المؤلف أتاح تحميل الكتاب كاملاً مجاناً من هنا: https://almobadarah.com/books/baraheen.ar.pdf.
صفحة الكتاب على موقع Goodreads الخاص بالكتب: براهين النبوة والرد على اعتراضات المستشرقين والمنصرين.
لقد شهد لميزة حفظ السيرة النبوية في تاريخ الأنبياء المستشرق بنيامين بوزمورث سمث - أحد أساقفة الكنيسة المشيخية في أمريكا - حيث ذكر في كتابه (محمد والمحمدية) أننا لا نعلم الكثير عن حياة موسى وعيسى وبوذا وغيرهم أما الإسلام فأمره كله واضح وفي أيدي الناس تاريخه الصحيح ويعلمون من أمر محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم الكثير. ص77.
شهادة المستشرق اليهودي برنارد لويس المعروف بمواقفه السلبية من الإسلام: «…ولكن نقد علماء الحديث الدقيق للأسانيد وجمعهم الدقيق للاختلافات… يعطي لعلم التأريخ العربي في القرون الوسطى مهنية ومراساً لا نجد له نظيراً في القديم ولا مماثلاً في القرون الوسطى في الغرب… بل حتى علم التاريخ في العالم المسيحي اليوناني، والذي هو أكثر تقدماً وتعقيداً، يقصر هو أيضاً عن مضاهاة الأدبيات التاريخية الإسلامية من نواحي الحجم والتنوع والعمق التحليلي». ص81.
شهادة المؤرخ النصراني اللبناني (أسد جبرائيل رستم): «أول من نظم نقد الروايات التاريخية ووضع القواعد لذلك علماء الدين الإسلامي، فإنهم اضطروا اضطراراً إلى الاعتناء بأقوال النبي، وأفعاله لفهم القرآن وتوزيع العدل… فانبروا لجمع الأحاديث ودرسها وتدقيقها فأتحفوا علم التاريخ بقواعد لا تزال، في أسسها وجوهرها، محترمة في الأوساط العلمية حتى يومنا هذا». ص82.
السيرة لم تؤلف في القرن الثالث الهجري، وإنما قد ازدهر فيه جمع أخبار الرسول صلى الله عليه وسلم في مؤلفات علمية تخصصية بأسانيد يبلغ طرفها الآخر الرسول صلى الله عليه وسلم، وهذه الأسانيد يمكن الحكم عليها وفق الأصول التي وضعها عباقرة أهل الحديث. وقد نقل العلماء كل ما وصل إليهم سواء كان صحيحاً أو ضعيفاً أو حتى موضوعاً.
أبعد الناس عن إحسان الظن برواة الأخبار هم علماء الحديث، إذ يمكن القول أن علم الحديث قائم في الحكم على الرواة على سوء الظن بالرواة لا التسليم الأولي بعدالتهم، حتى قال الإمام المحدث (عبد الرحمن بن مهدي) في القرن الثاني الهجري: «خصلتان لا يستقيم فيهما حسن الظن: الحكم والحديث». قال الإمام (ابن القطان): «لم نر أهل الخير في شيء أكذب منهم في الحديث» فلم يكن هم المحققين من المحدثين تصحيح روايات أهل الورع والصلاح. ص88-89. ولم يقتصر علماء الحديث على تقسيم الرواة إلى ثقات وضعفاء وإنما ميزوا الثقات إلى طبقات، والضعفاء رتبوهم في دركات.
حديث: «من كذب علي متعمداً فليتبوأ مقعده من النار» رواه بضعة وسبعون صحابياً، منهم العشرة المبشرون بالجنة، ولم يرو حديث عن النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم بهذه الكثرة. كما روى أربعة وعشرون صحابياً حديث: «نضر الله عبداً سمع مقالتي فوعاها، فبلغها من لم يسمعها» وهو في الحض على الرواية الصادقة التي تذيع خبر الوحي.
اعترف المنصّر (ويليام موير) قائلًا: «قرآنٌ واحد كان سائدًا بين المسلمين، والاستخدام المتزامن لنفس السّفر من جانبهم جميعًا في كل عصر حتّى يومنا هذاء هو دليل حاسم أن ما بين أيدينا الآن هو النص عينه الذي تمّ إعداده بأمر الخليفة المظلوم. يبدو أنّه لا يوجد أي عمل آخر ظل اثني عشر قرنا بهذا النقاء كنص». [من كتاب Life of Mohamet: from original sources]
الاتفاق حاصل بين جميع علماء النقد النصيّ أنه لا سبيل للوصول بطريق مباشر أو من خلال التراث الشفهي أو المخطوطات إلى نص التوراة، بالإضافة إلى أنّنا نملك ثلاث روايات متأخرة ومختلفة للتوراة في عدد من نصوصها: التوراة العبرية، والتوراة السامرية، والترجمة السبعينية اليونانية. وأما العهد الجديد (الإنجيل مجازًا) فقد انتهت (Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung) - أهم مؤسسة علميّة عالميّة مهتمة بتركيب أفضل نص يوناني للعهد الجديد - في نسختها اليونانية الأخيرة (NA 28) إلى أن آخر رجائها في البحث التاريخي النقدي أن تصل إلى أقدم نص ممكن للعهد الجديد لا النص الأصلي، لامتناع استعادة النص الأوّل. البحث التاريخي أثبت وجود العديد من الأخطاء في العهدين القديم والجديد، بعضها مذكور ص544 وما بعدها.
الكتاب المقدس وفقدان الأسانيد: يتكون الكتاب المقدس من 66 سفراً عند البروتستانت أو أكثر عند الكاثوليك والأرثودكس. وهذه الأسفار كلها بلا استثناء فاقدة للإسناد المتصل، بل هي عند التحقيق بلا إسناد أصلاً.
علم المستشرقون - بداهة - أن قبول السيرة كلية أو بالجملة لا بد أن يؤول إلى الإقرار بنبوة محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم، ولذلك كان مبدأ النظر الاستشراقي في السيرة البحث عن بدائل غير الميراث الحديثي، وقد تولى كبر هذا الأمر (إجناتس جولدتسيهر)، ثم اتسع الأمر وتفرعت مسالكه. ولا يملك القارئ الجاد إلا العجب من هذه البدائل التي يطرحها المستشرقون بعدما ردوا الروايات المسندة المصفاة من كدر الشبهة، فهي مراجع صامتة لا تُبين، أو مشبوهة لا تستأمن على خبر التاريخ وعلى رأسها:
إن نفي الصدق عن (محمد) يلزم منه أن يكون هذا الرجل أعظم مفتر ومخادع سعى على الأرض؛ إذ كان يفتعل القرآن عند كل حادثة حتى إنه يأتي بأفعال وحركات شديدة بدعوى الاستجابة لعارض الوحي كما كان يفتعل الإخلاص لإفراد الربٌ بالعبادة والتمجيد وكان يخدع من يلازمه من أصحابه ويفتعل النزاهة في معاملاته ويخدع حتى نساءه في بيته بافتعال الصدق والنزاهة. خلاصة البرهان المطلوب من منكر طابع الصدق في شخصية نبي الإسلام هو أن يوضح كيف استطاع رجل ظاهره الحماسة لإفراد الربّ بالطاعة وتنزيه القلوب عن الشرك والزهد في الملاذ والسعي لصلاح معاش الناس ومعادهم - وهو الأمر الذي شهد به من عاشره في الليل والنهار والحل والارتحال والغضب والرضى والسلم والحرب والضيق والفرج - أن يبطن في قلبه عكس ذلك فهو يحب الكذب ويمعن فيه ولا يجد سبيلاً لما يريد إلا به.
يقول المستشرق المُنَصّر المخاصم للإسلام (ويليام موير): «إن من أعظم معززات صدق محمد أن أوائل المعتنقين للإسلام كانوا أقرب أصدقائه إليه وأهل بيته وهم الذين لهم صلة وثيقة بحياته الخاصة فلا يخفى عليهم ملاحظة تناقض الحال الذي لا يخلو منه - بصورة كبرت أو صغرت - المخادع المنافق عندما يكون في ملأ ويكون في بيته».
ما الذي يطمع فيه مدعو النبوة غير المجد الدنيوي والتسلط على رقاب الناس والتنعم بخيراتهم؟! فهل في حياة النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم شيء من ذلك؟ انظر إلى حجراته اليوم في المدينة وقارنها بما كان لدى الأكاسرة والقياصرة، واقرأ الأحاديث الصحيحة في زهده التام في مكة وفي المدينة حين القوة ص129-130.
إنه لا تجتمع في الإنسان أمانة تامة وخديعة ماكرة، وحرص على هداية الخلق وسعي لإضلالهم.. ولذلك فثبوت الكمال الخلقي البشري خاصة خلة الصدق ينقض مخالِفَه ضرورةً.
إن الناظر في حال نبي الإسلام القائم بالليل متهجدًا بالقرآن، في خشوع وذلَ وإخبات حتّى تشققت منه القدم، لا يسعفه خيال الشكّ السادر أن يرى في روح هذا الرجل الخاشع بعض طيف الخديعة والمكر. إنه يرى روحًا تذوب مع كلمات القرآن، ومعاني التوحيد، وصور القيامة، ومشاهد البعث المهيبة.
أقوال عن النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم: لقد بحثت في التاريخ عن الإنسان النموذج ووجدته في محمد. الشاعر الألماني الكبير جوته. ربما علينا أن نتساءل - إذا أخذنا في الاعتبار كل المعايير التي من الممكن أن تؤخذ في الحسبان لقياس عظمة الإنسان - إن كان هناك أحد أعظم من محمد. الشاعر الفرنسي الكبير Alphonse de Lamartine.
المعجزات مخالفة لتجربة الإنسان مع الطبيعة وليست مناقضة لهذه التجربة، فهي من الممكنات العقلية، وإثبات المعجزة بذلك مسألة تاريخية وليس مسألة فلسفية.
عن المعجزات: إن كان المخالف لا يصدق غير الأخبار المتواترة فقد ثبت في السيرة معجزات متواترة. والتواتر هو ما رواه جمع غفير عن مثله إلى منتهاه، تحيل العادة تواطؤهم على الكذب، ويكون مستندهم الحس. وهو على نوعين: لفظي وهو ما تواتر لفظه عن الرواة، ومعنوي وهو تواتر معنى مشترك ككرم حاتم الطائي وشجاعة عنترة فهي أمور لا نشك فيها وإن كنا لا نجزم بصحة الأحداث الفردية لكرم حاتم وبطولات عنترة. ومجموع روايات معجزات النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم تصل إلى التواتر المعنوي إذ تمنع العادة أن يتواطأ هذا الجم الغفير من الرواة على الكذب في نقل خوارق نبي الإسلام. ولا يقتصر خبر معجزات النبي على تواتر جنس الخارقة، وإنما ثبت بالتواتر عدد من المعجزات المخصوصة بعينها، نقلها عدد كبير من الصحابة، وعنهم عدد أكبر من التابعين حتى مؤلفي الدواوين التي صنفت لجمع الحديث النبوي:
قد يقول المخالف: . . نعم. . قد تحدّى القرآن المخالفين؛ واستفز نفوسهم للرد. . لكن ليس في ذلك برهان لإعجازه؛ إذ قد اجتمعت له من الأسباب التاريخيّة ما جعله كتابًا فريدًا فرادة سونيتات (شكسبير). ولكل عصر مؤلفاته الأدبيّة النادرة التي من الممكن تفسير تميّزها بخدمة الأوضاع الثقافية والاجتماعيّة لشخصيّة كُتابِها بصقل مواهبهم وتنمية ملكات الإبداع الفكري في نفوسهم. . كل شيء قابل للتفسير المادي، حتى ما يُدّعى من إعجاز القرآن! ونقول: .. بل كان القرآن في جميع أمره مخالفاً لفرادة سونيتات (شكسبير)؛ فقد تحدّى العرب أهل الفصاحة والذلاقة أن يأتوا بمثله رغم أنّ كلّ ما احتف به من تفاصيل وسياقات تاريخيّة تمنع أن يبلغ الحدّ المتوسّط من البلاغة، فضلًا عن أن يبلغ أعلى درجاتها البشريّة، فهو كتاب يأبى التفسير المادي لأمور:
نقل القرآن اعتراضات المشركين، وكرّر خبر كبيرها وصغيرها. ولو كان في المعارضات ما هو أهل لفخر أهل مكّة لشاع خبر الاستشهاد به، ولألزم القرآن أن يرد عليه، لا أن يكرّر القرآن عرض التحدّي ونقل عجز بلغاء المشركين دون نكير من المخالفين. ولذلك قال المستشرق (إدوارد هنري بلمر): «مسألة عدم نجاح أفضل الكتّاب العرب في إنتاج أي شيء قريب في الخصاصة من القرآن نفسه ليس شيئًا مفاجئًا».
ولا يصحّ تاريخيًا فى المعارضة إلا القليل النادر. وقد عاش فى بلاد المسلمين خصوم حاقدين اجتهدوا في الطعن في نبوة (محمد) صلى الله عليه وسلم، ولم يستعلن منهم واحد بكتاب معارض للقرآن رضي عنه مخالفو الإسلام في عصره وبعده، ومن هؤلاء (ابن الراوندي) الذي ألّف «الفريد» فى الطعن فى نبوّة (محمّد) صلى الله عليه وسلم والقدح في معجزاته، و«التاج» في قدم العالم، و«الزمرّد» في إبطال النبوّات، وهي كتب نشرها في العلن، وراجت بين الناس. الفرصة إذن كانت قائمة لظهور الكتاب المعارض المتحدّي للقرآن، ولرواجه إذا بدا فيه ما يستحقّ التقديم والتبجيل.
صوّر القاضي (عبد الجبار) - الذي عاش في النصف الثاني من القرن الرابع الهجري وبداية الخامس انتشار كتب الزنادقة الطاعنين في الإسلام بقوله: «وانظر إلى… الكتب التي وضعها الملحدة وطبقات الزنادقة، كالحدّاد، وأبي عيسى الورّاق، وابن الراوندي، والحصري، وآمالهم في الطعن في الربوبيّة وشتم الأنبياء صلوات الله عليهم وتكذيبهم، فإنّهم وضعوها في أيام بني العباس وفي وسط الإسلام وسلطانه والمسلمون أكثر مما كانوا إذ ذاك وأشدّ ما كانوا ولهم القهر والغلبة والعز، والذين وضعوا هذه الكتب أذلَ ما كانوا، وإنّما كان الواحد بعد الواحد من هؤلاء يضع كتابه خفيًا وهو خائف يترقب، ويخفي ذلك عن أهله وولده، ولا يطلع عليه إلا الواحد بعد الواحد ممن هو في مثل حاله في الخوف والذل والقهر، ثم ينتشر ذلك في أدنى مدة ويظهر حتى يباع في أسواق المسلمين، ويعرفه خاصتهم وعامتهم، ويتحدثون به ويتقولونه ويذكرونه وقد غمّهم ذلك وساءهم، وودّوا أن ذلك لم يكن». [عبد الجبار، تثبيت دلائل النبوة].
ولا يذكر الناس في أيّامنا من محاولات خصوم الإسلام والمنصّرين غير الكتاب الذي أراد له أصحابه إعلان كسر الإعجاز القرآني في الشرق والغرب، والمسمّى «الفرقان الحقّ» الذي قام على الترويج له المنصّر [الفلسطيني - الأمريكي] (أنيس شروش). ثم ماذا كان من أمر هذا التحدّي الذي حشدت له الأقلام للمعارضة، والمطابع والصحافة للإذاعة والإشهار؟ لا شيء غير الفضيحة.
ولما سمع (جبير بن مطعم) رضي الله عنه النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم يقرأ في المغرب بالطور، قال عند قوله تعالى : {أَمۡ خُلِقُوا۟ مِنۡ غَیۡرِ شَیۡءٍ أَمۡ هُمُ ٱلۡخَـٰلِقُونَ. أَمۡ خَلَقُوا۟ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَ ٰتِ وَٱلۡأَرۡضَ بَل لَّا یُوقِنُونَ. أَمۡ عِندَهُمۡ خَزَاۤىِٕنُ رَبِّكَ أَمۡ هُمُ ٱلۡمُصَۣیۡطِرُونَ}: كاد قلبي أن يطير [رواه البخاري]. ويكفي في شهادة العرب الجاهليين لإعجاز القرآن قول (الوليد بن مغيرة) المشرك بعد أن سمع القرآن من فِيّ رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم وقد استحثه (أبو جهل) أن يقول فيه قولًَا منكرًا: «وَمَاذًا أَقُولُ؟ فوالله مَا فيكم رَجُلٌ أَعْلَمَ بِالأَشْعَار مِنّي، ولا أَعْلَم بِرَجَزه ولا بِقَصِيدَتِهِ مِنّي، ولا بِأَشْعَار الْجِن، وَالله مَا يُشْبِه الذي يَقُولُ شيئًا من هذا، ووالله، إن لقوله الذي يقول حلاوة، وإن عليه لطلاوة وإنه لمثمر أعلاه، مغدق أسفله، وإنه ليعلو وما يُعلا، وأنه ليحطم ما تحته» [رواه الحاكم. وقال: هذا حديث صحيح الإسناد على شرط البخاري ولم يخرجاه].
