A letter from North Korea.

   I recently had an argument with a friend. We were discussing the current visit of Xi Jinping to North Korea: "Well, a communist visiting another one. What's the news?" 

   Really? So I mentioned the fact that North Korea and especially Pyongyang have changed drastically over the last two years (not to mention China of course) which immediately got me labelled as a North Korean apologetist. (There is such a thing apparently.) So I added that this wasn't just my opinion, The Wall Street Journal recently posted an article about the drastic transformation of North Korea. Not just the architecture, but the streets with nice new BMWs, the Uber-like taxi applications, the restaurants where you can order wood-fired pizzas... Silence. 

   This got me thinking: How much can you confront people and their hard core beliefs without inviting a hostile response? 

   This is not an empty question as this is precisely the purpose of this blog. Not to participate in propaganda, right, left, east and west, but to look at the real world behind the curtain. The one very few people care to see less it destroys the reality on which their worldview is constructed. 

   We think in cliché. We learn something at some stage and thereafter this becomes an anchor to our belief system. This is especially true to all these things we have little time or interest to learn more about like North Korea. And mostly these clichés survive the confrontation with reality long beyond their expiration date. 

   This post is not about North Korea. I will not try here to convince anyone that the country has changed. If you are interested, just read the article from the WSJ, it is readily available. It is about "reality", the one that AI is about to transform utterly. Already, half the videos on YouTube are AI generated. They do not try to show you anything, AI has no "opinion", they just pander to your taste and confirm your prejudice whatever it is to insure that you stay hooked. Soon it will be 99%. At this stage people will completely lose the ability to even listen to any idea dissenting with their own. Our society will slide further towards extreme polarization. This doesn't need to be so but before changing other people's opinion we first need to learn how to make our own more flexible by keeping an open mind and the ability to learn. That in the end may be the ultimate challenge.