Context matters

I saw a video of a reporter, or at least someone holding a microphone, whose whole trick was quoting something and asking people whether Trump or Hitler had said it.

If you’re a friend, or at least follow this blog, you know I’m not fond of Trump. I don’t care for him. I believe he shows some intelligence sometimes, but I also believe he’s mentally unstable and isn’t fit to be the most powerful person in the world.

But that trick by the reporter is just a dirty, misleading move. Quoting something out of context, then making someone look bad because they agreed with it without knowing what it actually meant, is not right.

Let’s imagine there’s this quote: “this is our path to a better world, to a beautiful world, and to a world with no suffering and no harm to humanity.”

This is a beautiful quote, isn’t it? If Abraham Lincoln said it, we’d guess it’s about freeing slaves and ending a horrible time in history. If Hitler said it, we’d guess it’s about killing millions of people, committing genocide, and bringing back slavery. Out of context, I would approve of that quote. But knowing Hitler said it, I’d refuse to believe anything good could come out of it.

Context matters. If a gangster says “let’s cut him up,” it’s probably to murder someone. If a surgeon says it, it’s most likely to save someone’s life. So please stop ruining people’s lives because you heard something out of context, or because something they did was shown to you without any context at all.

This trick works because our minds often react to words before we stop to think about who said them and why. Any journalist, or honestly anyone with an agenda, can use it on anyone, for any goal. So next time someone tries to convince you that a person is good or bad based on a single line taken from somewhere, ask yourself what came before it and what came after. That one question can save you from being fooled.

Quote

Two days before the end of the world, he suddenly realized he had never truly lived.

His calendar was full, except for two untouched days.

He panicked. Restless and furious, he went to the angel of death to ask god for more days.

He shouted and cursed. He raged at the heavens and the earth. He screamed and made a scene.

The angel remained silent.

He clung desperately to the angel. He blasphemed and threw away his prayer rug. Then his heart broke, he wept, and he fell onto the prayer rug.

This time, the angel broke the silence and said: “Know this, you have just lost another day! Only one day remains. Come, at least live this one.”

Through his sobs he whispered, “But with one day… what can anyone possibly do in one day?”

The angel said: “The one who tastes the joy of living a single day has lived a thousand years. And the one who does not understand today, a thousand years will not help him.”

Then the angel poured the share of one day’s life into his hands and said: “Now go. Live.”

He stood there, stunned, staring at life glowing in the hollow of his palms. But he was afraid to move, afraid to walk. What if a drop of life slipped through his fingers?

He stood still for a moment. Then he thought: “When I have no tomorrow, what is the point of saving this life? Let me spend this handful of it.”

And so he began to run. He splashed life over his face, he drank it, he breathed it in. And he was filled with such ecstasy that he felt that he could run to the edge of the world, step on the sun, and beyond…

That day, he did not build a skyscraper. He did not own land. He did not gain status, but…

In that single day, he lay on the grass. He watched a ladybug.

He lifted his head and saw the clouds. He greeted strangers. He prayed sincerely for those who did not love him.

In that one day, he reconciled. He laughed. He felt light. He enjoyed. He overflowed. He forgave. He loved. He let go. And it was complete.

He lived that one day.

But in god’s calendar, the angels wrote: “he passed away, the one who had lived a thousand years.“

Erfan Nazarahar
Quote

Curiously, the failures of Communism are more often treated as a joke than as a tragedy. (As in the current jollity: What would happen if the Communists occupied the Sahara? Answer: Nothing—for 50 years. Then there would be a shortage of sand.)

William F. Buckley Jr.

In the weights

There’s a site called IN THE WEIGHTS that I came across through Kev Quirk’s blog post . It checks whether you’re someone who lives on inside certain LLMs.

Large language models encode their knowledge and reasoning through billions of numbers called “the weights.” The amazing capabilities of AI come through adjusting those weights to better represent world knowledge and tasks.

“In the weights” means that a model is able to recall someone without using tools like web search.

intheweights.com

The site also says this matters because, and I quote, “being in the weights means your existence was deemed important in the process of creating superhuman artificial intelligence.”

So I had to try it.