من الشهادات في هذا الباب قول الشيخ (رشيد رضا): «إنّ من أوتي حظًا من بيان هذه اللغة، وفاز بسهم رابح من آدابها حتى استحكمت له ملكة الذوق فيها، لا يملك أن يدفع عن نفسه عقيدة إعجاز القرآن ببلاغته وفصاحته، وبأسلوبه في نظم عبارته. وقد صرّح بهذا من أدباء النصرانيّة المتأخّرين الأستاذ (جبر ضومط) مدرّس علوم البلاغة بالجامعة الأمريكانيّة في كتابه «الخواطر الحسان». وعقّب (الرافعي) على شهادة (رشيد رضا) بقوله: «وصرّح لنا بذلك (بإعجاز القرآن) أديب هذه الملة (النصارى) الشيخ إبراهيم اليازجي الشهير. وهو أبلغ كاتب أخرجته المسيحية. وقد أشار إلى رأيه ذاك في مقدمة كتابه «نجعة الرائد». وكذلك سألنا شاعر التاريخ المسيحي الأستاذ خليل مطران، ولا نعرف من شعراء القوم من يجاريه فأقر لنا بمثل ما أقر به أستاذه اليازجي، والأمر بعد إلى العقل المنصف والعقل «المنصف» ليس له دين إلا الحق، والحق واحد لا يتغير». من كتاب إعجاز القرآن للرافعي.
أمّا الأديب الشاعر المعاصر (نقولا حنا) فقد قاده إيمانه بإعجاز القرآن إلى اعتناق الإسلام، والكتابة في تمجيد هذا الكتاب العظيم بقوله في قصيدته «من وحي القرآن»: «قرأت القرآن فأذهلني، وتعمقت به ففتنني، ثم أعدت القراءة فآمنت.. آمنت بالقرآن الإلهي العظيم، وبالرسول من حمله.. النبي العربي الكريم، أما الله فمن نصرانيتي ورثت إيماني به، وبالفرقان عظم هذا الإيمان… وكيف لا أؤمن ومعجزة القرآن بين يدي أنظرها وأحسها كل حين … هي معجزة لا كبقية المعجزات.. معجزة إلهية خالدة تدل بنفسها عن نفسها، وليست بحاجة لمن يحدث عنها أو يبشّر بها. [نقل ذلك حسن ضياء الدين عتر في كتاب المعجزة الخالدة عن كتاب من وحي القرآن لنقولا حنا]
كما أقرّ بإعجاز القرآن المستشرق (جوزيف شارل ماردروس) في مقدّمة ترجمته لاثنتين وستين من السور الطوال في القرآن بتكليف من وزارة الخارجية والمعارف الفرنسيّة. فقد كتب: «أمّا أسلوب القرآن فهو الأسلوب الخاص بالله. وبما أن الأسلوب يمثّل جوهر الكائن الذي صدر عنه هذا الأسلوب، فلا يمكن أن يكون هذا الأسلوب إلا إلهيًا . والحق الواقع هو أن أكثر الكتاب شكًا وارتيابًا قد خضعوا لسلطان تأثيره… [نقل ذلك وترجمه رشيد رضا في كتاب الوحي المحمدي عن كتاب جوزيف Le Koran qui est la Guidance et le Diffeirenciateur]
وأمّا (فارس الشدياق) (وهو من أبرز علماء العربية النصارى في القرون الأخيرة حتّى وصفه المستشرق (كرنليوس فاندايك) - صاحب أشهر ترجمة عربيّة للكتاب المقدّس المعروفة باسم (ترجمة الفاندايك) - بأنّه: «الأديب الشاعر اللغوي الكاتب البليغ . . ولغته من أحسن ما كتبه المتأخرون نثرًا في اللغة العربية في عصر النهضة الاخيرة» فقد كتب - بعد إسلامه - غاضبًا من جرأة كاتب نصرانى اسمه (رزق الله) أراد معارضة القرآن لنفى إعجازه اللغوي، فقال: «إِنَ هذا السفيه قد أشعر إشعارًا ظاهرًا بأنه قادر على تحدّي القرآن، وهو أعجب شيء من جنونه وهوسه. . . وقد حان الآن أن نظهر جهله باللغة والصرف والنحو وغير ذلك ليعلم فيما قصده من تحدي القرآن أنه مجنون جنونًا مطبقًا». علمًا بأنّ (فارس الشدياق) قد كُلف بإعداد ترجمة عربيّة للكتاب المقدّس النصراني قبل إسلامه، وقد أتمّها ونشرها، غير أن النصارى منعوا تداولها بعد هدايته.
وقد أسلم طائفة من كبراء اليهود إعجابًا بدين الإسلام وعقيدة التوحيد. ومن هؤلاء أسماء كبيرة، لعل أهمها (هبة الله بن علي بن ملكا البغدادي) الملقب ب«أوحد الزمان» الفيلسوف البارز والطبيب الشهير. ومن أبرز أذكياء اليهود الذين أسلموا (السموأل بن يحيى المغربي) العالم بالتوراة والهندسة والرياضيات والفلك والطب والتاريخ٠ وقد كان والده حبرًا يهوديًا مغرييًا وشاعرًا كبيرًا عدّه (يهوذا الحريزي) أحد أكبر شعراء الأندلس. كتب (السموأل) عن سبب إسلامه في كتابه «بذل المجهود في إفحام اليهود» - الكتاب الذي أثار حفيظة معاصره وأكبر فلاسفة اليهود في القرون الوسطى (موسى بن ميمون) -: «فإني كنت لكثرة شغفي بأخبار الوزراء والكتّاب قد اكتسبت بكثرة مطالعاتي لحكاياتهم وأخبارهم وكلامهم قوّة في البلاغة، ومعرفة بالفصاحة، وكان لي في ذلك ما حمده الفصحاء، وتعجب به البلغاء. .. فشاهدت المعجزة التى لا تباريها الفصاحة الآدميّة فى القرآن، فعلمت صحّة إعجازه».
{الم (١) غلبت ٱلروم (٢) فی أدنى ٱلأرض وهم من بعد غلبهم سیغلبون (٣) فی بضع سنین لله ٱلأمر من قبل ومن بعد ویومىٕذ یفرح ٱلمؤمنون (٤) بنصر ٱلله ینصر من یشاء وهو ٱلعزیز ٱلرحیم (٥) وعد ٱلله لا یخلف ٱلله وعدهۥ ولـٰكن أكثر ٱلناس لا یعلمون}: جاءت الآيات في صدر سورة الروم تخبر بمجموعة من البشارات:
تنبيه: شكك بعض المستشرقين في الإعجاز الغيبي في مفتتح سورة الروم بدعوى وجود قراءة بفتح الغين لا ضمها، وأنها هي القراءة الأصلية. والحق أن قراءة “غَلبت” لا تصح لأسباب:
{ لَّقَدْ صَدَقَ ٱللَّهُ رَسُولَهُ ٱلرُّءْيَا بِٱلْحَقِّ ۖ لَتَدْخُلُنَّ ٱلْمَسْجِدَ ٱلْحَرَامَ إِن شَآءَ ٱللَّهُ ءَامِنِينَ مُحَلِّقِينَ رُءُوسَكُمْ وَمُقَصِّرِينَ لَا تَخَافُونَ ۖ فَعَلِمَ مَا لَمْ تَعْلَمُوا۟ فَجَعَلَ مِن دُونِ ذَٰلِكَ فَتْحًۭا قَرِيبًا } كان رسول الله قد رأى في منامه أنه دخل مكة هو وأصحابه وطافوا بالبيت، ثم حلّق بعضهم وقَصَّرَ بعضهم. فحدّث بها أصحابه ففرحوا واستبشروا. فلما خرج إلى الحديبية مع الصحابة، منع المشركون المسلمين دخول مكة، ووقع ما وقع من قضية الصلح. وعندها وقع في نفس بعض الصحابة من ذلك شيء، حتى سأل (عمر بن الخطاب) رسول الله في ذلك، فقال له فيما قال: «أفلم تكن تخبرنا أنا سنأتي البيت ونطوف به؟» قال صلى الله عليه وسلم: «بلى، أفأخبرتك أنك تأتيه عامك هذا؟» قال: «لا». قال النبي: «فإنك آتيه ومطوف به». وبهذا أجاب الصدّيق عنه أيضًا. وقد تحققت الرؤيا - ورؤيا الأنبياء حق - بدخولهم معتمرين العام التالي بعد صلح الحديبية. قال (ابن كثير): «وقوله تعالى : {فَعَلِمَ مَا لَمْ تَعْلَمُوا۟ فَجَعَلَ مِن دُونِ ذَٰلِكَ فَتْحًۭا قَرِيبًا} أي: فعلم الله من الخيرة والمصلحة في صرفكم عن مكة ودخولكم إليها عامكم ذلك ما لم تعلموا أنتم {فَجَعَلَ مِن دُونِ ذَٰلِكَ} أي: قبل دخولكم الذي وعدتم به في رؤيا النبي {فَتْحًۭا قَرِيبًا} وهو الصلح الذي كان بينكم وبين أعدائكم من المشركين.
{تَبَّتۡ يَدَآ أَبِي لَهَبٖ وَتَبَّ (1) مَآ أَغۡنَىٰ عَنۡهُ مَالُهُۥ وَمَا كَسَبَ (2) سَيَصۡلَىٰ نَارٗا ذَاتَ لَهَبٖ (3) وَٱمۡرَأَتُهُۥ حَمَّالَةَ ٱلۡحَطَبِ (4) فِي جِيدِهَا حَبۡلٞ مِّن مَّسَدِۭ (5)} تخبر السورة عن مآل (أبي لهب) وزوجه، وأنهما لن يؤمنا بالإسلام، وسيموتان على الكفر. وقد أسلم كل أهل مكة إلا قله منها (أبو لهب) وزوجه.
{ يا أيها الرسول بلغ ما أنزل إليك من ربك وإن لم تفعل فما بلغت رسالته والله يعصمك من الناس إن الله لا يهدي القوم الكافرين } { فَٱصْدَعْ بِمَا تُؤْمَرُ وَأَعْرِضْ عَنِ ٱلْمُشْرِكِينَ. إِنَّا كَفَيْنَـٰكَ ٱلْمُسْتَهْزِءِينَ } { فكيدوني جميعا ثم لا تنظرون } تُخبر الآيات السابقة أن الله سبحانه سيعصم رسوله من القتل حتّى يبلّغ ما أنزل إليه من ربّه. وقد كان الرسول يتّخذ الحراس قبل نزول الآية، ولما نزلت صرف حراسه وسرحهم قائلا: «يا أيها الناس انصرفوا فقد عصمني الله» : وقد عصمه الله في مواطن كثيرة جدَّا. وما توفي حتى أتم البلاغ الذي وُعد بأدائه كاملًا، ونزل قوله تعالى: { ٱلْيَوْمَ أَكْمَلْتُ لَكُمْ دِينَكُمْ وَأَتْمَمْتُ عَلَيْكُمْ نِعْمَتِى وَرَضِيتُ لَكُمُ ٱلْإِسْلَـٰمَ دِينًا}.
إن القرآن الكريم أراد أن يفرق بين حاكم مصر الأجنبي على أيام (يوسف) الصديق في عهد الهكسوس، فأطلق عليه لقب (ملك)، وبين حاكم مصر الوطني على أيام (موسى) - مثلًا - الذي أطلق عليه لقب (فرعون) وهو اللقب الذي كان يطلق على ملوك مصر منذ عهد (أخناتون)، هذا فضلًا عن أن ذلك من إعجاز القرآن الذي لا إعجاز بعده، وإذا ما عدنا إلى التوراة، لوجدنا أن الحقائق التاريخية تقف ضد ما أوردته التوراة بشأن استعمال لقب فرعون، إذ إنها تستعمله حين يجب أن تستعمل لقب ملك، وذلك قبل الأسرة الثامنة عشرة، وتستعمل لقب ملك حين يجب أن تستعمل لقب فرعون، وذلك منذ عهد الأسرة الثامنة عشرة وفيما بعدها. [دراسات تاريخية في القرآن الكريم لمحمد بيومي مهران] لم يُعرف ملك مصر بلقب فرعون إلا منذ حكم أمينوفيس الرابع، أي: في الربع الثاني من القرن الرابع عشر قبل المسيح. كل استعمال لكلمة فرعون للدلالة على ملك مصر قبل هذا العصر هو خطأ تاريخي: ارتكب محررو الكتاب المقدس هذا الخطأ لما كانوا يستعملون لغة زمانهم عند تأليفهم للكتاب المقدس. فى المقابل، فإن استعمال هذه الكلمة للأحداث الأقرب لنا كزمن موسى، هي مطابقة للمعطيات التاريخية. إنه علي أن أعلن أنه في زمن تبليغ القرآن إلى الناس، كانت اللغة المصرية القديمة قد اختفت منذ أكثر من قرنين من الذاكرة البشرية، وبقيت كذلك إلى القرن التاسع عشر، لذلك فليس بإمكاننا أن نعرف أن ملك مصر في زمن يوسف يجب أن يُدعى بلقب غير المذكور في الكتاب المقدس. دقة اختيار الكلمات في هذا الموضوع في نص القرآن تثير التفكير. [Moise et pharaon: les Heibreux en Egypte: quelles concordances des livres saints avec l’his-toire? by Maurice Bucaille]
{ فَأُلْقِىَ ٱلسَّحَرَةُ سُجَّدًۭا قَالُوٓا۟ ءَامَنَّا بِرَبِّ هَـٰرُونَ وَمُوسَىٰ. قَالَ ءَامَنتُمْ لَهُۥ قَبْلَ أَنْ ءَاذَنَ لَكُمْ ۖ إِنَّهُۥ لَكَبِيرُكُمُ ٱلَّذِى عَلَّمَكُمُ ٱلسِّحْرَ ۖ فَلَأُقَطِّعَنَّ أَيْدِيَكُمْ وَأَرْجُلَكُم مِّنْ خِلَـٰفٍۢ وَلَأُصَلِّبَنَّكُمْ فِى جُذُوعِ ٱلنَّخْلِ وَلَتَعْلَمُنَّ أَيُّنَآ أَشَدُّ عَذَابًۭا وَأَبْقَىٰ } ذكر القرآن الكريم هاهنا وسائل التعذيب في زمن فرعون، وقد نشر الدكتور (أحمد عبد الحميد يوسف) نصًا ورد فى معبد عمدا من بلاد النوبة المصرية يصوّر وسائل التعذيب في زمان فرعون، وهو يرجع إلى السنة الرابعة من عهد (مرنبتاح) (حوالي سنة 1220 ق.م)، وهو يؤكّد أنَ (مرنبتاح) قد عذب الناس بقطع من خلاف وصلب. [نقله محمد بيومي مهران في دراسات تاريخية في القرآن الكريم]. والسؤال الذي نواجه به المنصّرين هو: لِمَ يورد القرآن هذه الواقعة ويعقبها بذكر حقيقة تاريخية ما كان يعلمها الناس في القرن السابع الميلادي ولم ترد فى التوراة إلا أن تكون وحيًا من الحقّ سبحانه؟
{ أولم ير الذين كفروا أن السماوات والأرض كانتا رتقاً ففتقناهما } قال (ابن كثير): «كان الجميع متصلًا بعضه ببعض، متلاصق متراكم بعضه فوق بعض في ابتداء الأمر، ففتق هذه عن هذه فجعل السموات سبعًا، والأرض سبعًا». وقد صحّ تفسير الآية بفصل السماء عن الأرض عن التابعي الجليل المفسر (قتادة السدوسي)، والتابعي الجليل (الحسن البصري). [تفسير الطبري]
وصف القرآن الكريم الجبال أنّها مثل الوتد، والوتد قطعة من الخشب أو الحديد تغرز في الأرض لتشدّ نفسها، ويكون جزؤها الأكبر مخفيًا تحت الأرض. فالوتد فى (لسان العرب) هو: «ما رُز فى الحائط أو الأرض من الخشب والجمع أوتاد». يشهد العلم الحديث اليوم على دقة هذا الوصف العجيب للجبال، والذي لم يُعرف إلا في الزمن المتأخر بعد دراسات جادة من العلماء المتخصصين، حتى قال الجيولوجي (سيمون لامب): «كان اكتشاف أن للسلاسل الجبليّة جذورًا عميقة [في الأرض] واحدًا من أكبر الاكتشافات الجيولوجيّة في القرن التاسع عشر وبداية العشرين» [Robert Dinwiddie; Simon Lamb and Ross Reynolds, Violent Earth].
هيمن الاعتقاد بأن دم الحيض أساسي في تكوين الجنين على الطب اليهودي والنصراني واليوناني والهندوسي، وكان الاتفاق بينهم حاصلًا على ذلك. ومن العجيب أنَ الفهم اليهودي النصراني الأرسطي قد بقي مهيمنًا على الساحة العلميّة حتى قرون بعد البعثة في بلاد المسلمين، حتى قال الإمام (ابن حجر): «وزعم كثير من أهل التشريح أن مني الرجل لا أثر له في الولد إلا في عقده، وأنّه إنّما يتكون من دم الحيض، وأحاديث الباب تبطل ذلك».
