a special treatment in economic theory, unlike other actors and agents. And I explained it before. And government, the status of government or the role of government is yet to be properly defined. There are ideological clashes between economists, which is a surefire proof that economics is not a science. So some economists think that the government's role should be minimized, because it is inefficient at allocating scarce resources. Others say that governments are the only one who can rectify market failures and provide afford regulation to ensure competition and the smooth, frictionless action of free markets. Consider technology and innovation. Economics failed to account for the role of innovation in growth and development. And I mentioned that before also. And this is another topic, another area where disruption brought on by innovation actually leads to growth contrary to many economic theories. And then there's the issue of long-term investment horizons that I mentioned. How do we deal with investments, economic enterprises that span decades and centuries? For example, the construction of a cathedral in the Middle Ages, which took sometimes four to six hundred years. It's an economic activity, who can argue with it? It's a manifest economic activity, but it cannot be accounted for by any economic model or theory. Or more economic is the problem. This assumption that the economic agent is rational. Consumer choices are irrational in most cases. And even investment choices, which are supposed to be vetted by committees and experts and scientists and analysts, even investment choices are driven by egos or by fears or by catastrophizing or by lack of opportunity or by lack of options. People don't behave in accordance with the predictions of basic economic theory. They just don't. And we need to accept this, and we need to accept also time inconsistencies. People tend to lose control of their actions, as I said. Change their preferences suddenly. There's a question of positivism via pragmatism. What should the economics be focused on? The construction and testing of models, which are consistent with some basic assumptions? Or should it revolve around mining data? And I think the solution is to convert economics to a branch of psychology. Economics is the sub-branch of economics, known as econometrics. Measuring, modeling, testing, mathematics. It serves to camouflage, it serves to disguise the inadequacies and shortcomings in economics as it stands today, almost in all its branches, even behavioral economics. We need to start from scratch. We need to start from zero. We need to start from the raw material, from the subject matter. We need to start from us human beings, frail, unpredictable, crazy-making. People don't act rationally, almost ever. Luckily for us, actually.


Kia ora. My name is Adam from Cocoa, which is kind of, I guess some of you know Cocoa, some of you don't. Cocoa is not really short for anything, but we like to think of it as being short for the Cocoa Surf Club. So just shortening this into a nice handy term. This is our first Cocoa Surf Club meeting that we had. There was five of us here. We met in San Francisco and we did some surfing. It was really a fantastic day. There was some real surfers at Blancoa Club, including Nakomi, who I think you've just heard of before. Nakomi's pretty awesome. We have other members such as Nick from E-Life and Yura, who you can see on the right. We had meetings in Portugal, in the UK, in New Zealand. That's Nakomi down there. And we've also met in San Francisco. As I mentioned before, when there's no good surf, we do some other stuff. We collect pippies, which is New Zealand's salt shellfish. We hang out at cafes. We hug rocks occasionally. We're big enough to hug. And we sometimes collaboratively build publishing systems with other people, which is, you know, I find it quite funny if Club makes publishing systems. So I included a few photos because it's kind of unusual. We build them with people like E-Life. We build them with people like the European Bioinformatics Institute. Also with Wernbase, there's Kristin, who's one of the founders of the club. We build them with people like Collaboracycology Journal, with UCP, with the open source for Alliance for Open Scholarship, which we founded. We also build them with people like Archive and organization for human brain mapping. And we have regular surf club meetups where we talk about publishing systems. As you can see, there's a collection how we facilitate our events. So you can join the Cocoa Surf Club if you like surfing, hanging out cafes, hugging rocks, and collaboratively building modern open-source decoupled modular publishing systems, books, journals, and micro-pubs, et cetera, that lower the entry threshold to innovation and break the big box close in the platform lock-in. And as you know, a surf club that collaborates with modern open-source decoupled modular publishing systems for book journals and micro-pubs, that lower the entry threshold to innovation and break the big box close in the platform lock-in stays together. Thank you.