Screenshot of intheweights.com showing Ali Reza Hayati as “in the weights” with 675 strength, top 5%, and model bars comparing LLMs’ recall of him. In the middle-top section it's written: "GEMINI 3.1 LITE SAYS AN IRANIAN FREE SOFTWARE ACTIVIST, BLOGGER, AND CONTRIBUTOR TO THE GNU PROJECT AND VARIOUS OPEN-SOURCE INITIATIVES."
A screenshot of intheweights.com results .

When I first typed in my name, it pulled up a bunch of different people, all with the same name as I have a common Persian name and surname. So I added phrases such as “Free Software” or “Blogger” to narrow it down and check if I actually live on in these LLMs. Turns out, I do.

Worth mentioning, the site itself doesn’t claim to be perfect. It openly admits that models can hallucinate details, mix up common names, and lose accuracy over typos.

Still, it’s worrying. These LLMs, these so-called AI agents, can identify you, learn about you, and quietly keep track of you, and there’s not much you can do about it. What worries me most is how cheap surveillance has become.

Countries used to pour huge amounts of money and resources into spying on people, keeping tyranny running, and forcing citizens into an unjust order people never agreed to. Now, all of that is becoming far too easy.

A handful of cameras across a city, wired up to a computer, and suddenly you know everything about everyone.

It’s a nightmare, honestly. Privacy, and the freedom to stay anonymous whenever you choose, are essential to real freedom and liberty. It’s a basic right, one that lets you raise your voice and speak your mind without the state shutting you down or silencing you.

Now these LLMs are being used to study you: every pattern you follow, everything you say, and everything you do. More than just learning about you, they’re designed to learn you, built and trained to track everything everyone does and says until they understand you inside out.

This same ability could keep people safe from terrorists, warn people of disasters, or help humanity become more creative, more productive, and more free. But it could just as easily be used to keep everyone in line, silenced, and scared.

It could go either way, and I really hope it heads in the right direction, towards a better future. Not one where a new kind of slavery is created, far worse than anything we’ve seen in the movies.

Danger of uninformed opinions

Have you ever seen a video of people talking or expressing opinions and you think to yourself “what kind of idiocy is this?” How dumb can you be to say such meaningless things? Certainly not dumber than you look.

You must forgive my language, as I’m writing this with complete disgust toward some people online. I can’t name them, and I can’t repeat what they said but have you ever experienced this? The feeling and the pressure inside to go and write about some random person, or sometimes rather famous people, and just express your utter disgust and aversion towards them?

And the worst part? People listen. They actually sit there, nod, and take it as gospel. Because the person saying it has a checkmark or a million followers on social networks, suddenly their word carries weight. It doesn’t matter if what they’re saying is completely detached from reality. The damage is already done the second it leaves their mouth.

I used to just ignore these, well because most of the time what they said didn’t affect me, but I learned that if you don’t rise to defend others, they won’t rise to defend you. It’s selfish but it’s, yet again, human.

But here’s the thing about ignoring it. Silence has a cost. Every time someone with a massive audience says something ignorant and nobody pushes back, that opinion starts to feel like a fact. It spreads. It gets shared, clipped, quoted, and before you know it, you’re arguing with someone at dinner who heard it from someone who heard it from that idiot online. That’s the damage I’m talking about. It’s not abstract, it’s very real.

I used to ignore them, but nowadays it bothers me a lot more than before. The fact that they have a platform to spread their idiocy, affect people, and seem reasonable, while being a complete idiot and ignoring the facts of the matter, is triggering me a lot lately. I’m so sick of this “I’m a celebrity so I have an opinion about everything” nonsense. You need education, you need facts, and you need actual information on the matter so you don’t spread your ignorance.

People underestimate how much this actually affects younger audiences especially. When a kid or a teenager sees someone they look up to confidently saying something wrong, something harmful, they don’t fact-check it. Why would they? That’s their idol. And that’s exactly where the real damage happens. Quietly, in the background, shaping how an entire generation thinks about something they never got the real story on.

You haven’t experienced it, you don’t know all the fact. I can believe your intentions are good but I won’t ignore the result of your idiocy. Your intentions are good, your outcome is the worst possible, sadly.

You can put back a movement, you can destroy years of hard work of people, and you can benefit the wrong people and damage a whole lot of people simply because you didn’t check what you’re spreading. It’s wrong. Please consult someone with the experience, someone with enough knowledge that will guide you to see the truth, or at least all sides of the matter.