عيش غير المسلمين في بلاد الإسلام: لقد أصاب الجو العلمئّ الإسلامئ المتميّز بالانفتاح والتحفيز على التفكير اليهود بوهجه، فنقلهم إلى عصرهم الذهبي في ظلّ دولة الإسلام. وفي ذلك كتب الرحّالة اليهودي (بنيامين التطيلي) في القرن الثاني عشر الميلادي متحدنًا عن يهود بغداد: «يوجد في بغداد حواليّ أربعين ألف يهوديٌّ، وهم يعيشون في أمان وازدهار، محفوظي الكرامة تحت سلطان الخليفة العظيم، ومن بينهم حكماء كبار». وأثنى بكلمات بليغة على الخليفة العبّاسي، حتى قال عنه: إنّه كان «محسنًا للإسرائيليين وكثيرٌ من زواره من الإسرائيليين».
فضل المسلمين في تأسيس العلم التجريبي: يقول (روبير بريفو) في كتابه «بناء الإنسانية»: «لقد تعلّم روجر بيكون من خلفاء [مسلمي إسبانيا] في جامعة أوكسفورد اللغة والعلوم العربيّة. لم يكن لروجر بيكون ولا سميّه المتأخر عنه أيّ حقّ في أن يُنسب إليهما الفضل في ابتكار المنهج التجريبي. لم يكن روجر بيكون أكثر من رسول من رُسل علم المسلمين ومنهجهم إلى أوروبا المسيحيّة». مقرّرًا أنّه لا يوجد جانب واحد من جوانب الترقّي الأوروبي لا يمكن الكشف عن الأصل الحاسم للثقافة الإسلامية فيه ومؤكدًا أن العلم الطبيعي والروح العلمية هما أبرز أوجه تأثير الإسلام في أوروبا المعاصرة. أما مؤْرّخ العلوم (جورج سارتون) فقد أقر أن أهم إنجاز في القرون الوسطى هو خلق الروح التجريبيّة. ورد ذلك أساسًا إلى جهد المسلمين حتى القرن الثاني عشر. وقد ذكرت سيجريد هونكه في كتابها «شمس العرب تشرق على الغرب» تفاصيل مثيرة عن أثر الحضارة الإسلامية على الثقافة والحياة العمليّة الأوروبيّين، بدءًا من «ثقافة الاستحمام»، إلى علوم الطبّ والفلك والرياضيات التي قرّرت فيها أَنْ المسلمين «وليس اليونان هم أساتذة أوروبا في النهضة العلميّة الرياضية» . وانتهت إلى القول: «… نعم إن العرب هم مخترعو العلوم التطبيقية والوسائل التجريبية بكل ما تدل عليه هذه العبارة. والعرب هم المخترعون الحقيقيون للأبحاث التجريبية!».
ممن شهد من أعلام الفكر من الغرب من النساء على عظمة الإسلام في باب تحرير المرأة من أثقال الأفكار الجاهليّة (كارن أرمسترونغ) إذ قالت: «كان النساء من أوائل المؤمنات بمحمد. كان تحريرهن مشروعا يملك قلبه. حرِّم القرآن بطريقة حازمة قتل المواليد الإناث، ووبّخ العرب على فزعهم عندما كانت تولد أنثى. وأعطى النساء أيضًا حقوقًا قانونيّة في الميراث والطلاق لم يملك جل النساء الغربيات شيئًا شبيهًا بها حتى القرن التاسع عشر. شجّع محمد النساء أن يلعبن دوزًا إيجابيًا في شؤون الأمة، وقد عبرن عن آرائهن بصراحة في ثقة أنه سيسمع لهن».
شهد المستشرق (غوستاف لو بون) في حديثه عن فتح «العرب» للهند أَن الفاتحين قد ألانوا قلوب الناس إلى الإسلام بحسن ملكهم، وأن أهل الهند قد أقبلوا على الدين الوافد عن طيب خاطر لا عن خوف من بارقة السيوف. [La Civilisation des Arabs]
من عاش تجربة الاقتراب من الموت شهد أنه رأى أو سمع أو التقى بأشخاص يمنع استلقاؤه في المشفى فاقدًا للوعي أن يدركها، ومن ذلك أن أحد العميان رأى ما أحاط به لما كان فاقدًا الوعي أثناء التجربة، وامرأة تصف خروج روحها ورؤيتها حذاء أزرق فوق سقف المستشفى, ثم بارتقاء السقف وجد الحذاء نفسه، وأخرى أجريت لها عملية على دماغها وهي فاقدة للوعي وعيناها مغلقتان، ثم هي تصف بعد ذلك تفاصيل العملية والآلات (التي كانت مغطاة) وحوارات الأطباء. ومن المهم هنا الإشارة إلى أن هذه الظاهرة العجيبة قد قادت أكاديميين ملاحدة إلى الإيمان بالله واليوم الآخر بعد اقتناعهم أن الإنسان أكثر من مادة، ومن هؤلاء (ريموند أ. مودي) و(بِم فان لومل). وهي التجربة التي جعلت الفيلسوف (أ. ج. آير) رأس إحدى أهم المدارس الفلسفية الإلحادية في القرن العشرين يقول بعد تجربته الخاصة إثر توقّف قلبه عن النبض لمدة أربع دقائق: «تجاربي القريبة أضعفت بصورة قليلة قناعتي أن موتي الحقيقي - والذي سيكون قريبًا - هو نهايتي). فهو على عناده أقرّ بأثر التجربة فيه. [Gary Habermas & J.P. Moreland, Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality و Jeffrey Long and Paul Perry, Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences وJ. Steve Miller, Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God and Heaven]
لقد نظرنا في كتابنا هذا في السيرة المحفوظة لنبي الإسلام، فإذا هي دالة بشهادة الصديق والخصيم على نبوته، ولا سبيل لرد ذلك إلا بإنكار صدق هذا المحفوظ، ولذلك عرضنا منهجيّة توثيق السيرة على سُنَّة علماء الحديث، ومنهج المخالفين، فاستبانت لنا عبقريّة منهج الأوّلين، ولم نسمع من المنكرين غير همهمات للمستشرقين لا تكاد تبين، وهي شكوك ووساوس لم تنتظم في منهج علمي متين.
قبسات من أخلاق النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم: ص116-119 + ص124.
شبهات المنصرين: كثيراً ما يستدلون بالضعيف أو الموضوع من الروايات. وجهلهم باللغة جعلهم يأتون بالعجائب. والتدليس في عرض الخبر التاريخي فمثلاً يعرضون قضية قتل الرسول صلى الله عليه وسلم للذكور البالغين من بني قريظة متغافلين عن ما استدعى ذلك وهي الخيانة العظمى التي كادت تودي بأمة الإسلام لو نجحت في مسعاها، ويتجاهلون أن طابع المسامحة والعفو كان الأصل في فعل النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم وخير مثال عفوه عن أهل مكة الذين آذوه كثيراً عند الفتح.
قول المستشرقة (لورا فيشيا فاغليري) في الرد عن اتهام النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم بالشهوانية لزيجاته المتعددة: أنه طوال سنين الشباب حيث تكون الغريزة الجنسية أقوى ما يكون، وعلى الرغم من أنه عاش في مجتمع كان تعدد الزوجات فيه هو القاعدة، وكان الطلاق سهلاً، لم يتزوج إلا من امرأة واحدة لا غير، ولم يتزوج ثانية إلا بعد أن توفيت خديجة، وإلا بعد أن بلغ الخمسين من عمره. لقد كان لكل زيجة من زيجاته سبب اجتماعي أو سياسي.. وباستثناء عائشة تزوج من نسوة لم يكن عذارى ولا شابات ولا جميلات… ص138.
]]>Book page on Goodreads: $100M Leads: How to Get Strangers To Want To Buy Your Stuff.
The book is about getting engaged leads. It covers the core four advertising methods: warm outreach, post free content, cold outreach, and run paid ads. It also covers the four lead getters: customer referrals, word of mouth, agencies, and affiliates. The book is written by Alex Hormozi who is a serial entrepreneur and has founded and scaled three companies to $120M+ in cumulative sales across four different industries without taking on outside capital.
Here are my notes from each chapter of the books.
My offer was simple. I’ll fill your gym in 30 days for free. You pay nothing. I pay for everything. I sell new members and keep the first 6 weeks of membership fees as payment. You get everything else. If I don’t fill your gym, I don’t make money. You spend nothing either way. It was an easy offer to sell.
You’re not getting as many leads as you want because you’re not advertising enough. Period.
In a nutshell: I will show you how to get strangers to want to buy your stuff.
A lead is a person you can contact. That’s all. If you bought a list of emails, those are leads. If you get contact information from a website or database, those are leads. The numbers in your phone are leads. People on the street are leads. If you can contact them, they are leads.
Leads alone aren’t enough. We want engaged leads: people who show interest in the stuff you sell. If someone gives their contact information on a website, that is an engaged lead.
Engaged leads are the true output of advertising.
Often, a business promises to give its product or service in exchange for money. This is a core offer.
Sometimes, though, people want to know more about your offer before they buy. This is common for businesses that sell more expensive stuff. If that’s you, then you’ll often get more leads to engage by advertising with a lead magnet first. A lead magnet is a complete solution to a narrow problem. It’s typically a lower-cost or free offer to see who is interested in your stuff. And, once solved, it reveals another problem solved by your core offer. This is important because leads interested in lower-cost or free offers now are more likely to buy a related higher-cost offer later. Think of it like salty pretzels at a bar. If somebody eats the pretzels, they’ll get thirsty and order a drink. The salty pretzels solve the narrow problem of hunger. They also reveal a thirst problem solved by a drink, which they can get, in exchange for money.
Your lead magnet should be valuable enough on its own that you could charge for it.
A person who pays with their time now is more likely to pay with their money later.
1) Reveal Their Problem. Think “diagnosis.” If your audience has a problem they don’t know about, your lead magnet would make them aware of it. These lead magnets work great when they reveal problems that get worse the longer you wait. Example: You run a speed test that shows their website loads at 30 % below the speed it should. You draw a clear line between where they should be and how much money they lose by being below standards.
2) Samples And Trials. You give full but brief access to your core offer. You can limit the number of uses, time they have access, or both. This works great when your core offer is a recurring solution to a recurring problem.
3) One Step Of A Multi-Step Process. You can give them one step in a multi-step process that solves a bigger problem.
Leads have to notice your lead magnet before they can consume it. Like it or not, this means how we present it matters more than anything. For example, improving the headline, name, and display of your lead magnet can 2x, 3x, or 10x your engagement.
Here’s what you do next-you test. The three things you’ll want to test are the headline, the image(s), and the subheadline, in that order.
People buy stuff based on how much value they think they’ll get after they buy it. And the easiest way to get them to think they’ll get tons of value after they buy is … drum roll please … to provide them with value before they buy.
Once the leads consume the lead magnet, some of them will be ready to buy or learn more about your offer. This is the time to give a Call To Action (CTA).
Good CTAs have two things: 1) what to do and 2) reasons to do it right now.
Let’s say you make $10,000 of profit on your core offer. And it costs you $1000 in advertising to get someone on a call for it. If you close one out of three people, it costs you $3000 in advertising to get a customer. Imagine you advertise a free lead magnet instead of your core offer. Your lead magnet costs you $25 to deliver, and because it’s free to them, more will engage. The extra engagement means it only costs $75 in advertising to get someone on a call. All in, it’s $100 per call. Now, let’s say one out of ten folks who get the lead magnet buys your core offer. This means your new cost to acquire a customer is $1000 ($100 x 10 people). We just cut our cost to get a customer by 3x.
The Core Four Advertising Methods:
When I make an offer from scratch, I refer to the value equation. If you’re wondering ‘what’s the value equation?’-it was the core concept of my first book $100M Offers.
The goal is to maximize the first two and minimize the second two. So all you have to do now is show someone: You have exactly what they want They’re guaranteed to get it Insanely fast Without lifting a finger or giving up anything they love.
So let’s do just that with a real-life offer:…
By the way, do you know anybody who is (describe their struggles) looking to (dream outcome) in (time delay)? I’m taking on five case studies for free, because that’s all I can handle. I just want to get some testimonials for my service / product. I help them (dream outcome) without (effort and sacrifice). It works. I even guarantee people get (dream outcome) or I work with them until they do. I just had a girl named XXX work with me (dream outcome) even though she (describe the same struggle your contact has). I also had another guy who (dream outcome) and it was his first time. I’d just like more testimonials to show it works across different scenarios. Does anyone you like come to mind? (Pause if on the phone) … and if they say no … Haha, well … does anyone you hate come to mind? (ha) This helps break any awkwardness.
There’s an important feature here. We’re not asking them to buy anything. We’re asking if they know anyone. And of the people who say yes, most say they are interested.
Building an audience is the most valuable thing I’ve ever done.
Leila bought me four calls with a big influencer who had the type of audience I wanted to build. She paid $120,000. On my first call, he told me to post regularly on every platform. So, that’s what I did. Twelve months later, my audience grew by more than 200,000 people. On my second call, he noted the progress. But I wanted more. He said, “Bro, anyone telling you there’s some secret is trying to sell you something. We just put out as much as we possibly can. Pull up your Instagram and pull up my Instagram… Look. You’ve posted once today. I posted three times. Pull up your LinkedIn … Look. You posted once this week. I posted five times today.” Simple. Not easy. Over the next six months I put out ten times the content. And over the next six months, I added 1.2M people to my audience.
Free content makes all other advertising more effective. If you reach out to someone and they can’t find content related to your services, they’re less likely to buy. On the other hand, if they find lots of valuable content, they are more likely to buy.
Switch from “How to” to “How I.” From “This is the best way” to “These are my favorite ways” etc. (especially when starting out).
Narrow the focus of your content. If you have a small local business, you probably shouldn’t make general business content. Not at first, at least. Why? The audience will listen to people with better track records than you. But you can narrow your topics to what you do and the place you do it. Example: plumbing in a certain town. If you do that, you can become king of that puddle. Over time, you can expand your plumbing puddle to the general local business pond. Then the lake of brick & mortar chains and so forth.
First, we start with warm outreach. We reach out to every person we have permission to contact. Second, we post publicly about the successes and lessons we have from our first clients. We post testimonials. We provide value. Then occasionally ask. We commit to doing both of these activities every day.
Cold outreach has one key difference from warm outreach: trust. Strangers don’t trust you.
Cold outreach is a numbers game. The more people you reach out to the more engaged leads you get. Once we figure out how much outreach it takes to engage a lead, then we only have one thing to do … more.
There are three different ways I get my targeted lead lists. First, I use software to scrape a list of names. Second, I pay brokers to assemble me a list of targeted leads. And if neither of those work, I manually scrape a list of names myself. Find your scraping tool by searching “outbound leads scraping tool” or “database lead scraping.”
There are two important factors I emphasize to get strangers to engage: personalization and big fast value. This is important because they don’t know us and they don’t trust us. We’ve gotta overcome both issues in a matter of seconds.
A) They Don’t Know Us → Personalize (Act Like You Know Them). This comes in handy for personal subject lines on emails, the first few messages in chat, or the first few sentences someone hears.
B) They Don’t Trust Us → Big Fast Value. We’re not trying to tickle their interest, we’re trying to blow their minds in under thirty seconds. It needs to be BIG FAST VALUE. If it’s not, or it’s mediocre, you’ll blend in with the ocean of people trying to get their attention. Give away something for free people would normally pay for and they will want it. Note: I didn’t say, “so good they should pay for it,” I said, “stuff they actually pay for.”
Pro Tip: 50% Email Response Rate Bump I took our cold outreach template and re-wrote it below a third grade reading level. The results: 50% more leads responded. I recommend running all scripts and messages through a free reading level app online. I won’t recommend one because they go out of business all the time, but I promise you can find one. Make your messages easier to understand and more people will respond.
With warm and cold outreach we have to do more stuff to reach more people. To reach more people with free content, we depend on the platform or audience sharing it if they feel like it. Paid ads are different. The reach is guaranteed. But getting your money back isn’t. So it’s a game of efficiency rather than reach.
This chapter reveals how I create more efficient paid ads by finding needles in the haystack. I start with the entire world as my audience (haystack) then narrow down to get a higher percentage of engaged leads (needles). First, I pick a platform that contains my ideal audience. Second, I use whatever targeting methods that exist within the platform to find them. Third, I craft my ad in a way that repels anyone else. Finally, I tell whoever’s left standing to take the next step. People overcomplicate it. But that’s it.
Once we advertise profitably in a small puddle of an audience, we expand to a pond, then a lake, then an ocean. And as the audience gets bigger it does have more of the wrong people, but it has more of the right ones too.
…instead of spending $1000 to make $10,000 with $9000 in profit, you spend $100,000 to make $300,000 with $200,000 in profit. Your ratio goes down, but you make more money.
