Published on March 31, 2025 2:47 PM GMT
I wanted to share some thoughts and see if they would help me be less wrong. Instead, I ended up as a war correspondent for Gwern, reporting unofficially.
Well, since I'm here, I might as well take advantage of this opportunity, even if I don't have any more stories to tell my grandchildren: "You already posted this on Lesswrong, Grandma, we're not abandoning the metaverse because of this."
Imagine you grew up in a relatively well-educated family and were lucky enough to have some resources in life. But you also suffered some violence. Imagine feeling fragile, dyslexic, with attention deficit disorder, and asthmatic... Then, at six years old, you watch a movie: Rambo. And you think, I want that power for my life.
At the same time, you push yourself to improve both physically and mentally. But no matter how much you train, you still can't fight back against one of the bullies at school. Then, you realize that humor works better—it’s like a martial art: Comedy-jitsu. So, you shape your life around jokes, not always good ones. But you love seeing people experience the pleasure of laughter—it’s almost like an orgy of joy.
With this weapon, you start training early. You push yourself to the limit—earn a degree in physical education to improve your physique and a degree in English to overcome your dyslexia. You join the military, passing the physical and intellectual tests, determined to be strong.
By the time you’re 22, you've achieved your goal: a military firefighter, a role that combines everything you've worked for. You had to transform yourself completely, to educate yourself relentlessly. And because of that, you stand out—not just for your physical strength but for your ability to teach. You win awards as an educator, get invited to TV shows and interviews for your social projects, and use humor to educate about life. You dedicate far more than the required eight hours a day to this mission. You go to the extreme of pursuing a postgraduate degree in neuroscience to defend your stance on humor as a soldier. And you set fire to their heads. You're a pyromaniac firefighter!
But then, funding for the educational projects that save lives in the favelas is threatened.
Determined to keep them alive, you start using your own salary to sustain the programs because the fire department says there’s no money. You take out loans, pay for fuel, buy food, and fund resources for the social projects—all out of your own pocket.
Then, after some time, you try to figure out why the city government is shutting your project down. And they tell you: The fire department isn’t submitting receipts.
That’s when you realize—you've been paying while they’ve been keeping the money. The money meant for the kids in the favelas.
To make things worse, your superiors demand a cut of the money you make from your educational talks, saying: We don’t earn enough. We should be able to distribute this money however we want.
As if that weren't enough, your wife cheats on you and keeps you from seeing the daughter you love, the one you legally took responsibility for.
You send emails to your friends, but they ignore you. Some say you’re lying. Others—worse—say they know you’re telling the truth but can’t get involved because they have families. Then, the anonymous phone calls start, threatening you for getting involved where you shouldn't.
You don’t understand. You lose your sense of humor. And you cry like a baby, begging your superior not to shut down the social projects. His response? A punishment—for not being a real soldier.
You think, “It seems like I`m who thinks in not throwing away money meant for kids in the slums.” You feels like a cancer now, metastasizing into self-destruction. You push away family, friends, anyone who might anchor you to life… until Bruno, that stubborn son of a bitch, and we half-baked plan to start a company. The same guy who in high school when the teacher said that Brazil wasn't doing badly and was growing, he asked: "how many centimeters?".
He’s the friend who survived your worst jokes and sharpest edges, the one who never asked for receipts or cut deals. When he finds the “pills, the spreadsheets, the goodbye notes” disguised as investment in business plans, he doesn’t yell. He just sits on your floor—the comedian who never stopped laughing—and cries with no jokes: “Please don't do nonsense things”
And so, you begin searching for a new logic to live by—a logic that might rescue others like you, who aren’t truly cancer but maybe just in the wrong body or missing the best kind of rationality.
Thanks Bruno Noleto.
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