Decision making in hard situations

During the internet blackout , one of the main sources of entertainment for me was watching movies. Between sounds of bombs near our house and being completely cut off from the world, one thing that could keep me sane was starting to watch movies and series I had on my hard drives.

This way I could still feel connected to the world. I can experience the same culture, the same feeling, and the same events and happenings some person experiences in Canada or Japan or Nigeria. This is amazing. I see the same pictures, I wonder about the same thing, and feel the same emotions as anybody else who sees these movies.

Recently, I’ve been watching the series From and I couldn’t be more excited about it. I like everything it does. The story, the mystery, the graphics, acting, sounds, from start to ending of each episode, there’s no single moment I can miss. This is one of those series that I can talk about after each episode ends. One of the series I want to discuss and have conversation about.

One thing I usually enjoy about series like this is that I get to ask myself what would I do if I were there. How would I have been reacting to the same events if I was in their shoes. It keeps me thinking whether I am strong to make the right decision in the same situation? It’s easy to judge a character when he or she does something bad or makes mistake, well because we’re seeing the whole picture from different angles, but if I were them, would we be able to make the same mistake and avoid making even bigger one?

It’s like watching football (the real one, not the American one), looking at the players it’s easy to mock them when they fall or make a mistake, it’s easy to blame them when they miss a shot or penalty kick, but could we really do better than them? Not even be better, could we make the same mistake? Or perhaps we’ll do way worse.

I’m not comparing myself to a TV character of course. It’s all scripted, all of their decisions are made by the writer, I know, nevertheless I still keep thinking about how strong would I be in a bad situation. How effective would my decisions be. Will I be a main character in the same situation, being able to lead people, taking care of them, and share wisdom, or will I be the weak character who makes the situation worse?

And I always reach the same conclusion. It’s easy to decide what would I do when I’m sitting in front of my TV or laptop, sipping my fresh coffee in my pajamas and decide what would I do. I wouldn’t know the answer until I’m really trapped in the same situation as them. It’s easy to criticize them while I know I’ll have a good night sleep. I wouldn’t know for sure what would I do under the same pressure those characters experience.

That leads me to another question for myself. The kind of question I usually ask my friends. How much money would you take to be trapped in the same situation? Or, would you accept to spend one year in the same situation for $500M? The answer for me is still the same. It’s easy to say yes when you’re lying on the couch in front of TV, eating your lunch. The real answer, for me, will be when I’m really presented with the question, with real opportunity. It seems too easy to do right now, but will I really be that person who can endure all that?

I doubt that I can be any better than the weakest character I see on these movies and series. To think about the amount of pain and suffering they’ve endured and still standing? That seems impossible to me. I can just hope I wouldn’t be in their situation.

Yet, we’ve experienced some stuff here most people in world can’t even imagine. So maybe I’m wrong, maybe I can be the hero if I was in their world.

Aside

This is just a notice that this blog is moved to a new URL. Everything has been moved. I plan to keep the previous domain forever so there won’t be any broken links. If you’ve linked to this blog, please update it.

Regrets

I regret a lot of things. Small and big decisions. It’s part of growing up. I try to keep an open mind so with new evidence, my ideas change. There’s no shame in that. I change my ideas because I’m not just another hard-headed person who sticks to what he believes in forever.

Something I do regret for a while, now that it’s more than two thousand hours that the internet is shut down in Iran, now that it’s the 85th day of the digital blackout, is helping and contributing to all those projects and organizations in the name of digital and software freedom.

I believed that a free society needs free software , but I now believe that those who promoted this idea didn’t really care about people’s freedom, if they did care they would’ve protested the current situation in my country. With my limited unstable slow internet connection that I barely have access to after weeks, if I’m lucky, I browsed through some of those projects I used to contribute to and not a single word.

It was a sad yet awakening realization.

Still offline

This is an scheduled post, written when I had a slow internet connection during the nationwide internet shutdown here in Iran. You’re reading this post because I didn’t have internet connection to delete this, meaning we’re still living in digital darkness.

It should be the 60th day of the blackout and I wrote this post because I felt it’s necessary to remind everyone how important is their life. How we sometimes take stuff for granted, such as the internet connection you’re enjoying right now.

I may not be alive by the time this post gets published. If I’m not I hope I be remembered as someone who fought for freedom and liberty, openness, human society, and making life a little better. If I’m alive, then maybe I get more chances and more opportunities to fight for what I believe in.