Modern advertising platforms have two ways to target. You can use them separately or combine them:
1) Target a lookalike audience. Modern platforms can show your ad to an audience that is similar to, and much bigger than, a list you provide.
2) Target with factors of your choosing. Targeting options include: age, income, gender, interests, time, location, etc.
What should the ad say? → Call Out + Value + Call to Action (CTA)
Call Out: People noticing your ad is the most important part of the ad … by a lot. My advertising became 20x more effective when I focused the majority of my effort on the first five seconds. We need the audience’s eyes and ears just long enough for them to realize “this is for me, I’ll keep paying attention.”
People want to work with people who look, talk, and act in ways familiar to them. So if you serve a broad customer base use more ethnicities, ages, genders, personalities etc. in your ads. If you serve a narrow customer base (ex: medical devices for seniors), then use people who look like them.
Dream Outcome: A good ad will show and tell the maximum benefit the prospect can achieve using the thing you sell.
Opposite-Nightmare: A good ad will also show them the worst possible hassles, pain, etc. of going without your solution.
Lower perceived risk by minimizing or explaining away past failures, emphasizing the success of people like them, giving assurances by authority, guarantees, and how what you have to offer will at least give them a better chance of success than what they currently do, etc.
A good ad will also show them how slow their current trajectory is.
A good ad will show and tell how much faster they will get the thing they want.
A good ad will also show them the amount of work and skill they’ll need to get the result without your solution.
A good ad tells and shows how you can avoid the stuff you hate doing, do more of the stuff you love doing.
Make your landing pages match your ads. People click an ad because you promised them some benefit. So carry that same look and language over to your landing page.
In Robert Cialdini’s seminal work, Influence, he shows that people like to think of themselves as consistent. So, if you remind them of the action they just took (CTA), and show how taking the next action aligns with it, you’ll get more people to take the second action (Contact Info). For example, “Now that you just did A, you need to do B to get the most of A.” Or “Doing A makes you a ‘doing A’ kind of person. Doing A kind of people, do B.”
To be clear, we aren’t selling anything. We are asking if they’re interested in the stuff we sell. And if they’re interested, they’ll give us a way to tell them more about it. And when they do, they become engaged leads.
Imagine I spend $100 on ten ads—$1,000 in total. Nine of them lose all $100. Then, one of them makes $500 back for the $100 I spent. I’m still down $500. Many people stop here because they see a $500 dollar loss. But not us. We see a winner. So now we buckle up and 100x down. We spend $10,000 on the winning ad and make $50,000 back.
I measure paid ad efficiency by comparing the lifetime gross profit of a customer (LTGP) with the cost to acquire a customer (CAC). I express this ratio as LTGP to CAC. Lifetime gross profit is all the money a customer ever spends on your stuff minus all the money it takes to deliver it.
We speak with hundreds of entrepreneurs every month. They often think they have crappy ads (high CAC) when, in reality, they have a crappy business model (Low LTGP). The cost to acquire customers, between competitors in the same industry, is much closer than you’d think. The difference between the winners and the losers is how much they make off each customer.
You spent $30 in ads and only got $10 back. Ten bucks trickles in, one month at a time, until you finally break even … two. months. later. That’s tough! Make no mistake, you should 100 % make that trade. But, now we have a cash flow problem. Here’s the way I fix it-I immediately sell them more stuff.
If I cover the cost to get and fulfill a customer in the first thirty days I can pay off my card, then do it again. It’s how I’ve scaled every company I’ve started for the past seven years past $1M / mo in the first twelve months-without outside funding.
Ad content ideas: Your Best Free Content Can Make The Best Paid Ads. If you can get your customers to create testimonials or reviews using your product, post them. If they perform well as free content, they often make killer ads too.
First, you reach out to people who know you. Then, you start making free content. Then you start reaching out to people who don’t know you. Then you start running paid ads. This is how you do the core four to get engaged leads.
Here’s how I get better: I test one thing per week per platform.
First, you do way more of the advertising that works until it “breaks.” Then, the next drop off point becomes obvious. Then you keep that level of advertising up while you go back, fix the constraint, and make it better.
Only once you’ve exhausted more–better do the real returns come from doing new. First, go with new ad placements on a platform you know. Second, go with placements you know on a new platform. Then, once you get the hang of that new platform, use new placements on it. Once you exhaust that, you can add a new core four activity on top of what you currently do. That gives you my simple, real-world way,
As far as what to do when? Whenever I build a business I think about it this way – after I do warm outreach to get my pool of customers going – if I have more time than money, I move to posting content. If I have more money than time, I go with cold outreach or running ads. But remember, you only need to do one to get engaged leads. So, just pick one. Then, max it out. Do more. Do better. Do new.
Pro Tip: Make The Success Activities The Conditions of Your Guarantee DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU HATE MONEY AND HELPING PEOPLE: As soon as you start getting customers results, note what they did. Then, start guaranteeing new customers those results. But do it on the condition they do what the best customers did. The guarantee sells more people. The conditions get them better results. You win. They win.
Asking for referrals only works when you treat it like an offer. The referrals come when you show the value the customer gets when they refer their friends. Dropbox gave free storage to customers and free storage to the friends they referred.
Example: Pay your average cost to acquire a customer (CAC) to the referrer or the friend or both.
I had a new salesman come into one of my portfolio companies and shatter all the sales records for an upcoming event. We didn’t know what was going on. So I hopped on the phone with him-how are you selling more tickets than everyone else? He shrugged and said, “I’m doing the same thing as everyone else. I just make sure I ask them who else they’d want to have come with them. Then ask them to introduce me.” Half his sales were referrals. So simple, and yet no one does it.
Unlockable Referral Bonuses: Create bonuses for people who 1) refer and 2) leave a testimonial. A few examples: Unlock VIP bonuses, courses, tokens, status, training, merchandise, service levels, premium support, additional hours of service, etc.
Agencies can play a valuable role in business growth. But not the way they want you to. I don’t want anyone else falling into the same trap.
If I want to learn new ways to do content, outreach, or paid ads, then I hire agencies offering new ways to do them. They’ve already made the big mistakes.
Here’s how I use agencies now. Rather than believe the lie that “I’ll never have to learn this stuff because they can do it,” I start every agency relationship with a purpose and a deadline to fulfill it. I open by saying: “I want to do what you do in my business, but I don’t know how. I’d like to work with you for 6 months so I can learn how you do it. Plus, I’ll pay extra for you to break down why you make the decisions you do and the steps you take to make them. Then, after I get a good idea of how it all works, I’ll start training my team on it. And once they can do it well enough, I’d like to change to a lower cost consulting arrangement. This way, you can still help us if we run into problems. Are you opposed to this?” In my experience, most agencies are not opposed to this.
I’ve used this method again and again. I hire one “good enough” agency to learn the ropes of a new platform. Then, I hire a more elite agency to learn how to maximize it – and I cannot recommend this strategy enough.
An affiliate is a lead-getter. They are an independent business that tells their audience to buy your stuff. Affiliates seem like referrals on the outside, but are much different under the hood. First, they have their own businesses and do their own advertising. Second, they agree to offer your stuff to their engaged leads in exchange for money, free stuff, or both.
Scenario # 1: You sell ten customers per month worth $10,000 each. Your business caps at $100,000 per month. In twelve months you’ve made 1.2 million.
Scenario # 2: For the same effort, you sell ten affiliates per month. Each month, those affiliates bring you one of those $10,000 customers. Now, every single month you add an extra $100,000 in revenue. In twelve months you’ve made 7.8 million. And it grows every month thereafter.
The ideal affiliate has a business with a warm audience full of people like your customers.
We make the affiliate-offer and advertise it the same way we would any other offer. We call out our audience, show our value elements, and then call them to action.
Call outs for potential affiliates often include:
we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Most affiliate money making offers show value like this: Make more money from your current customers and get more leads than your current offer (dream outcome) … with a high chance of working since your customers already want the product (perceived likelihood of achievement)… without needing to build, deliver, or provide customer support for the product yourself (effort and sacrifice)… so you can start selling it tomorrow (time delay).
The whisper-tease-shout method: During the whisper phase of my book launch: I posted content, reached out to friends, emailed my list, and told potential affiliates about major updates to the book. I showed what draft I was on. I took pictures behind the scenes of me printing out drafts. I showed the many versions of the frameworks I drew. I shared videos of myself editing the book early in the morning and late at night, etc … all of it made people who want leads get curious and pay attention. Tease: Think “Elements Of Value.” It’s time to start satisfying all the curiosity you created during the whisper phase. Reveal your product, make the date of the launch public, and start showing the elements of value. Shout: Think “Call to Action.” Give specific actions for the audience to take when the product launches. Now you start pounding the audience with bonuses, scarcity, urgency, and guarantees around being “the first ones.” You shout to get as many people exposed to your offer as you can.
Once you find something that works for you – stick to what you pick. Those are the best words of encouragement I can offer. The longer you play the game, the better you will get, and the more success you will have. Just don’t quit or switch methods after seeing a few losses. It’s normal to lose in the beginning. In fact, I expect to crack a new lead source in three to six months (and this isn’t my first rodeo). So if your expectations are faster than that, do you think your expectations are reasonable?
Waking up early, getting right to work, and working 8 hours straight has been my highest ROI “habit stack.”
]]>Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized the AI world in the past few months. There are commercial ones like OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Anthropic’s Claude 2.1, and open-source ones like Llama 2 and Mistral and their many fine-tunes.
With OpenAI’s models, you can control the output to a good extent using function calling and get structured data back from the models.
With many open-source LLMs, you can have even greater control over the outputs. In this post, I will talk about great libraries that can be used to fully control the outputs of LLMs using what’s being called “guided generation.” They all have similar capabilities, so I’ll mention some of the interesting or unique features of each one with some examples to give you an idea of how they work. For more details, you can check their documentation via the links provided below.
If you want to see my conclusion and the tool I ended up using, you can skip to the end of the post.
Guided generation in large language models (LLMs) is an advanced approach that allows you to steer the model to generate text in the format and patterns you need. This method involves guiding the language model’s text generation using specific techniques like regular expressions, JSON schemas, context-free grammars (CFGs), etc.
With guided generation, you can be sure that the LLM will adhere to your predefined patterns or structures, enhancing both its relevance and accuracy.
Luckily we have many open-source tools that support guided generation, and most of them are actively maintained. Below are the most prominent ones at the time of writing this post.
# of stars | # of commits | # of contributors |
---|---|---|
16.1K | 1,177 | 54 |
The following example shows how you can make the model choose from a list of predefined options and then generate text based on the choice.
from guidance import models, gen
lm = models.LlamaCpp("path/to/llama2.gguf", n_gpu_layers=-1, n_ctx=4096)
# capture the selection under the name 'answer'
lm = lm + f"Do you want a joke or a poem? A {select(['joke', 'poem'], name='answer')}.\n"
# make a choice based on the model's previous selection
if lm["answer"] == "joke":
lm += f"Here is a one-line joke about cats: " + gen('output', stop='\n')
else:
lm += f"Here is a one-line poem about dogs: " + gen('output', stop='\n')
The output will be something like:
Do you want a joke or a poem? A poem.
Here is a one-line poem about dogs: "Dogs are the best."
Another example showing how to use functions with Guidance:
from guidance import models, gen
lm = models.LlamaCpp("path/to/llama2.gguf", n_gpu_layers=-1, n_ctx=4096)
@guidance
def qa_bot(lm, query):
lm += f'''\
Q: {query}
Now I will choose to either SEARCH the web or RESPOND.
Choice: {select(["SEARCH", "RESPOND"], name="choice")}
'''
if lm["choice"] == "SEARCH":
lm += "A: I don't know, Google it!"
else:
lm += f'A: {gen(stop="Q:", name="answer")}'
return lm
query = "Who won the last Kentucky derby and by how much?"
lm + qa_bot(query)
which will output something like:
Q: Who won the last Kentucky derby and by how much?
Now I will choose to either SEARCH the web or RESPOND.
Choice: SEARCH
A: I don't know, Google it!
Notice how you can mix model generations with Python logic. For example, model selection between “SEARCH” and “RESPOND” is saved in choice
variable, then it’s used to decide what to do next. This can be a powerful feature that allows seamless integration of LLMs within your code.
# of stars | # of commits | # of contributors |
---|---|---|
4.4K | 483 | 51 |
import outlines
model = outlines.models.transformers("mistralai/Mistral-7B-v0.1")
generator = outlines.generate.choice(model, ["Blue", "Red", "Yellow"])
color = generator("What is the closest color to Indigo? ")
print(color)
which will output something like:
Blue
Another example showing how to use Pydantic models with Outlines:
from enum import Enum
from pydantic import BaseModel, constr, conint
import outlines
class Armor(str, Enum):
leather = "leather"
chainmail = "chainmail"
plate = "plate"
class Character(BaseModel):
name: constr(max_length=10)
age: conint(gt=18, lt=99)
armor: Armor
strength: conint(gt=1, lt=100)
model = outlines.models.transformers("mistralai/Mistral-7B-v0.1")
generator = outlines.generate.json(model, Character)
character = generator(
"Generate a new character for my awesome game: "
+ "name, age (between 1 and 99), armor and strength. "
)
print(character)
which will output something like:
name='Orla' age=21 armor=<Armor.plate: 'plate'> strength=8
Llama.cpp is one of the most popular LLM libraries out there. Its development is very active with hundreds of contributors. Its main goal is to “enable LLM inference with minimal setup and state-of-the-art performance on a wide variety of hardware - locally and in the cloud”.
# of stars | # of commits | # of contributors |
---|---|---|
50.4K | 2,092 | 555 |
llama.cpp supports guided generation to constrain the model’s output using GBNF grammars. GBNF is a grammar format that allows you to define the structure of the output you want to generate. GBNF might seem intimidating at first, but after you understand its syntax and go through some examples, you will find that it’s not that complex really.
The following quick example shows how to guide the model to generate output in the format of a list.
from llama_cpp import Llama, LlamaGrammar
llm = Llama(
model_path="mistral-7b-instruct-v0.2.Q4_K_M.gguf",
n_gpu_layers=-1
)
grammar = LlamaGrammar.from_string(
"""
# a grammar for lists
root ::= ("- " item)+
item ::= [^\n]+ "\n"
""".strip()
)
output = llm(
"List the names of some deep learning architectures.",
max_tokens=64,
temperature=0.5,
grammar=grammar
)
It will output something like:
- Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN)
- Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN)
- Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM)
- Autoencoder
- Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN)
The above tools are the ones that I used extensively and they are the most popular. But there are other tools that might be useful too:
Other than using these tools to force the model to generate text in a specific format, there is an alternative approach I’ve seen in some projects. It’s about using a powerful model that you instruct in the prompt to respond in a given format. You might provide some examples in the prompt as well. Then you parse the output to make sure it’s in the format you need. If not, you prompt the model to generate again, and so on.
Based on my experience with the three tools above (Guidance, Outlines, and llama.cpp), I ended up using llama.cpp for two main reasons:
I found llama.cpp to be more robust and reliable. I encountered some bugs with Guidance and Outlines. For example, I encountered an issue with Outlines that made generation fail randomly. I’m sure the maintainers will fix the issues, but with llama.cpp, I didn’t encounter any bugs.
llama.cpp is very active and has a large community. It’s the most starred LLM library on Github as far as I know. It has a lot of contributors and it’s being used by many projects. This means that it’s more likely to be maintained and improved in the future.
Plus llama.cpp is pretty fast (especially in the latest releases) and the GBNF grammar offers a lot of flexibility to guide the model’s output.
]]>Did you know that AI can now create images that are indistinguishable from those taken by top photographers or created by great designers? Not all AI models are created equal in this regard, this post aims to shed light on those that truly stand out in the world of image generation.
AI image generation started to take off in January 2022 when OpenAI launched their DALLE-2 model, then Midjourney launched their V4 model and Stability AI introduced and open-sourced Stable Diffusion 1.5. Those were all good models that shocked the world with their capabilities.
But things got really exciting in 2023 with OpenAI’s DALLE-3, Midjourney’s V5 then V6, and Stable Diffusion’s SDXL.
In this post, I’ll compare Midjourney V6, Midjourney V5.2, DALLE-3, and SDXL. I’ll use different prompts (taken from public galleries) that cover many aspects, like photorealism, illustrations, imagining a new concept, logo creation, ability to show text, ability to follow details in the prompt. The comparison is comprised of 52 prompts.
For each prompt, I’ll score each model’s generation out of 10, a score based on objective factors (like generation quality, following details, etc.) and subjective factors based on how I perceive the image and its aesthetics. I understand that the objective factors can have subjective elements as well, but at the end, these are just my scores :).
Note that for all the models I show 4 images per prompt except for SDXL where I show 1 image because it was faster for me to do it this way. After testing, I believe this approach doesn’t compromise the quality or fairness of the comparison; when you use these models to generate multiple images, the images tend to be similar and of the same quality.
For the generation, for Midjourney models, I used their Discord interface. For DALLE-3, I used Microsoft Image Creator. For SDXL, I used the official Stability AI’s offering on Replicate with default settings except for steps (I used 60) and size (I used 1024 x 1024).