Everybody forced here ripping a box of 2022 leaf in the game use sports for Michael D. Here we go, Mike. Let's find some Cowboys Rangers, Nix and Yankee stuff for you. Yeah, I watched your first episode of Mandalorian Do I have anything for you? How did you did you order anything? More fun openly is Almost almost That one had the better hits last time so I'm gonna just go box by box here. All right first up Say Shaquille O'Neal Jersey card 7 to 12 7 to 12 Shaquille O'Neal Jersey Check this out Big Ticket rookie Patrick mohomes the second is a Texas Tech ticket stub Obviously that's gonna be I don't know if it says one of one, but obviously it's it's a unique ticket There's another second one. That's pretty cool though game three Saturday, September 26 2015 There we go. Patrick mohomes big rookie ticket. That is awesome six shooters Paul Pierce Jason kid Durk Novitsky Chauncey billups Kobe Bryant and Richard Lewis 45 at a 45 That is so fire. It's a Sonic's Richard Lewis. It's like mid 2000s right there. Yeah Pierce kid Novitsky Billups Bryant and Richard Lewis. Yep. Kobe's on that too That's awesome, man Do career threes made Richard Lewis has only like 50 behind Kobe? Which is also right behind billups that is a wild dude he although he was a really good shooter for like five six Or he was nailing him It's such a cool card Good stuff, Mike. All right two more here. All right time worn Brian Roberts Don Drysdale Time worn to Robin Roberts Don Drysdale 22 of 25 and this is pretty nasty to dual auto on the back Allen Iverson Tony Parker six of six So fire man loving the multi-autos in this so far Allen Iverson Tony Parker six of six It's a big time basketball box right there. Hey appreciate the order Mike. We'll get these out to you


Oh hi. Welcome to Tom Meeting Television. I'm here joined today by Patrick Standin, lecturer in philosophy at St. Michael's College and we're going to talk about Public Philosophy Week. Welcome Patrick. Thank you, thank you. So tell me, yeah great thanks. Tell me a little bit about what Public Philosophy Week is. I think it's just passed but it's been around for a few years. Is that right? Yes, it has. Yeah. Yeah, Public Philosophy as its practice locally is a venture of several philosophy departments from local colleges Middlebury, UVM, St. Michael's and professors of philosophy and public intellectuals essentially take philosophy out of the formal academic setting and bring it into pubs and libraries and places of public access to share philosophy and the love of knowledge and to talk about ideas and to engage in conversation about any number of issues. It's really the calendar of events and topics that is offered every year is amazing. Tyler Doggett, a professor of philosophy, is really our local champion for public philosophy. It's part of a larger movement that really came out of England in a way of bringing philosophy out of the formal academic environment and philosophy in many ways is a birthright for every human that we're all capable of thinking and we all have that wonder, that curiosity to know and learn. So it sort of builds on that notion and it's essential part of philosophy that probably was ignored for much of the 20th century because of the specialization of academic philosophy but philosophy has always been part of the public, part of societies, part of communities, you know, socrates of course was a man of the marketplace who would go around asking questions of everyone. So, you know, in that sense it's an attempt to sort of just put philosophy back where it belongs, not in the, you know, the classroom. It certainly belongs there but not exclusively so but let's philosophy come out and engage ideas in the real world. Outside of public philosophy, so when I think of philosophy, I think of like books, abstract thinking, old guys, dead white males, right? Well, yeah, so like philosophy, the study of knowledge, the study of learning, the study of... Yeah, and I think that that estimation of philosophy stems from what has been going on in the 20th century where philosophy became a very specialized and arcane discipline that was only the province of a few really intelligent people and these people of course because of the particular quirky nature and privileges of the 20th century were almost always white, almost always wealthy, almost always male. Who are the people that come to mind? In that sense, I'm thinking of, you know, a lot of analytical philosophers out of the British and American tradition. So, Bertrand Russell, AJ Ayer, Gilbert Ryle, these are the big names of 20th century philosophy that nobody knows because they're working in such narrow areas of knowledge. You know, what is knowledge? And Bertrand Russell might be an exception then because he was a public intellectual. But philosophy prior to that and after that, and always during that time period, has had a presence in the public realm and just returning back to that is, in a way, its homecoming because philosophy comes from the streets. And we've seen different period throughout history. You know, you're thinking, I'm thinking particularly of ancient Athens when you had Socrates and Plato and Diogenes and Aristotle and Epicurus engaging public discourse and talking to politicians and average people. Throughout history, the French Revolution, the American Revolution conquered in the 1840s. The streets of Paris in the 1960s. Philosophy was public in those areas in those times. And it certainly is happening again. And there's a lot more of it. So I think taking it out of that, that realm and that realizing the philosophy is something for everyone. Yeah. Do you see, so public philosophy week, just back to that and you can bring up the webpage so folks can see that and see where you can go. There's no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about is one of the quotes on that. Do we see a place where do you see besides something like this where it's academics or community leaders bringing things out into the street? Do you see a kind of philosophy emerging from the milieu of like social media and TikTok and YouTube and the the ways that we're interacting now? Yeah, well, there's certainly, you know, using those as media to investigate ideas, to share information, to learn our vital parts and sort of the original reasons why we had the growth of social media. And and I think they still can be viable alternatives. And certainly coming up from you know, the wider audiences, there's a lot of ideas.  