Philosophy behind ResNet

We started developing ResNet based on personal experiences at the end of 2021.

After a very busy year and several lockdown measures due to COVID-19, it was finally time to catch up with old friends and hear how everyone was getting on. It became clear how many of our friends were going through very difficult times without us noticing. This was the trigger for the development of ResNet, which gives us, and hopefully many others, an efficient tool to respond when friends we care about – but are outside the inner circle of family and friends with whom we are often in contact – are going through difficult times.

From this starting point, the development of ResNet was influenced by many conversations with people having very different backgrounds, by reading a lot of research literature, by creating the core advisory board (CAB), and by simply trying out and collecting feedback.

Over time, our ambitious goal became to change individual behaviors so that your own 7 life categories’ scores and those of your friends start improving, making you more resilient, and also simply making you enjoy life more. We are convinced that with sufficient perseverance, we can indeed make a difference. If we succeed in making a small contribution to people

  • reducing their screen time and instead enjoying nature, exercising, and healthy nutrition,
  • reducing flying or driving by car, and instead increasing the use of public transportation, cycling, or walking,
  • reducing their ego, and caring more about friends, nature, climate, and society,

we would be very happy.

On a societal level, we are also inspired by the beautiful allegory of long spoons, where heaven ☀️ is an immediate result of good behaviors (feeding/helping each other) and hell ⛈️ is a state of bad, selfish behaviors (harming others by feeding just yourself – note that “others” can also mean your own future selfs).

But how come that hell on earth does exist if we can safely assume that almost everyone on earth sincerely wants to do something good in life?

A simplistic answer is Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity, i.e., the combination of a general lack of education and understanding and a few evil minds (populist leaders, some food-, game-, luxury articles-, tech-, trading-companies, influencers, etc.) that know how to exploit this weakness, in order to gain power, money, followers, etc.

A great, modern example is this scam video. But while this example of hell ⛈️ on earth might be clear to (almost) everyone, there are other examples provided on the Advice page of the Learn tab of ResNet, where it is much harder to decide whether this is heaven or hell. How would you rate a company like Heineken for example? See on ResNet how others made their decisions. Discuss with your friends.

We are not megalomaniacs and believe that we could stop the evil minds, but we believe and hope that we can eventually reach many people to make better decisions in life, to build up their own resilience network to support their friends, and to really make a difference.

The following animation is an example for how small changes of individual behaviors can lead to quite different outcomes over time, a stable and resilient network ☀️ vs a rather
unstable network ⛈️ with a few large, polarizing clusters and many isolated individuals. Wait for the structure to evolve… And also try out to click on the network to disturb its structure.

We are not promoting a “we are all equal” world, but we are emphasizing the importance of having strong social relationships with a few carefully selected true friends – and family of course. Strong relationships do not necessarily need a lot of interactions by the way. What matters is that one can rely on each other and that one is there when needed. There are positive effects on all 7 life categories.

Some more heaven ☀️ and hell ⛈️ examples that you might agree with?

Delayed gratification: helping your future selfs. Have you heard of the marshmallow experiment?

Instant gratification: harming your future selfs.

Reading a book, lifelong learning, education, etc.

Watching Netflix, TikTok, Instagram, wasting life time, staying within your filter bubbles, etc.

Healthy nutrition.

Processed food, substance use, smoking, vaping.

Investing money, saving, moderate frugalism, investing into personal health.

Trading, gambling, luxury shopping, SUVs, sports cars, lack of financial education.

Exercising, physical activity, meditation.

Accepting stress, not taking the time for active stress relief.

Strong social relationships, building up your own personal resilience network. Party with your friends, ResNet 🤝 meet them.

Switching friends and partners often. Being socially isolated despite potentially having many contacts on social media.

Optimism, aiming to create value for society. Meritocracy.

Pessimism, used as an excuse to not work hard. Victim role.

Getting things done.

Procrastination.

Your resilience network will support you making good decisions in life ☀️ ResNet will support you staying engaged and helping them as well.

Spread the optimistic and positive idea of ResNet by sharing the app with your friends, using the + button on the Followers tab – after the initial delayed gratification waiting period of 7 days.

We will continuously refine the app over the next years until we achieve an average of 1 + ε invites per app user, which leads to a (slow) exponential growth that might get saturated as late as 2040…

December 2023