Feel free to skip to the end of the post to see the results, but I encourage you to take a look at the images and enjoy watching the magic of AI image generation.
Now let’s get started with the comparison…
zen modern bauhaus abstract design with boho influence. Minimalistic and symmetrical, abundance of consistently-equal lines and only 1 shape, yellow-garnet and cream colour balance, spacious and breathability
Sad alien smoking, sitting on a ground, An alien ship crashed into the ground, desert
minimalism ,a delicate golden sailboat, sailing on translucent jade water with fluorescent purple, 3D,fluorescent green, light blue, light green, gold accents,spathoid, color gradients, fusion, flowing water pattern shapes, overhead, ultra wide Angle, Bright colors, color art, detail UHD,16K
fried egg flowers in the bacon garden shallow depth of field, highly detailed, high budget, bokeh, film grain, grainy
Illuminated (“The moon, a silver boat, sails through the sea of stars, painting dreams on the night sky.”:1.2) , Suffering, hillside, Cubism, side lit, Selective focus, Kodachrome, gilded technique, Batik
circuitboard egyptian pyramid, ((focus))
A man stands in the wilderness, blue dot light spinning, Vincent van Gogh’s painting style, pointillism style, magnificent landscapes, illustrations, negative space, intagliography, art, minimalism
An illustration of an avocado sitting in a therapist’s chair, saying ‘I just feel so empty inside’ with a pit-sized hole in its center. The therapist, a spoon, scribbles notes.
A 2D animation of a folk music band composed of anthropomorphic autumn leaves, each playing traditional bluegrass instruments, amidst a rustic forest setting dappled with the soft light of a harvest moon.
Photo of a lychee-inspired spherical chair, with a bumpy white exterior and plush interior, set against a tropical wallpaper.
An expressive oil painting of a basketball player dunking, depicted as an explosion of a nebula
An ink sketch style illustration of a small hedgehog holding a piece of watermelon with its tiny paws, taking little bites with its eyes closed in delight.
A vintage travel poster for Venus in portrait orientation. The scene portrays the thick, yellowish clouds of Venus with a silhouette of a vintage rocket ship approaching. Mysterious shapes hint at mountains and valleys below the clouds. The bottom text reads, ‘Explore Venus: Beauty Behind the Mist’. The color scheme consists of golds, yellows, and soft oranges, evoking a sense of wonder.
Tiny potato kings wearing majestic crowns, sitting on thrones, overseeing their vast potato kingdom filled with potato subjects and potato castles.
A stylized portrait-oriented depiction where a tiger serves as the dividing line between two contrasting worlds. To the left, fiery reds and oranges dominate as flames consume trees. To the right, a rejuvenated forest flourishes with fresh green foliage. The tiger, depicted with exaggerated and artistic features, stands tall and undeterred, symbolizing nature’s enduring spirit amidst chaos and rebirth.
A 3D render of a coffee mug placed on a window sill during a stormy day. The storm outside the window is reflected in the coffee, with miniature lightning bolts and turbulent waves seen inside the mug. The room is dimly lit, adding to the dramatic atmosphere.
An illustration of a human heart made of translucent glass, standing on a pedestal amidst a stormy sea. Rays of sunlight pierce the clouds, illuminating the heart, revealing a tiny universe within. The quote ‘Find the universe within you’ is etched in bold letters across the horizon.
An antique botanical illustration drawn with fine lines and a touch of watercolour whimsy, depicting a strange lily crossed with a Venus flytrap, its petals poised as if ready to snap shut on any unsuspecting insects.
A vibrant yellow banana-shaped couch sits in a cozy living room, its curve cradling a pile of colorful cushions. on the wooden floor, a patterned rug adds a touch of eclectic charm, and a potted plant sits in the corner, reaching towards the sunlight filtering through the window.
A minimalist, logo featuring a sleek and stylized black falcon head against a white background awesome, professional, vector logo, simple
Create cool Asian Design red white black with tress and The Moon
ornaments on a manuscript, cohesive colors of crimson and golden, geometry art, sacred ratios
a chicken in a suit
a real photo of a Luminescent radiant sun, black background
A man standing in the street, golden hour, 1990s
STICKER, popping art, company building collage art, white background,.jpeg transparent, colorful, color shading
mindface electrical diagram. Cellular marble cutaway by junji ito, Akira toriyama, Jean Leon Gerome
Anthropomorphic lion wearing a ski jumpsuit and gloves standing in the snow
a man in high-fashion campaign for Balmain jewelry, glittercore long exposure beauty shot in gigantic mirror prism, hundreds of reflections. Utilize 50mm lens, full-frame camera with a depth of field set to 16f and shutter speed at 4 seconds, dynamic compositions and storytelling, ensuring the scene captivates with both fashion finesse and narrative intrigue
ultramodern minimal living room with colorful ammolite stone pattern floor, colorful ammolite stone pattern floor
colorful dark baroque-inspired graphic fantasy novel illustration on rough paper, vintage poster style oil on canvas with expressive brush strokes and visible canvas weave texture minimalist cartoon illustration surrealism
Floral bouquet ornament frame background with Watercolor, isolated white background ,cartoon style, thick line,low detail,no shading
Based on the movie - Ferris Beuller’s Day Off - Cameron’s House - Model: Teen boy, pensive look, dark hair. - Clothing: Preppy sweater, collared shirt, khakis. - Shoes: Classic loafers. - Background: Darker, moody room, 80s memorabilia. - Mood: Reluctant, worried. - Camera: Nikon Z7, full-body shot. - Lighting: Dim, soft light. - Angle: Slightly high, showing the room’s depth. Shot should be hyper-realistic and cinematic, capturing the essence of the iconic film while showcasing the 80s inspired fashion in a full-body, distance photograph. HYPER REALISTIC PHOTOGRAPH - FULL BODY IMAGE - MUST SHOW SHOES
sheep pasture, portrait of a young man, small geometrically cut photo collage, distorted, broken, fragmented maximalist, Picasso, very detailed
ethereal, contemporary portrait photograph, a man’s contemplative face partially emerges from deep shadows, surrounded by a soft blur. The muted orange tones envelop the subject, while a prism-like rainbow spectrum highlights his eye, invoking a sense of mystery. The composition leverages the interplay of light and shadow, creating a dynamic yet introspective mood
abstract art by Mondrian with solid lines and blocks of color, there are illustrated cats placed in the colored boxes in various cute poses
mushrooms different varieties watercolor
the most beautiful picture on earth
logo of two letters “AI” in Knitted STYLE
Gold coins were scattered on the wet rock steps, and a golden sunshine shone down on an area, reflecting the glittering gold,Photorealistic, Global Illumination, 32k, Ray Tracing Ambient Occlusion, Hyperrealistic
this logo won the best logo of all time award
a logo for a software for quality managers using the quality colorus red, green and orange as well as underline the brand values: undestanding, relationship and dependability as well as the characteristics friendly, easy, masculine, serious and industrial
a simple vector art symbol logo for a flower and fire,, and war. No color. No watermark. White background, black lines only. Simple line art.
a sharply-focused black and white painting based on a squared-shaped face with various surrounding geometric shapes, in the style of hundertwasser, in the style of elke trittel, mechanical whimsy, columns and totems, mixed-media sculptor, folk art painting, yaka art, collage and mixed media
a complex logo for a university named Princess X for Science
Risographic style geometric
An abstract work of art consisting of various geometric figures, vignetting photography, photo grade, 2K, hyper quality
Create an illustration of a protractor, a triangle, and a square. Use simple shapes and clear lines.
universe
There is a yellow bird in the middle of the black flock, comic
Pareidolia, scifi pulp magazine style, by Lisa Frank
Drawing on paper with colored pencils. The kitten is cute cartoon, smiling and sitting on the grass. Against the background of the landscape
My rating of the tested models:
Book page on Goodreads: The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017.
The book talks about the history of the conflict in today’s Palestine and Israel since its beginning in the 19th century. The author is a professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia university; the book cites many authentic sources and archival materials. The book is divided into parts where each part talks about a significant period of time in the conflict.
I started reading the book after the current episode of the conflict started in October 2023. Although I’m familiar with the situation as I’m from the region, this book gave me a lot of new information about the history of the conflict. I liked that it cites many references including many western and Israeli sources and archives, not only Palestinian and Arabic sources. I think it’s a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the conflict and its important history.
I took a lot of notes while reading the book: it was filled with important details and historical material that are essential to understanding the conflict as a whole with the right context. So I ended up with 64 pages of notes! I thought it’s not practical to share all of them here in a blog post. So I used GPT-4 on ChatGPT to summarize the notes of each chapter in quick bullet points. They give a good idea about what the chapter is about. However, they are definitely not a replacement for reading the book.
Here are the AI summarized notes from each chapter.
The chapter “The First Declaration of War, 1917–1939” from the book “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine” discusses the impacts of World War I and subsequent British policies on Palestine, leading to a prolonged conflict with the Palestinian people.
This chapter focuses on Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, particularly against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
The chapter “The Fifth Declaration of War, 1987–1995” from “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine” covers a significant period in Palestinian-Israeli history, focusing on the First Intifada and its aftermath. Here’s a summary of the key points and events:
where \(R\) is the average book rating, \(v\) is the number of ratings for the book, \(m\) is the minimum number of ratings required to be considered (a parameter to set based on your dataset), \(C\) is the mean rating across the entire dataset.
Book page on Goodreads: The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It.
The main two ideas in the book for me are: 1) Having a business is not only about the technical work that produces the business product. The “technician” inside us should be accompanied with a manager and an entrepreneur for the business to grow and succeed. 2) The importance of systematizing the business, of making the business systems-dependent rather than expert-dependent. In that case, you need employees who follow great detailed systems to offer the same quality of service every time.
The book opened my eyes on two great ideas mentioned above. However, I think the book could use more organization of its contents. And I’d like to see a similar book about software business and startups specifically.
Entrepreneurial Seizure: Inside your mind it sounded something like this: “What am I doing this for? Why am I working for this guy? Hell, I know as much about this business as he does. If it weren’t for me, he wouldn’t have a business. Any dummy can run a business. I’m working for one.” Here lies a fatal assumption: if you understand the technical work of a business, you understand a business that does that technical work. And the reason it’s fatal is that it just isn’t true. In fact, it’s the root cause of most small business failures!
We all have an Entrepreneur, Manager, and Technician inside us. And if they were equally balanced, we’d be describing an incredibly competent individual. The Entrepreneur would be free to forge ahead into new areas of interest; The Manager would be solidifying the base of operations; and The Technician would be doing the technical work.
An entrepreneurial business, without a Manager to give it order and without a Technician to put it to work, is doomed to suffer an early, and probably very dramatic, death. A Manager-driven business, without an Entrepreneur or a Technician to play their absolutely critical roles, will put things into little gray boxes over and over again, only to realize too late that there’s no reason for the things or the boxes she put them into! Such a business will die very neatly. A Technician-driven business, without The Entrepreneur to lead her and The Manager to supervise her, The Technician will work until she drops, only to wake up the next morning to go to work even harder, and the next, and the next. Only to discover, long after it’s too late, that while she was working someone moved a freeway through the store!
Infancy of a business ends when the owner realizes that the business cannot continue to run the way it has been; that, in order for it to survive, it will have to change.
It’s only a problem when The Technician consumes all the other personalities. When The Technician fills your day with work. When The Technician avoids the challenge of learning how to grow a business. When The Technician shrinks from the entrepreneurial role so necessary to the lifeblood, the momentum, of a truly extraordinary small business, and from the managerial role so critical to the operational balance or grounding of a small business on a day-to-day basis.
You might say: “But I can’t even imagine what my business would be like without me doing the work. It has always depended on me. If it weren’t for me, my customers would go someplace else.” If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic! You might then say: “But what if I want to do the technical work in my business? What if I don’t want to do anything else but that?” Then for God’s sake, get rid of your business! And get rid of it as quickly as you can. Because you can’t have it both ways. You can’t ignore the financial accountabilities, the marketing accountabilities, the sales and administrative accountabilities. You can’t ignore your future employees’ need for leadership, for purpose, for responsible management, for effective communication, for something more than just a job in which their sole purpose is to support you doing your job.
Once your Technician begins to let go, once you make room for the rest of you to flourish, the game becomes more rewarding than you can possibly imagine at this point in your business’s life.
A dolescence begins at the point in the life of your business when you decide to get some help.
Every Adolescent business reaches a point where it pushes beyond its owner’s Comfort Zone—the boundary within which he feels secure in his ability to control his environment, and outside of which he begins to lose that control.
And as the business grows beyond the owner’s Comfort Zone, there are only three courses of action to be taken, only three ways the business can turn. It can return to Infancy. It can go for broke. Or it can hang on for dear life.
One of the most consistent and predictable reactions of The Technician-turned-business-owner to Adolescent chaos is the decision to “get small” again. According to the Small Business Administration, more than 400,000 such businesses close their doors in the United States every year.
The Adolescent business has another alternative that is certainly less painful and decidedly more dramatic than “getting small.” It can just keep growing faster and faster until it self-destructs of its own momentum.
At the heart of the Turn-Key Revolution is a way of doing business that has the power to dramatically transform any small business from a condition of chaos and dis ease to a condition of order, excitement, and continuous growth. It is the Turn-Key Revolution that provides us with that illusive key to the development of an extraordinary business: the ultimately balanced model of a business that works.
…But the genius of McDonald’s isn’t franchising itself. The franchise has been around for more than a hundred years. The true genius of Ray Kroc’s McDonald’s is the Business Format Franchise.
According to studies conducted by the U.S. Commerce Department from 1971 to 1987, less than 5 percent of franchises have been terminated on an annual basis, or 25 percent in five years. Compare that statistic to the more than 80-percent failure rate of independently owned businesses, and you can immediately understand the power of the Turn-Key Revolution in our economy, and the contribution that the Business Format Franchise has made to it and the future success of your business. The Business Format Franchise is built on the belief that the true product of a business is not what it sells but how it sells it. The true product of a business is the business itself. You should build a systems-dependent business, not a people-dependent business. A business that could work without you.
The reason for the success of Business Format Franchises is the Franchise Prototype. To the franchisor, the Prototype becomes the working model of the dream; it is the dream in microcosm. Once having completed his Prototype, the franchisor then turns to the franchisee and says, “Let me show you how it works.” And work it does. The system runs the business. The people run the system.
In the Franchise Prototype, the system becomes the solution to the problems that have beset all businesses and all human organizations since time immemorial. The system integrates all the elements required to make a business work.
At Ray Kroc’s McDonald’s, every possible detail of the business system was first tested in the Prototype, and then controlled to a degree never before possible in a people-intensive business. The french fries were left in the warming bin for no more than seven minutes to prevent sogginess. Hamburgers were removed from the hot trays in no more than ten minutes to retain the proper moisture…
Unlike the trade name franchise before it, Ray Kroc’s system left the franchisee with as little operating discretion as possible. This was accomplished by sending him through a rigorous training program before ever being allowed to operate the franchise. If the franchisor has designed the business well, every problem has been thought through. All that’s left for the franchisee to do is learn how to manage the system.
The Franchise Prototype is the answer to the perpetual question: “How do I give my customer what he wants while maintaining control of the business that’s giving it to him?”
The Franchise Prototype is the model of a business that works. The balanced model that will satisfy The Entrepreneur, The Manager, and The Technician all at once. And it’s been there all the time! It’s been there at McDonald’s. And at Federal Express. And at Disney World. And at Mrs. Field’s Cookies. It’s been there at Subway Sandwiches and Domino’s Pizza and Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut. It’s been there at Taco Bell and UPS and Universal Studios.
Pretend that the business you own—or want to own—is the prototype, or will be the prototype, for 5,000 more just like it. That your business is going to serve as the model for 5,000 more just like it.
You should assume that the model will be operated by people with the lowest possible level of skill. Because if your model depends on highly skilled people, it’s going to be impossible to replicate. Such people are at a premium in the marketplace. They’re also expensive. You should ask: How can I create a business whose results are systems-dependent rather than people-dependent? Systems-dependent rather than expert-dependent.
All work in the model should be documented in Operations Manuals.
The model should utilize a uniform color, dress, and facilities code.
Go to work on your business rather than in it, and ask yourself the following questions:
Your Business Development Program is the step-by-step process through which you convert your existing business—or the one you’re about to create—into a perfectly organized model for thousands more just like it. The Program is composed of seven distinct steps:
Your Strategic Objective is a very clear statement of what your business has to ultimately do for you to achieve your Primary Aim. In this context, your business is a means rather than an end, a vehicle to enrich your life rather than one that drains the life you have.
The first standard of your Strategic Objective is money. Gross revenues. How big is your vision? How big will your company be when it’s finally done? Will it be a $300,000 company? A million-dollar company? A $500-million company? If you don’t know the answer, how can you possibly know whether your business can help you realize your Primary Aim?
The organizational development reflected in the Organization Chart can have a more profound impact on a small company than any other single Business Development step.