I was amazed at how when recently the state university system decided to empty their library of books. And it was that the the pushback came back from students and and they were saying, no, you know, we don't want any more social media. We want books.  What was the what was the turnout like? It was good. It was good. You know, there are events all over Vermont and the the topics range.  Yeah, it's amazing the the the richness and diversity and the breadth of what's being offered just in a small state like Vermont. And, you know, when you look at the calendar, it happens every year, usually toward the end of April and beginning of May and finding the calendar and looking and finding what's of interest to you. And I'm sure that there's going to be something that would spark your interest. So I'm curious. You mentioned the state library system removing the books, which was what do we call that? We would which the pushback was successful. It was not going to happen. But what in your experience is happening with philosophy in higher ed? Yeah, philosophy in higher ed is going through a growth period. We're seeing more students come to colleges and universities considering philosophy minors and majors. There's growth in the field. We see a great amount of success. We see a lot of interdisciplinary growth. Students are leaving philosophy programs graduating and going into a number of different fields. We see that you know, many CEOs and heads of businesses and industries are looking at philosophy majors as vital members of their teams because they can argue well, they can think clearly, they can write well, because there's just some of the skills you're going to get from philosophy and you can export those types of skills to any field. Of course, there's always the traditional fields where philosophers and philosophy students tend to shine and that's in law and medicine. Philosophy is the number one degree taken in law school. And I think it's the number one non science degree taken in medical schools as well. So, so you're finding philosophy. Why is that? What do you think what's behind that? I think what it is is philosophy requires you to read carefully to learn to think critically, to argue well, to speak well. And the result is that you can typically succeed in those arenas in that because of those skills. I feel like it has a real abstract quality as well to be able to like zoom out and look at something from a kind of global three dimensional landscape view. It is. It is. There's no doubt about that. But it's it's it's about, you know, taking that global perspective and coming back into the, you know, the the small two and going back and forth and moving into those. I mean, a vestige of that is that if you get a PhD in any subject today, whether it's in English literature or biochemistry, you're getting a doctorate of philosophy. And when you study a discipline thoroughly, you're looking at the foundations of that and the theoretical underpinnings of it. So that's the abstract aspect to it. But philosophy is also about just, you know, how do you live your life? You know, how do we invest power in the society who controls power? You know, what is art? What is beauty? What is the right thing to do? I mean, I think any engaged citizenry needs to be well informed and critically minded and thoughtful in philosophy is a discipline that can encourage that. I mean, one of the biggest problems that philosophy is facing in the Academy today is representation. And it's doing a great job bringing in more women philosophers, persons of color, people from different language groups and traditions and cultures. And and that's a wonderful welcome antidote to the large the dominance of the white male perspective of academic philosophy throughout the 20th century. Because certainly not just a Western concept. Oh, right. No, not at all. And in fact, quite the opposite, right?  And you're talking about cultures and traditions that are far removed from the modern world. Of course, the Western tradition did build on many of those. But it's wrongheaded to think that it moved in a linear past manner, because it it went, you know, perhaps the metaphor more useful be kind of a fractal pattern going in all different directions. And it's always governed by dialogue and conversation and argument. So, you know, there are Greek philosophers who are dialoguing with Buddhist philosophers. There were great contributions that are made by philosophers from Africa and Asia and native and indigenous traditions around the world. And, you know, philosophy today is becoming more open to those. And I think there's they're also looking at the limitations of the traditional Western analytical model, which certainly has its place, but is also needs to be complemented and supplemented. So we're going to get to your talk, but I just have one question. Is there like an original philosopher? Is there the first in your in? Is there somebody who's considered like the first philosopher? Yeah, well, you know, a lot of people turn to Socrates. Interesting. Socrates is not. Yeah, the most ancient philosophy. Right. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, in the Western tradition, and many sort of global philosophy, he's looked towards an ancient Turkish philosopher by the name of Thales, who grew up in the island of Militis on the in the Mediterranean. And he he questioned the mythopoetic worldview, the the idea that gods did everything. And he started to think about things. And the story goes that he had visited Egypt and had looked at the Egyptian astronomical records and discerned a pattern about eclipses. And when he came back home to Militis, he he told his friends that an eclipse is going to happen in a few weeks or something like that. And of course, his friends didn't believe him because they all saying, well, that's that would be the agency of the gods. And the eclipse did happen. And instead of, you know, perhaps in a sacrificing goats or sheep or whatever, they started to look and say, Well, you could rashly know these kinds of things. And I think that that is often seen as the origin of philosophy, at least as in an academic sense, because what you're doing is using human reasoning to try to figure things out. You know, all humans love to know a toddler. Yeah, that is exactly right. I in my philosophy classes, I start with a story. I tell my students to imagine a, you know, a dad putting his little, maybe a four or five year old daughter to bed on a cold winter's night.   So he says, Oh, that's the moon.    And then eventually, dad's going to say, Well, go to sleep, right? And I think what has happened to so many of us is that we've been in that position where we've been told to stop asking questions. And in a way, philosophers are still children, right? They've been able to keep that little spark, that insatiable curiosity alive, right? And then what philosophers love to do is we love to share that. You know, we were committed with bringing life back into the minds of people's, you know, the, you know, because the adult world, the larger world has probably told them to not ask questions and not rock the boat. And, and, and, and, you know, we try to get people to turn those that, you know, that fire inside them into a conflagration again. So philosophers are good for democracy. I think your talk, epistemic, epistemic injustices, philosophy and listening as social change. Yeah, a little bit about your presentation. That was my talk this year. And, and, and, and I have to point out that, you know, like so many other things, we took a, you know, a time off during the pandemic and now we're back. And, and so I look for us again next year. And my talk this year was on epistemic injustice. And epistemic injustice is a really important movement in philosophy pioneered by a number of women philosophers, including the British American philosopher Miranda Fricker, who should call it epistemic justice. Yeah, well, it is. Yeah. Yeah.  And that's a very limited way of thinking about it because a lot of harm that is done to people is done to their ideas, their mind and their knowledge. And when philosophers talk about knowledge, they're using the, the word epistemology or epistemic, which comes from the ancient Greek episteme, which means knowledge. And, and how epistemic justice and injustice works is when someone does a wrong to you as a knower.  And so the example that Miranda, Miranda Fricker uses in her, in her work is how, say in the 1940s and 50s, women were subject to sexual harassment in the, in the, in the world of employment, but they, they didn't have the concept for sexual harassment. So they might have just said, well, I don't, I feel uncomfortable about this, but I don't know why, or, you know, he's just trying to be, he's just flirting with me or something like that. And with the rise of feminism and the development of this particular concept of idea, we had this notion of sexual harassment, so a person could, could say it. So what would have happened in that world before those concepts were available, the woman who was being harassed, you know, and she might have kept silent, right? And so imagine, you know, she had an idea and she might be undermined by it, right? People wouldn't listen to her. And this happens all the time.  And that what that wrong is done is it undermines you as a knower, right? You're, you, the value of what you're saying and what you know is being diminished by someone who is claiming that, well, what you're saying doesn't matter or you can't mean it. So, you know, women during that time period, we're often said, well, you're being emotional, right? And, and, and what happens is that when you have the terms, the ideas, the knowledge to defend, and then you start to listen, then you're laying the groundwork for that knowledge to be shared. And you're, and you're essentially endorsing that person's position, right? And avoiding any kind of harm, right?  You don't know what you're talking about. You know, it's often going to undermine the knower, the person articulating that position. And so, what Miranda Fricker does is she suggests there's some ways that we can develop in our society to prevent that from happening by listening to the testimonies of those who are, are, are there to have and are offering their own epistemic or, or knowledge based experience. And so, what we learn... Epistemic means experience, meaning... Well, it really means knowledge. Yeah, yeah. But is it born of, born of seeing, knowing, I mean, born of what? Yeah, it's, it's born of your perspective, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's, you're being in the world, your engagement with the world. Yeah. And so, in, in that sense, you know, we, you know, there might be an absolute truth out there, but we all are looking at it from our