If everybody’s doing everything, then who’s accountable for anything?
Without an Organization Chart, everything hinges on luck and good feelings, on the personalities of the people and the goodwill they share.
An example Organization Chart might require the following positions:
Names should fill all the boxes in the Organization Chart even if the business consists of two people only; these two persons will be the shareholders and the employees. The next job is writing a Position Contract for each position on the Organization Chart. A Position Contract is a summary of the results to be achieved by each position in the company, the work the occupant of that position is accountable for, a list of standards by which the results are to be evaluated, and a line for the signature of the person who agrees to fulfill those accountabilities.
You may think that the successful implementation of a management strategy is dependent on finding amazingly competent managers—people with finely honed “people skills,” with degrees from management schools, with highly sophisticated techniques for dealing with and developing their people. It isn’t. You don’t need such people. Nor can you afford them. What you need, instead, is a Management System. Create your Management System, and teach your up-and-coming managers to use it.
People do not simply want to work for exciting people. They want to work for people who have created a clearly defined structure for acting in the world. A structure through which they can test themselves and be tested.
In the development of your Marketing Strategy, it is absolutely imperative that you forget about your dreams, forget about your visions, forget about your interests, forget about what you want— forget about everything but your customer!
There is a famous dictum that says, “Find a need and fill it.” It’s inaccurate. It should say, “Find a perceived need and fill it.” Because if your customer doesn’t perceive he needs something, he doesn’t, even if he actually does. Get it? Those perceptions are at the heart of your customer’s decision-making process. And if you know his demographics, you can understand what those perceptions are, and then figure out what you must do to satisfy them and the expectations they produce.
Each demographic model has a specific set of perceptions that are identifiable in advance. Women of a certain age, with a certain amount of education, with a certain size family, living in a certain geography, buy for very specific psychographic reasons. Those unconsciously held reasons will be different from another group of women, of a different age and marital status, with a different educational background, living in a different part of the country.
…An age in which your customer is deluged by so many products and promises that he becomes swamped in confusion and indecision. The challenge of our age is to learn our customer’s language. And then to speak that language clearly and well so that your voice can be heard above the din.
“Who are my customers, specifically? What is their Demographic Profile?” How do you answer these questions? You ask them! You ask each and every one of them, by having them complete a questionnaire in return for a free gift! The free gift is the price you pay for that information. The answers you get will prove to be a bonanza! But, while you’re at it, you might as well get the psychographic data you need, as well as the geographic data you need. How do you do that? You find out on your questionnaire what colors they prefer, what shapes, what words. You find out the brands of perfume they buy, automobiles, clothes, jewelry, food. You match those brands to the ads and commercials that sell them…
…How do you find them, those people you have not yet met? You buy a list of those who fit your Central Demographic Model in what you’ve now determined to be your Trading Zone! What’s your Trading Zone? It’s the geographic perimeter within which your current customers mainly live. You take their addresses from your questionnaire…
What is a selling system? It’s a fully orchestrated interaction between you and your customer that follows six primary steps:
At E-Myth Worldwide, we call it the Power Point Selling System. A career development company we worked with put it in the hands of people with no experience, and revenues increased 300 percent in one year.
Let’s look more specifically at the most important component of the Power Point Selling System, the Power Point Selling Process. It consists of: 1) The Appointment Presentation 2) The Needs Analysis Presentation 3) The Solutions Presentation.
The purpose of an Appointment Presentation is one thing and one thing only: to make an appointment. It is a series of words, delivered on the telephone or in person, that engage the prospect’s unconscious by speaking primarily about the product you have to sell rather than the commodity. For example: “Hi, Mr. Jackson. I’m Johnny Jones with Walter Mitty Company. Have you seen the remarkable new things that are being done to control money these days?” “What new things?” “Well, that’s exactly why I called. May I have a moment of your time?”
The Needs Analysis Presentation: The first thing you do in a Needs Analysis Presentation is repeat what you said in the Appointment Presentation to reestablish the emotional commitment: “Remember, Mr. Jackson, when we first talked I mentioned that some remarkable new things were going on in the world to control money?” The second thing you do is tell the prospect how you would like to proceed to fulfill your promise to him: “Well, what I’d like to do is to tell you about those things. At the same time, I’d like to show you some incredibly effective ways my firm, Walter Mitty Company, has developed to help you to control money here in your business Okay?” The third thing you do is to establish your credibility in the prospect’s mind by communicating two things. First, your company’s expertise is such matters: “We are Money-Controlling Specialists”. And second, your personal willingness to do whatever is necessary to utilize that expertise on his behalf: “Let me tell you why we created our company, Mr. Jackson. We’ve found that people like yourself are continually frustrated by not being able to get the most out of their money. Frustrated by paying higher interest rates than they have to. By working with financial experts who don’t seem to know what they’re doing. By banking with a bank that doesn’t seem to have their best interest at heart” And so on. “Do these things ever frustrate you. Mr Jackson? Of course they do And that’s why Walter Mitty Company has created a Money-Controlling System that makes it possible for you to get the most preferential treatment in the financial arena while paying the least for it. Now I know that sounds too good to be true. But let me explain how we propose to go about doing that for you…. “ The fourth thing you do in a Needs Analysis Presentation is describe the Walter Mitty Company’s Money-Controlling System and why it works so well. Not what it does but the impact it will have on the prospect: “…In order to do that we’ve created what we call at Walter Mitty Company a Money Management Questionnaire… So let’s review the Questionnaire together, and when we’re done I’ll provide you with a summary of some of the remarkable new things that are happening in the world to control money. And then I’ll take your information back so we can prepare your Financial Report…” The fifth thing Johnny Jones does in the Needs Analysis Presentation is complete the Money Management Questionnaire. The sixth thing Johnny Jones does is provide the prospective customer with the information he promised and show him how relevant it is to the Financial Report he will be preparing for him. The seventh thing Johnny Jones does in the Needs Analysis Presentation is make an appointment with the prospective customer to return with the Financial Report, reminding him that Johnny Jones will have some valuable solutions for him—at no cost!
The Solutions Presentation simply provides the rational armament for the emotional commitment. Here Johnny Jones brings the prospect up-to-date by reviewing everything he said and did during the Needs Analysis Presentation. The prospect has forgotten all those psychographically compelling things by now. But he won’t for long— they’re a part of him. Then Johnny Jones reviews in great, patient, and earnest detail every last word, comma, and number in his prospective customer’s Financial Report! He asks questions to make certain that the prospect feels that this is his Financial Report, not Walter Mitty Company’s. And when Johnny Jones is done, when he’s reviewed all of the components of the Financial Report prepared just for his prospect, Mr. asks him this question: “Of the options we’ve suggested here, Mr. Jackson, which do you feel would best serve you right now?” And then waits for the answer! Because the next person who speaks is going to make a purchase. If that’s Johnny Jones, he’s going to buy a “no sale.”
Beautiful quote from the book unrelated to the main topic of the book: “I’m a little girl again. When I still had my hiding places. Before I lost my spirit. It’s summer, and I’m lying in bed looking up at the ceiling in my room, feeling the cool summer breeze floating through the open window. There’s nothing I have to do; there’s no place I have to be. It’s the most wonderful feeling of my life, lying here like this, opening my eyes, closing them, dreaming, smelling the wonderful summer smells, the smell of cut grass, the smell of the water sprinkling on the lawn, the fullness of it.”
]]>Book page on Goodreads: Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling.
The book talks about the art of finding, forming, and creating stories that you can tell on a stage, at dinner with friends, etc. The book introduces the “homework for life” where you write a brief description every day about the most story-worthy moment of that day. This helps you find stories and make time slow down for you; you will stop feeling that days and years go by in a flash. The book discusses that each story is really about a 5-second moment in which change happens and heart moves. The best beginning of a story is at the opposite state of that 5-second moment. The book talks about strategies to make the audience more interested and engaged with your story (The Elephant, Backpacks, Breadcrumbs, Hourglasses, and Crystal Balls). The book also shows how to create a cinema in the minds of your listeners by simply providing a physical location for every moment of your story. It talks how surprise is the only way to elicit an emotional reaction from your audience. It states that the present tense is the best tense to tell stories because it makes audience more “present” in your story. It teaches you how to tell a success story.
Good book that contains some useful techniques to be a better story teller. The techniques mentioned in the book could have been told in a much shorter book. However, it was enjoyable to read the author unique stories throughout the book.
Anyone interested in becoming a better story teller.
Let’s also be clear that when I talk about storytelling, I am speaking about personal narrative. True stories told by the people who lived them.
Your story must reflect change over time. A story cannot simply be a series of remarkable events. Regardless of whether your change is infinitesimal or profound, positive or negative, your story must reflect change.
If you wouldn’t tell your story at dinner that way, for goodness’ sake don’t tell it onstage that way. Storytelling is not theater. It is not poetry. It should be a slightly more crafted version of the story you would tell your buddies over beers.
What is “Homework for Life”? I decided that at the end of every day, I’d reflect upon my day and ask myself one simple question: If I had to tell a story from today — a five-minute story onstage about something that took place over the course of this day — what would it be? As benign and boring and inconsequential as it might seem, what was the most storyworthy moment from my day? I decided not to write the entire story down, because to do so would require too much time and effort.
There’s an added bonus to Homework for Life. It might just be the most important reason to do the exercise. As you begin to take stock of your days, find those moments — see them and record them — time will begin to slow down for you. The pace of your life will relax.
This change (resulting from doing the Homework for Life) won’t happen instantly, and in this world, most people want their results instantaneously.
Stream of consciousness is the act of speaking or writing down whatever thought that enters your mind, regardless of how strange, incongruous, or even embarrassing it may be. People have been utilizing stream-of-consciousness strategies for a long time. It helps in generating new ideas and resurrecting old memories.
Rules for doing the stream of consciousness exercise:
That’s it. Set a timer for ten minutes, follow these three rules, and go. I always launch my sessions with an object in the room, but you can start any way you want.
All you need for this exercise is pen and paper. Fill the “First”, “Last”, “Best”, and “Worst” columns for each prompt as you can see in the example image below:
Every great story ever told is essentially about a five-second moment in the life of a human being, and the purpose of the story is to bring that moment to the greatest clarity possible. So dig. Search. Hunt. Fight for the five-second moment. Allow yourself to recall the entire event. Don’t get hung up on the big moments, the unbelievable circumstances, or the hilarious details. Seek out the moments when you felt your heart move. When something changed forever, even if that moment seems minuscule compared to the rest of the story.
Once you’ve distilled your five-second moment down to its essence, ask yourself: What is the opposite of your five-second moment? Simply put, the beginning of the story should be the opposite of the end. Find the opposite of your transformation, revelation, or realization, and this is where your story should start. This is what creates an arc in your story. This is how a story shows change over time.
Try to start your story with forward movement whenever possible.
In 2016, humorist Mo Rocca delivered a commencement speech at Sarah Lawrence College and provided one granular bit of wisdom that is both applicable and memorable:
Some perspective: Your great-grandparents — and some of you may be lucky enough to have known them — survived the Great Depression and defended freedom during World War II, defeating Hitler and the forces of darkness, ensuring that their progeny could also enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There’s a very good reason the women and men of that generation are known in history as the Greatest Generation. Well, I did some research, and it turns out that the life expectancy of that generation was just 54. Your life expectancy is 76. That means that you can take a deep breath, chill out — catch up on House of Cards and Narcos — and spend the next twenty-two years figuring out what you want to do — and you could still end up matching the achievements of the Greatest Generation.
I use five different strategies to infuse stories with stakes:
The Elephant: The Elephant is the thing that everyone in the room can see. It is large and obvious. It is a clear statement of the need, the want, the problem, the peril, or the mystery. It signifies where the story is headed. When a storyteller begins speaking, whether in a theater or a dining room or a conference room, the audience often has no idea of what to expect. The Elephant tells the audience what to expect. It gives them a reason to listen, a reason to wonder. The Elephant is the difference between these two beginnings of a story:
Version #1: My mother was the kind of woman whom everyone adored. The model of decorum and civility. She served as PTO president and treasurer of the ladies’ auxiliary. She was the only female umpire in our town’s Little League. She baked and knit and grew vegetables by the pound.
Version #2: I don’t care how perfect my mother was. When I was nine years old, I wanted to disown her. Leave home and never return. Forget she ever existed. My mother was the kind of woman whom everyone adored. The model of decorum and civility. She served as PTO president and treasurer of the ladies’ auxiliary. She was the only female umpire in our town’s Little League. She baked and knit and grew vegetables by the pound.
Elephants can also change color. That is, the need, want, problem, peril, or mystery stated in the beginning of the story can change along the way. Don’t switch Elephants. Simply change the color.
Backpacks: A Backpack is a strategy that increases the stakes of the story by increasing the audience’s anticipation about a coming event. It’s when a storyteller loads up the audience with all the storyteller’s hopes and fears in that moment before moving the story forward. In “Charity Thief,” I stick a Backpack on my audience when I describe my plan for begging for money before entering the gas station. Backpacks are most effective when a plan does not work.
Breadcrumbs: Storytellers use Breadcrumbs when we hint at a future event but only reveal enough to keep the audience guessing. In “Charity Thief,” I drop a Breadcrumb when I say: “But as I climb back into the car, I see my crumpled McDonald’s uniform on the backseat, and I suddenly have an idea.” The trick is to choose the Breadcrumbs that create the most wonder in the minds of your audience without giving them enough to guess correctly. Breadcrumbs are particularly effective when the truly unexpected is coming.
Hourglasses: There comes a time in many stories when you reached a moment (or the moment) that the audience has been waiting for. This is the moment to use an Hourglass. It’s time to slow things down. Grind them to a halt when possible. We all know what a McDonald’s uniform looks like, yet (in “Charity Thief”) I choose to describe it anyway, in the greatest detail. This is because I have my audience now. I own them. They cannot wait for that blue door to open so the unknown can become known.
Crystal Balls: A Crystal Ball is a false prediction made by a storyteller to cause the audience to wonder if the prediction will prove to be true. In “Charity Thief,” I say:
[The man] points his finger at me and says, “You stay right there.” Then he walks back into his house, and I know what he’s doing. He’s calling the police, and they will come and arrest me for stealing money from McDonald’s.
In storytelling, deploy Crystal Balls strategically: Only when your prediction seems possible. Only when your guess is reasonable. And only when your prediction presents an intriguing or exciting possibility.
Lie #1: Omission: If a person doesn’t fill a role in your story, simply pretend that person wasn’t there.
Lie #2: Compression: …In reality, my sister and I planned the jump on one day and I executed it the next. But why stretch out a story over the course of two days when nothing of consequence happens between the planning and execution? It’s easier for an audience to see and understand my story if all the events take place within a single afternoon. My Saturday-Sunday story becomes a Saturday-afternoon story.
There are more 3 lies mentioned in the book.
A great storyteller creates a movie in the mind of the audience. At no point should the story become visually obscured or impossible to see. In order to achieve this lofty goal, storytellers must do one thing, and happily for you, it’s exceedingly simple: Always provide a physical location for every moment of your story.
Version #1: My grandmother’s name is Odelie Dicks, which probably explains why she is who she is. She’s a crooked old lady in both body and mind. She wears only dark colors and likes to serve food that has stewed in pots for days. I like to imagine that there was a time in her life when she smiled — or at least didn’t scowl — but if that time existed, it was long before me.
Version #2 I’m standing at the edge of my grandmother’s garden, watching her relentlessly pull weeds from the unforgiving soil. My grandmother’s name is Odelie Dicks, which probably explains why she is who she is. She’s a crooked old lady in both body and mind. She wears only dark colors and likes to serve food that has stewed in pots for days. I like to imagine that there was a time in her life when she smiled — or at least didn’t scowl — but if that time existed, it was long before me.
One of these versions is the beginning of a story. The other sounds more like the beginning of an essay.
A clear majority of human beings tend to connect their sentences, paragraphs, and scenes together with the word and. This is a mistake. The ideal connective tissue in any story are the words but and therefore, along with all their glorious synonyms. These buts and therefores can be either explicit or implied.
When it comes to storytelling, I believe that surprise is the only way to elicit an emotional reaction from your audience. Whether it’s laughter, tears, anger, sadness, outrage, or any other emotional response, the key is surprise.
In “This Is Going to Suck”, I enhance the collision surprise through contrast. I paint a very different picture (beautiful and calm picture) of the world right before the collision.
Common mistakes that storytellers make that ruin surprise include:
Even non-funny stories can have funny moments like “This is Going to Suck”.
Milk Cans and a Baseball: The trick is to work to the laugh by using language that carefully builds your tower while saving the funniest thing for last. Sadly, the instinct of most people is to say the funniest thing first. For example, in a story entitled “Homeless and the Goat,” I tell the story about the period of my life when I was homeless. Near the end I say, “I was rescued from the streets by a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I sleep in a pantry off their kitchen that they’ve converted into a tiny bedroom. I share this room with a Jehovah’s Witness named Rick, a guy who speaks in tongues in his sleep, and the family’s indoor pet goat.” Goat is funny, but it’s only funny when said properly. When my friends tell this story on my behalf, they kill the humor. They kill it because they can’t wait to say the word goat.
Babies and Blenders: Babies and Blenders is the idea that when two things that rarely or never go together are pushed together, humor often results. …This always gets a laugh, because three-year-old boys are rarely described as assholes, especially after being described as sweet, angelic, and little. In the story about the way that my grandmother pulled my loose teeth, I refer to her as a sadist. Grandmother and sadist are rarely seen together, so it’s funny.
…Do you feel as if you’re on the train with me? I’m loading you up with sensory information. The sounds and sights and feel of the train. Another strategy that I’m using to put you on this train with me is the use of the present tense.
Some storytellers are able to see their stories. As they tell it, they almost relive the moments. Rather than staring into the eyes of their audience, their minds recreate a vision of the events as they unfold.
There is nothing wrong with sharing your success stories, but they are hard stories to tell well. The truth is this: failure is more engaging than success. Nevertheless, there are times when you might want to tell a success story, and when you do, there are two strategies that I suggest you employ.
…Why do I open my story with this moment? I want to be sure that my audience knows that I’m not perfect, nor am I pretending to be. I’m not the best teacher in the world. Not even close. I may save a girl’s life, but I also struck a child with flying footwear. I marginalize myself. I cast myself as the underdog by sharing a highly imperfect moment of teaching, so I can tell you about the closer-to-perfect one later. I maligned myself by admitting I’d thrown a shoe at a student. I marginalized my accomplishment by pointing out that while I may have saved Lisa, I had failed to save the many who came before her.
Human beings love underdog stories. The love for the underdog is universal. Underdogs are supposed to lose, so when they manage to pull out an unexpected or unbelievable victory, our sense of joy is more intense than if that same underdog suffers a crushing defeat.
…This is how to tell a success story: Rather than telling a story of your full and complete accomplishment, tell the story of a small part of the success.
It’s hard to be authentic and vulnerable when you’re reciting lines. It’s also obvious to an audience when a storyteller is simply reciting a story instead of telling a story. Instead of memorizing your story word-for-word, memorize three parts to a story:
When you can see your audience — in a classroom, a conference room, your aunt’s kitchen, a reception hall, or a faculty meeting — eye contact is important. You can’t speak to the middle distance and expect your audience to connect. My suggestion is this: Find a person on your left, a person on your right, and a person dead center who likes you. These will be the people who are smiling. Nodding. Laughing. Use these three people as your guideposts. Make eye contact with them, and the people in each of those areas will feel you are attending to them as well.
]]>Book page on Goodreads: Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery.
The book criticizes materialism and provides evidences that contradict materialism principles. Materialism is not based on science; it is a belief that achieved its dominance within institutional science in the second half of the nineteenth century. Many scientists use multiverse theories like superstring theory which are untestable theories to explain why the conditions and constants at the time of the Big Bang were suitable (fine tuned) for biological life to be possible. If they were slightly different, biological life could never have emerged. They use these theories to avoid believing in a creator God. The book talks, with supporting evidence, about telepathy, hypnosis, inedia phenomenon (not eating nor drinking for years), and other experiences that challenge the materialistic view of the world. The book discusses, with examples, how scientists are normal humans who might be corrupted and do unethical deeds. The book shows how modern science is so focused on material matter; it downplays and don’t give a way to other sciences that might prove to be of great benefits like alternative medicine. The book talks about the vast gulf between the rhetoric about the powers of genes and what they actually do and the disappointment that occurred after the results of the Human Genome Project had appeared.
It was a little annoying that the author mentions “morphic resonance” a lot as an explanation of some phenomena although it seems to not have a strong proof. He refers us to another book of him where he explains more about it.
People idolizing modern scientists and thinking that “modern science” is the only way to know. People who use science as a religion.
The Cosmological Anthropic Principle asserts that if the laws and constants of nature had been slightly different at the moment of the Big Bang, biological life could never have emerged, and hence we would not be here to think about it. So did a divine mind fine-tune the laws and constants in the beginning? To avoid a creator God emerging in a new guise, most leading cosmologists prefer to believe that our universe is one of a vast, and perhaps infinite, number of parallel universes, all with different laws and constants, as M-theory also suggests. We just happen to exist in the one that has the right conditions for us. This multiverse theory is the ultimate violation of Occam’s Razor, the philosophical principle that “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity,” or in other words, that we should make as few assumptions as possible. It also has the major disadvantage of being untestable. And it does not even succeed in getting rid of God. An infinite God could be the God of an infinite number of universes.
According to the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, the fact that the “laws” and “constants” of nature are just right for human life on this planet requires an explanation. If these laws and constants had been even slightly different, carbon-based life would not exist. One response is to suggest that an Intelligent Designer fine-tuned the laws and constants of nature at the moment of the Big Bang so they were exactly right for the emergence of life and human beings. This is a modern version of deism. But an appeal to a divine mind, albeit of a remote, mathematical kind, is contrary to the atheistic spirit of much modern science. Instead many cosmologists prefer to think that there are innumerable actually existing universes besides our own, each with different laws and constants. In these “multiverse” models the fact that we occupy a universe that is just right for us is explained very simply. This is the only universe that we can actually observe precisely because it is the only one right for us. The other theoretical reason for the popularity of the multiverse is superstring theory. This ten-dimensional theory and the related eleven-dimensional M-theory generate far too many possible solutions, which could correspond to different universes, as many as 10500.
Multiverse theories assume that particular laws and constants are built into each separate universe at the moment of its origin or Big Bang. They are somehow “imprinted” in each universe. But how are they remembered? How does an individual universe “know” what laws and constants are governing it, as opposed to the different laws and constants of other universes? As the cosmologist Martin Rees expressed it, “The physical laws were themselves ‘laid down’ in the Big Bang.” But, he admitted, “The mechanisms that might ‘imprint’ the basic laws and constants in a new universe are obviously far beyond anything we understand.” Some physicists and cosmologists are unhappy with these speculations. A vast number of unobserved universes violates the canon of scientific testability. Multiverse supporters claim that mathematics itself, in the form of string and M-theories, provides evidence in favor of their speculations. But string and M-theories themselves, on which many of these speculations are based, are untestable. One critic, Peter Woit, called his book on the subject Not Even Wrong. Even generic predictions that superstring theory shares with other theories, such as supersymmetry, have not fared well.
The founders of mechanistic science in the seventeenth century, including Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, were all practicing Christians. Newton calculated that the Day of Judgment would occur between the years 2060 and 2344.
Materialists recognized only one reality: the material world. The spiritual realm did not exist. Gods, angels and spirits were figments of the human imagination, and human minds were nothing but aspects or by-products of brain activity. The materialist philosophy achieved its dominance within institutional science in the second half of the nineteenth century, and was closely linked to the rise of atheism in Europe. Twenty-first-century atheists, like their predecessors, take the doctrines of materialism to be established scientific facts, not just assumptions. When it was combined with the idea that the entire universe was like a machine running out of steam, according to the second law of thermodynamics, materialism led to the cheerless worldview expressed by the philosopher Bertrand Russell: “That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collisions of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system; and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be built.”
Big Bang theory: It was not until 1927 that Georges Lemaître, a cosmologist and Roman Catholic priest, advanced a scientific hypothesis like Hume’s idea of the origin of the universe in an egg or seed. Lemaître suggested that the universe began with a “creation-like event,” which he described as “the cosmic egg exploding at the moment of creation.” Later called the Big Bang, this new cosmology echoed many archaic stories of origins, like the Orphic creation myth of the Cosmic Egg in ancient Greece, or the Indian myth of Hiranyagarbha, the primal Golden Egg. Lemaître’s theory predicted the expansion of the universe, and was supported by the discovery that galaxies outside our own are moving away from us with a speed proportional to their distance. In 1964, the discovery of a faint background glow everywhere in the universe, the cosmic microwave background radiation, revealed what seemed to be fossil light left over from the early universe, soon after the Big Bang. The evidence for an initial “creation-like event” became overwhelming, and by 1966 the Big Bang theory became orthodox.
According to the theory of quantum electrodynamics, brilliantly expounded by the physicist Richard Feynman, virtual particles, such as electrons and photons, appear and disappear from the quantum vacuum field, also known as the zero-point field, that pervades the universe. Feynman called this theory the “jewel of physics” because of its extremely accurate predictions, correct to many decimal places. The price that is paid for this accuracy is the acceptance of invisible, unobservable particles and interactions, and of the mysterious quantum vacuum field. According to quantum electrodynamics, all electrical and magnetic forces are mediated by virtual photons that appear from the quantum vacuum field and then disappear into it again. When you look at a compass to find out where north is, the compass needle interacts with the earth’s magnetic field through virtual photons. When you switch on a fan, its electric motor makes it go round because it is suddenly filled with virtual photons that exert forces.
We have come a long way from a simple belief in atoms of matter as tiny solid objects that persist unchanged through time. According to current theories, matter itself is an energetic process, and mass depends on interactions with fields that pervade the vacuum. Mass, the quantitative measure of matter, turns out to be deeply mysterious. According to the Standard Model of particle physics, the mass of a particle like an electron or a proton is not inherent in the particle itself but depends on its interaction with a field called a Higgs field. The mass of an electron, for example, arises through its interaction with the Higgs field, and this interaction depends on special Higgs particles, called Higgs bosons. And no Higgs boson has so far been detected, despite the expenditure of billions of euros to look for them.
Dark matter helps to explain the structures of galaxies and the relations between galaxies within clusters, but it does so at a heavy price: nobody knows what it is. Detailed observations of distant supernovas—exploding stars in faraway galaxies—showed that the expansion of the universe was speeding up. Gravitation ought to be slowing it down. So something else must account for accelerating growth. Physicists were forced to conclude that there must be an antigravity force, called dark energy.
Inedia phenomenon: people who seem to be able to live for months or years without eating. This phenomenon is known as inedia (Latin for “fasting”). Many people who did this long fasting were monitored to verify that they were not eating or drinking during their fasting.
The Australian astronomer John Webb studied the fine structure constant, α, to see if it was always constant or not. He found that it wasn’t. As Webb and his colleague John Barrow pointed out, “If α is susceptible to change, other constants should vary as well, making the inner workings of nature more fickle than scientists ever suspected.
The neuroscientist Benjamin Libet and his team in San Francisco measured changes in the brain and the timing of conscious experiences. First, Libet’s group stimulated their human subjects either by flashes of light or by a rapid sequence of mild electric pulses applied to the back of the hand. If the stimulus was short, less than about half a second (500 milliseconds), the subjects were unconscious of it, even though the sensory cortex of their brains responded. But if the stimulus went on for more than 500 milliseconds, the subjects became consciously aware of it. So far, so good. The need for a minimum duration of stimulus is not in itself surprising. What is surprising is that the subjects’ conscious awareness of the stimulus began not after 500 milliseconds but when the stimulus started. In other words, it took half a second for the stimulus to be experienced subjectively, but this subjective experience moved backward to when the stimulus was first applied. Second, Libet investigated what happened when people made free conscious choices. The subjects sat quietly, and were asked to flex one of their fingers or push a button whenever they felt like doing so. They also noted when they decided or felt the wish to do so. This conscious decision occurred about 200 milliseconds before the finger movement. This seems straightforward—the choice preceded the action. What was remarkable was that electrical changes began in the brain about 300 milliseconds before any conscious decision was made. For some neuroscientists and philosophers, Libet’s finding seemed like the ultimate experimental proof that free will is an illusion. The brain changed first, and about a third of a second later, conscious awareness followed the choice, rather than initiating it.
The materialist denial of purposes in evolution is not based on evidence but is an assumption. Materialists are forced to attribute evolutionary creativity to chance on ideological grounds.
The usual assumption is that genes somehow control or “program” the development of form, as if the nucleus, containing the genes, is a kind of brain controlling the cell. But Acetabularia shows that morphogenesis can take place without genes. If the rhizoid containing the nucleus is cut off, the alga can stay alive for months, and if the cap is cut off, it can regenerate a new one. Even more remarkable, if a piece is cut out of the stem, after the cuts have healed, a new tip grows from the end where the cap used to be and makes a new cap. The image below illustrates these scenarios.
Mechanists expel purposive vital factors from living animals and plants, but then they reinvent them in molecular guises. One form of molecular vitalism is to treat the genes as purposive entities with goals and powers that go far beyond those of a mere chemical like DNA. The genes become molecular entelechies. In his book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins endowed them with life and intelligence. In Dawkins’s words, “DNA moves in mysterious ways.” The DNA molecules are not only intelligent, they are also selfish, ruthless and competitive. If challenged, most biologists will admit that genes merely specify the sequence of amino acids in proteins, or are involved in the control of protein synthesis. They are not really programs; they are not selfish, they do not mold matter, or shape form, or aspire to immortality.
There is a vast gulf between rhetoric about the powers of genes and what they actually do. Investors in biotechnology are swept along by the metaphors, as are readers of popular science. The problem goes right back to Weismann, who made the determinants an active agency, controlling and directing the organism’s development. In effect, he endowed a special kind of matter, the germ-plasm, with the properties of the soul. Genetic programs and selfish genes are similarly endowed with vital powers, including the ability to “mould matter” and “create form.” Thanks to the discoveries of molecular biology, we know what genes actually do. They code for the sequences of amino acids that are strung together in polypeptide chains, which then fold up into protein molecules. Also, some genes are involved in the control of protein synthesis. DNA molecules are molecules. They are not “determinants” of particular structures. Richard Dawkins has probably done more than any other author to popularize genes. Unfortunately, his vivid metaphors are highly misleading.
If genetic programs were carried in the genes, then all the cells of the body would be programmed identically, because in general they contain exactly the same genes. The cells of your arms and legs, for example, are genetically identical. Your limbs contain exactly the same kinds of protein molecules, as well as chemically identical bone, cartilage and nerves. Yet arms and legs have different shapes. Clearly, the genes alone cannot explain these differences. They must depend on formative influences that act differently in different organs and tissues as they develop. These influences cannot be inside the genes: they extend over entire tissues and organs. At this stage, in most conventional explanations, the concept of the genetic program fades out.
High hopes about the Human Genome Project were transformed into disappointment by the actual project results. One manifestation of those hopes happened at the press conference in the White House on June 26, 2000, President Clinton said, “We are here today to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome. Without a doubt this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by mankind. It will revolutionize the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of most, if not all, human diseases … Humankind is on the verge of gaining immense, new power to heal.” The optimism that life would be understood if molecular biologists knew the “programs” of an organism gave way to the realization that there is a huge gap between gene sequences and actual human beings. In practice, the predictive value of human genomes turned out to be small, in some cases less than that achieved with a measuring tape. Recent “genome-wide association studies” compared the genomes of 30,000 people and identified about fifty genes associated with tallness or shortness. To everyone’s surprise, taken together, these genes accounted for only about 5 percent of the inheritance of height. In other words, the “height” genes did not account for 75 to 85 percent of the heritability of height. Most of the heritability was missing. Many other examples of missing heritability are now known, including the heritability of many diseases, making “personal genomics” of very questionable value. Since 2008, in scientific literature this phenomenon has been called the “missing heritability problem.”
There is a growing recognition that some acquired characteristics can indeed be inherited. This kind of inheritance is now called “epigenetic inheritance.”
I carried out many further filmed observations of Jaytee’s behavior, and did similar experiments with other dogs, notably a Rhodesian Ridgeback called Kane. Again and again, on film and under controlled conditions, these dogs anticipated their owners’ returns. The most remarkable animal I have come across is an African gray parrot, N’kisi. Its owner and I set up a controlled experiment in which she viewed a series of photographs in a random sequence while she was in a different room on a separate floor, being filmed continuously. The pictures were in a random order and represented twenty words in N’kisi’s vocabulary, like “flower,” “hug” and “phone.” Meanwhile, N’kisi, who was alone, was also filmed continuously. He often said words that corresponded to the image she was viewing, and did so much more frequently than expected by chance. The results were highly significant statistically.
In an attempt to find out more about telepathy in modern societies, I launched a series of appeals for information through the media in Europe, North America and Australia. Over a period of fifteen years, I built up a database of human experiences, similar to my database on unexplained powers of animals, with more than four thousand case histories, classified into more than sixty categories.
I designed a simple procedure to test both the chance-coincidence theory and the unconscious-knowledge theory experimentally. I recruited subjects who said they quite frequently knew who was calling before answering the phone. I asked them for the names and telephone numbers of four people they knew well, friends or family members. The subjects were then filmed continuously throughout the period of the experiment alone in a room with a landline telephone, without a caller ID system. If there was a computer in the room, it was switched off, and the subjects had no mobile phone. My research assistant or I selected one of the four callers at random by the throw of a die. We rang up the selected person and asked him to phone the subject in the next couple of minutes. He did so. The subject’s phone rang, and before answering it she had to say to the camera who, out of the four possible callers, she felt was on the line. She could not have known through knowledge of the caller’s habits and daily routines because, in this experiment, the callers rang at times randomly selected by the experimenter. By guessing at random, subjects would have been right about one time in four, or 25 percent. In fact, the average hit rate was 45 percent, very significantly above the chance level. This above-chance effect has been replicated independently in telephone telepathy tests at the universities of Freiburg, Germany, and Amsterdam, Holland.