own perspective, our own point of view. And so, your position becomes valuable because of the unique perspective that you have. And for someone to discount that perspective merely because of some identity that you've subscribed to becomes a case of epistemic injustice. So, epistemic injustice is usually, injustice is usually occurs is that you're going, your knowledge is discounted merely because you have an identity as a woman, as a person of color, as a person with disabilities, as a different language speaker. Think, for example, another example might be how we discount people who have certain accents, right? And, you know, conversely, we attach way too much importance to other kinds of accents, right? So, you know, an oxbridge accent, you know, the oxbridge, Cambridge, standard English, you know, whatever people say when they say it in that way, we attach more significance and importance to it. And those are biases, right? And so, becoming aware of those biases and trying to prevent them from happening will enable those people who might have something very important to say, and it might be very legitimate and important for that knowledge to become part of the social discourse to actually have and be heard. Yeah. So, you know, the importance of curiosity, the importance of seeking understanding when you're met with something that is contrary to your experience, your learned understanding experience. But I'm curious, in the current conversation on free speech, how this relates, because it's, you know, it gets, you know, we have, you know, here in Tom Meeting TV Studios, folks come in and, you know, for example, there was a program recently that where some folks were discussing issues around stickering in the community and free speech. But the words and language used to back up those political ideologies, the political way of thinking were really kind of hurtful and hateful and sort of ignorant. And so, in that ignorance is also born a discounting. In this case, it was a trans ignorance, you know, it was ignorance around the experience, the lived experience of trans people and hurtful and hateful. So, right, those three sort of things. And it begins to bring into question even just the very being of the studio that we're sitting in, which stands for free speech and yet harms members of our community. Right. And it, you know, it makes us sort of wrestle with the philosophies that underpin the work that we do here. I wonder if you have thoughts on that. Yeah. Well, and the wrestling is really good. Uh-huh. Right. Miranda Frick is a guide here, too, because she points out that, you know, some experiences are just illegitimate, right?  So, you know, there are ways of assessing, you know, the content of language and of knowledge, right? You know, if you have a severe pain in the head, you're not going to give your friend a scalpel and tell them to open it up. You're going to go to a doctor, hopefully. If your car's broken down, you're probably going to go to a certified mechanic. And what I think there's a tendency to do is to, while we should always be critical of authority, there is legitimate authority. And that happens in free speech, too, right? So, I think free speech is only free when it's not going to harm someone. And in a way, you always have to ask yourself, what are the reasons for you saying it? What are the effects of you saying it? Is what you're about to say going to make the world a better place? Is it going to build community? Is it going to enable a person to flourish? Or is it going to do the opposite? You know, and I think that kind of self-reflective stance, which is something that you would develop in philosophy and also just in lived experience, is something that's missing in current discourse. I mean, why do you feel it's important to put up a sign, a sticker, or make a claim that members of your community are telling you is hurtful? And in a way, when that happens, you're seeing an epistemic injustice because what the person is doing if they're putting up, say, a transphobic sticker, they're undermining the knowledge of the trans members of your community, right? And I think that that's a way of starting and you have to go through a process of self-reflection and ask yourself, well, you know, why are people being, you know, why do they view this as hurtful? And then that becomes a process of self-engagement because you're saying, you know, perhaps there's something about what I'm saying that is hurtful and is wrong. So do we bring in a component of, do we bring in a component of power and privilege here? You know, so I think about folks in the police forces who said, well, I feel hurt. That's why I want to say blue lives matter.   Is this one of those places where we talk about power and privilege in relationship to, and if we're getting too far off, you know, no, it certainly is. And, you know, and, you know, it's a universal platitude that all lives matter.  They may feel uncomfortable and, and the discomfort might be something that comes with the position and, and they might be better people because of that, that process of discomfort that they're going to go through. But, you know, I, I, I think that wrestling with these kinds of ideas, these experiences are important. Listening, of course, but one can always disagree, too. And one can say, well, you, you have a position, but your position is being tempered by, you know, these other positions. I mean, I think that the early on in the debate over black lives matter, free speech and, and, and, and so forth, I think one of the things that, the examples that, that I thought was very helpful was the idea of, you know, if, if, if there's a fire burning in a house, you, you know, you're not going to put water on all the other houses that aren't burning, you're trying to put out the, the fire in the particular house that's burning. And that's the issue at hand that we have to work with, right? And, and that's what we're going to, I want to, I do want to talk a little bit about your role on the New Truth and Reconciliation Commission before we run out. Sure. Because we're about to, speaking about truth, we're about to get into the realm of whose truth is truth. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it is, it's certainly, it's an outgrowth of my training in philosophy, my social advocacy, my work in epistemic injustice, but it's also, I teach disability studies and the philosophy of disability and, and medical ethics. And so it grows out of those concerns as well. And tell us about what's Act 128 and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Yeah. So the state recently passed a bill that created Vermont's First Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which is charged with looking into the state sponsored injustices that have been visited upon citizens and marginalized groups in Vermont's history. And these include, of course, the first people here, the Abinaki, but also the French Canadians, French Indians, persons with disabilities, and others, and certainly members of the BIPOC community, we know now, of course, that while slavery was outlawed formally in the Constitution, it was still de facto practiced around throughout the 19th century. And so those wrongs that have been visited upon those individuals have created the historic inequities that lead to the institutional inequalities that we see today. And so the state issued an apology regarding the eugenics period in Vermont's history. And from that, and other discussions around looking at justice with Abinaki, with injustices done to our members of our Black and BIPOC communities, they're developed a long dialogue in the state legislature that culminated in the creation of this bill. And so three commissioners, myself, Mia Schultz and Melody McEnwalker have been chosen to lead the commission and we're tasked with staffing the commission and hiring an executive director, historical researcher, legal counsel and administrative assistants and interns to start doing the hard work of documenting these instances of abuse, both historic and more recent. With the goal of? The goal is to provide the legislature with recommendations on how to address and perhaps remedy and seek to begin the process of recovery and healing from these wrongs. What those recommendations look like at this point, we don't know because we have to go through the process of documenting and listening to those stories. And then from those stories and listening to those communities, we can see what they think would be appropriate in that sense. Certainly some degree of reparations or public apologies or even using this information to inform our educational curriculum at the school level may well be things that we might be offering. Of course, we're just going to make these recommendations. The legislature is not duty bound to follow them. And we've just begun. We've just begun the work. We're just a month ago. Exactly. Yeah. And what's been the response so far to that? It's been there's been a tremendous outpouring of support. There's been a lot of criticism which is expected to. We've been dialoguing with people from all over the globe, including members of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions out of Canada, Maine, Peru, South Africa, and points farther abroad who have been so helpful and forthcoming with offering advice and recommendations and their their wisdom on how to build a successful and efficient commission. And I think of the most some of the one of the most famous one was certainly after apartheid. Indeed. And that is that when you first cut your teeth and sort of the political realm is it? It certainly was for me. But yeah, UVM back in the 1980s and Shantytown. It's a really full circle to bring what you learned. It is a young person. It is. And it's you know, I was really fortunate in that after UVM I went to graduate school in Boston and I happened to be able to be there in the front row listening to Nelson Mandela right after he was freed from his imprisonment in Robben Island. Boston, Massachusetts actually was one of the first places he visited. And so that's a large component of my own story of intellectual growth. And so it does feel appropriate and and fitting in my story to be involved with this. And I here we have a philosopher involved in public politics and democracy. Indeed. It's exactly where you want to be. Yeah, exactly. It's that that that public realm to fit nicely. So yeah. And and I've also been heartened by just the outpouring of people from those communities that we're going to be looking at to they've provided information. And so it's just been a whirlwind of meeting stakeholders and persons. And it's been a very educational process. And hopefully as we go forward to choose our staff and you know, we'll continue this this this great important work. Yeah. Well, thanks for being here today. I think we just sort of have scratched the surface.  And people can always reach out to me and my campus email and learn more about public philosophy or or contact Tyler Doggett at UVM. Yeah. We also have a public philosophy website. It's on social media as well. So we shared it. Great. Yeah. Shared it on the screen as well. Super. And there'll be another one next year. Indeed. They will cover some of those events. With whole new topics. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for watching, folks. We're going to wrap up now and thanks to Pat Trickstanden for coming in. You're welcome. And joining us and keep watching and keep thinking. Yes. Great.