One of the very few systematic observations of animal behavior before, during and after an earthquake concerns toads in Italy. A British biologist, Rachel Grant, was carrying out a study of mating behavior in toads for her PhD project at San Ruffino Lake in central Italy in the spring of 2009. To her surprise, soon after the beginning of the mating season in late March, the number of male toads in the breeding group suddenly fell. From more than ninety being active on March 30, there were almost none on March 31 and in early April. As Grant and her colleague Tim Halliday observed, “This is highly unusual behavior for toads; once toads have appeared to breed, they usually remain active in large numbers at the breeding site until spawning has finished.” On April 6, Italy was shaken by a 6.4-magnitude earthquake, followed by a series of aftershocks. The toads did not resume their normal breeding behavior for another ten days, two days after the last aftershock. Grant and Halliday looked in detail at the weather records for this period but found nothing unusual. They were forced to the conclusion that the toads were somehow detecting the impending earthquake some six days in advance.
Skeptical organizations are the principal defenders of the belief that psychic phenomena are illusory: they seek to debunk or deny any evidence that suggests they might be wrong. The best established of these groups is the US Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI). The effects of these well-organized and well-funded skeptical campaigns are not simply intellectual, but political and economic. Through maintaining the taboo against the “paranormal,” they ensure that most universities avoid this controversial area altogether, despite great public interest in the subject.
The physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz, who played such an important part in the establishment of the principle of conservation of energy in living organisms, dismissed the possibility of telepathy out of hand: “Neither the testimony of all the fellows of the Royal Society, nor even the evidence of my own sense, would lead me to believe in the transmission of thought from one person to another independently of the recognized channels of sense. It is clearly impossible.”
Discovering and testing new drugs is a lengthy and increasingly expensive process, and drug companies try to make as much money as possible from their drugs while patents last. They inevitably devote enormous amounts of money to advertising and promotion. In order to bolster the drugs’ scientific credibility, they offer large fees to scientists to put their names to articles that have been ghostwritten by authors paid by the drug company, or else the scientists are given other inducements to lend their names to studies they have not done. Medical ghostwriting takes many forms, but a recent case gives some insight into what is involved. In 2009, around fourteen thousand women who developed breast cancer while taking Prempro, a hormone replacement therapy (HRT), sued the drug’s manufacturer, Wyeth. In court, it turned out that many of the medical research papers supporting HRT had been ghostwritten by a commercial medical communications company called DesignWrite.
…In several other clinical trials, Prozac was no better than the placebo… However, the drug company, Eli Lilly, did not publish the results of unsuccessful trials, which were revealed only because an independently minded researcher, Irving Kirsch, managed to obtain the data using the US Freedom of Information Act. He found that when all the data were taken into account, not just the positive results published by the manufacturers, Prozac and several other antidepressants turned out to be no more effective than placebos, or than a herbal remedy, St. John’s wort, which is far cheaper.
When I was studying at Cambridge, one of our physiology lecturers, Fergus Campbell, gave a demonstration of the powers of hypnosis using one of my fellow students as a subject. Campbell told the subject that he was carrying out a scientific experiment on the response of skin to heat, and would be touching the subject’s arm with a lighted cigarette. In fact he touched it with the flat end of a pencil. Soon afterward, the skin reddened and a blister appeared where the cool pencil had touched. I later learned that many other hypnotists had shown the same thing, and that it had been studied, but not explained, by medical researchers. Nerves that control small arteries in the skin mediate this burn response. People cannot will themselves to activate these nerves, which are under the control of the autonomic or involuntary nervous system. Yet the hypnotic induction of burns shows that suggestion can work through the autonomic nervous system.
Hypnosis can also produce “miracle cures,” as it did in the case of a boy in London in the 1950s. He was born with a thick, dark skin, and as he grew, most of his body was covered with a black, rough casing. Doctors said he had been born with ichthyosis, “fish-scale disease.” Treatment at some of London’s best hospitals did no good. Even a skin transplant from his normal chest to his hands proved worse than useless: the skin blackened and then shrank, stiffening his fingers. Albert Mason, a young doctor interested in hypnosis, heard of the case and, watched by a dozen skeptical colleagues, put the boy into a hypnotic trance. He told him, “Your left arm will clear.” It did. About five days later the coarse outer layer of skin became crumbly and fell off. The skin underneath soon became pink and soft. Through repeated hypnosis, Mason cleared other parts of the body, limb by limb. In a follow-up study three years later, Mason and a team of dermatologists confirmed that “not only has there been no relapse, but his skin has continued to improve.”
Numerous studies in the United States and elsewhere have shown that people who are religious, especially those who regularly attend religious services, live significantly longer, and have better health and less depression than people without religious faith. These effects were found with Christian and non-Christian groups. For example, in a study in North Carolina, Harold Koenig and his colleagues tracked 1,793 subjects who were over sixty-five years old with no physical impairments at the beginning of the study. Six years later, those who prayed had survived 66 percent more than those who did not pray, after correcting for age differences between the two groups.
In a recent systematic study, some Dutch psychologists at the University of Amsterdam contacted the authors of 141 papers published in leading psychology journals, asking for access to the raw data for the sake of reanalysis. All these journals required authors to sign an undertaking that they “would not withhold the data on which their conclusions are based from other competent professionals.” After six months and four hundred emails, the Amsterdam researchers received sets of data from only 29 percent of the authors.
One of the biggest cases of fraud to be exposed in physics in the twenty-first century concerned Jan Hendrik Schön, a young researcher on nanotechnology at Bell Laboratories, in New Jersey. He seemed brilliantly successful and amazingly productive, making breakthrough after breakthrough and receiving three prestigious awards. But in 2002, several physicists noticed that the same data appeared in different papers, apparently from different experiments. An investigating committee found sixteen instances of scientific misconduct, mostly the making up or recycling of data. Significantly, none of these instances of fraud was detected in the peer-review process. In another recent case, Marc Hauser, a Harvard professor of biology, was found guilty of scientific misconduct by an official inquiry at Harvard in 2010. He had falsified or invented data in experiments on monkeys. Again, his dishonesty was not detected by peer reviewers, but came to light when a graduate student blew the whistle. Hauser is the author of a book called Moral Minds: The Nature of Right and Wrong (2007), in which he claims that morality is an inherited instinct, produced by evolution and independent of religion. Hauser is an atheist, and claims his findings support an atheist point of view.
]]>This analysis was featured on: The Hustle newsletter (lead story), TechCrunch, Hacker News, The Growth Newsletter (issue #021), Social Blade, Data Science Weekly newsletter (Jul 09 2020's issue), Weekly, Tubefilter, Younes Talk, and more.
Around 1.5 years ago, I did an analysis of YouTube trending videos in US. That analysis was performed on trending videos of some months in 2017 and 2018. The analysis received a lot of interest on Kaggle and Reddit; I also received some emails praising the work done. That was 1.5 years ago.
Today, I present an improved and expanded version of that analysis. This analysis is more advanced and contains new interesting elements. In this analysis, All trending videos for the whole year of 2019 were analyzed (More than 70,000 videos).
Titles, descriptions, thumbnails, tags, views, likes/dislikes, and comments were all analyzed to produce the results shown in this post. Continue reading to know more about the analysis and the data or you can jump directly to the results section.
The main goal of the analysis is to find interesting facts and patterns by exploring the data and by using effective visualizations.
If you don’t have time to read the full analysis, here are some of the insights that were extracted from the data along with links to their sections in the analysis:
The analysis covers much more as you will see soon…
YouTube, as you know, is the most popular and most used video platform in the world today. YouTube has a list of trending videos. I’ll quote the description of trending videos from YouTube itself:
Trending helps viewers see what’s happening on YouTube and in the world. Trending aims to surface videos that a wide range of viewers would find interesting. Some trends are predictable, like a new song from a popular artist or a new movie trailer. Others are surprising, like a viral video. Trending isn’t personalized and displays the same list of trending videos in each country to all users.
The list of trending videos is updated roughly every 15 minutes. With each update, videos may move up, down, or stay in the same position in the list.
This analysis was performed using Python and a powerful group of Python libraries including Pandas, Matplotlib, NLTK, ImageAI, WordCloud, and more.
The analysis were performed in a Jupyter Notebook.
You can find all the code used for this analysis in a Jupyter notebook on this link. Feel free to read the code and re-use it however you want. Also note that the notebook contains more analyses than the ones shown here in this post, so if you want to see everything, refer to the notebook after you finish reading this post.
The data used in this analysis was retrieved using YouTube API. A script was scheduled to run each day throughout 2019 and fetch data from YouTube API about the trending videos of that day. The script would then process the data received from YouTube and store them in text files.
The scraping script is not my work. It can be found on Github: Trending-YouTube-Scraper. I put the script on a AWS EC2 instance and scheduled it—using Crontab—to run every day at a specific time.
After 2019 ended, I connected to the AWS instance using FileZilla application and downloaded all the data produced by the script. There was a file for each day of 2019. To perform the analysis, I needed to process the data in order to merge the files into a single CSV file.
In this post, United-States trending videos will be analyzed, which constitute a total of 72,994 videos. YouTube usually place 200 videos in the trending list each day which would mean that we should have 73,000 (365 x 200) videos. We have 72,994. This is probably because on a few days, the number of Trending videos was slightly less than 200.
So we have data on 72,994 trending videos to analyze. On YouTube, the same video might appear on the trending list for many days. This means that the 72,994 videos are not unique videos. In fact, among the 72,994 videos, we have 11,177 unique videos.
In other words, 11,177 videos showed on the trending list throughout 2019. Some of them might have stayed on the list for 10 days, some for 20 days, etc. We will see later in the analysis more info about this.
The following table shows an example of the data that we have for each video:
As we can see, we have the ID of the video which is a unique value for the video across YouTube (No two videos have the same ID). We also have the title of the video, its publishing date and time, the channel that published it, its category, and its description and tags. We also have the number of the views, likes, dislikes, and comments of the video. There are also a few more data shown in the table.
We can see that there is a field named “trending_date”. This field specifies the date on which this video was trending. As we said earlier, the same video might appear on the trending-videos list for more than one day. This means that we might find another record in the data for the same video ID but with different “trending_date” and maybe different number of views, comments, likes, etc. (because those numbers are likely to increase from one day to another).
If you want to download the data used in this analysis which describes 2019's trending videos in the United States, you can buy it securely on Gumroad on this link or by using the button below. Along with United States, you'll also get trending-videos data for United Kingdom, Canada, Denmark, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and other countries as well.
Now let’s start the best part of this post, let’s see the analysis results.
Please note that for the following analyses, unless otherwise stated, we applied the analysis on all of the 72,994 trending videos, not on the unique trending videos only. The reasoning behind this is that we are interested in videos considered trending by YouTube. So if a video is considered trending for 3 days, then we believe that it has more trending power and more trending characteristics than a video that was trending for 1 day only; thus, it should have more weight. So we include the 3 occurrences of that video in the analysis.
For some analyses, considering only unique videos is more appropriate. When that is the case, you will see a note telling you about that.
The Trending Video with the Highest Number of Views is a song by BTS band named “Boy With Luv”. The video was published on 12/April/2019 and on 23/04/2019, it appeared on the trending list with 195,376,667 views which is the highest number of views a trending video had in 2019.
In the table below, you can see the top 3 trending videos based on the number of views. These trending videos had views when they appeared on the trending list more than any other trending video. This table was produced by considering unique trending videos only (For more).
And now we will look at the distribution of views for trending videos. The histogram below shows this distribution:
Notice that the y-axis is log scaled. It is 10, 100, 1000… not 10, 20, 30…
We can see that the vast majority of trending videos had less than 20 million views when they became trending. In fact, when they became trending, around 94% of trending videos had less than 10 million views and around 99.9% had less than 100 million views.
Now, we might ask: What are the trending videos with the least amount of views? The table below shows the 3 trending videos with the lowest number of views when appearing on the trending list. This table was produced by considering unique trending videos only (For more).
You can see that these three videos appeared on the trending list on the same day they were published on. Maybe they received a high number of views in the first few hours after they were published which sent them to the trending list.
We mentioned earlier that there were many videos that appeared on the trending list on more than one day. We now want to consider the first appearance only of each video. We want to know how many views a trending video had when it became trending for the first time.
The following graph shows the distribution of the number of views of trending videos when first appearing on the trending list:
Notice that the y-axis is log scaled. It is 10, 100, 1000… not 10, 20, 30…
We can see that there is one video that became trending when it had ~150 million views. We can see another one that became trending when it had ~60 million views. But most of the videos became trending when they had less than ~30 million views.
In fact:
Some videos don’t appear on the trending list for only one day, nor for two days. There are some videos that appeared on the trending list for 30 days. The following table shows the videos that appeared on the trending list the most. There are 6 videos that appeared for 30 days on the trending list.
And this is how these 6 videos appear today on YouTube:
Titles constitute an important part of each video. They describe the video for people before deciding to click on the video or not. And because of that, video title is one of the important factors in video success; video title plays an essential role in determining video click-through-rate (CTR). Here are some interesting facts about 2019’s trending-videos titles.
6% of trending-videos titles are fully uppercase (LIKE THIS). Numbers, symbols, and emojis are not taken into account for this. For example, all the following titles are considered fully uppercase: “FIRST TITLE”, “2ND TITLE”, “#3 TITLE 🎉”.
If we count the number of fully-uppercase words in each of the trending-videos titles we get the following distribution graph:
This means that around 50% of trending videos have no fully-uppercase word in their titles, around 20% have 1 fully-uppercase word in their titles, around 10% have 2 fully-uppercase words in their titles, etc.
Are there some words that occur in trending video titles more than others? To find out the answer, I analyzed the titles of all trending videos and counted the occurrences of each word in those titles. Before that, symbols were removed from the words and contractions were replaced with their expansions. For example, “aren’t” and “we’ll” were replaced with “are not” and “we will” respectively.
Here is a word cloud of the most common 100 words in the trending titles. The size of the word reflects how common it is:
You can see that the most common word is “the” because it is the largest. You can also see large “a”, “to”, and “in”. Such words are called stop words. Stop words are words that are very common in a given language (English in our case). To get better results, we will exclude stop words from our analysis.
After excluding stop words, we get this word cloud:
We can now see more meaningfully the most common words in trending-videos titles. To see the exact commonness (frequency) values, the following table shows the most common 15 words with their frequencies:
For more details on the process, method used for word tokenization, stop words specifications, etc., please review the code in the project notebook.
Now let’s see what are the most common symbols in the titles of trending videos. Previously, we ignored symbols to produce the word clouds above. Now, we will consider only symbols. The table below shows the most common symbols:
We can see that “-” is the most occurring symbol. It occurred around 23,000 times in trending titles. After that comes the pipe “|” which occurred around 21,000 times in trending titles. Then we find “.” which occurred 16,560 time.
Now considering only emoji symbols, let’s see the most common emojis in the titles of trending videos:
So 🔥 is the most common with frequency of 154 followed by ™️ then ®.
But first, what are 2-grams? A 2-gram is a sequence of 2 words. For example, if we have the following sentence: “How are you today?”, then we can extract three 2-grams out of it: “How are”, “are you”, “you today?”.
If we extract the 2-grams from all trending-videos titles, what will be the most common ones? The word cloud below answers this question. Notice that the words of each 2-gram are connected with a “-“.
And the following table shows the exact frequencies of the 5 most-common 2-grams:
In the word cloud, we can identify some trends: we can see “reacts to”, “react to”, “avenger endgame”, “star wars”, “anwar jibawi”, etc.
How long are trending-videos titles? The following box plot answers this question by showing the distribution of titles lengths.
We can see that most trending videos have a title length between 36 and 64 characters. The average title length is 51 characters. The maximum title length is 100 which is the maximum title limit on YouTube and the minimum title length is 3. There is, actually, one video with a title length of 3 which is this video titled “DHL” which appeared on the trending list for 7 days:
Which channels produced more trending videos? The following bar chart tells us the answer:
We can see that Linus Tech Tips is the channel with most trending videos (365 videos). And the surprise is that it is a technology channel! This channel started in 2008 and has now (22/June/2020) 5,018 published videos. This is how it looks now:
And these are their most popular videos as of now:
And this is how their first video looked like back in 2008:
The second channel with most trending videos is Binging with Babish with 361 trending videos. This channel started in 2006 and has now 311 published videos. This is how it looks now:
And these are their most popular videos as of now:
And this is how their first video looked like back in 2007:
And finally, the third top channel in the number of trending videos is Bon Appétit with 355 trending videos. This channel started back in 2008 and has now 1,149 published videos. This is how the channel page looks like now:
And these are their most popular videos as of now:
And this is their first video published in 2012:
YouTube groups videos into categories. Example categories are: Entertainment, Music, Sports, Comedy, Education, etc. The following bar chart shows the number of trending videos for each category. The chart doesn’t include all categories because there are some categories with no trending videos in 2019.
Entertainment category comes first with 20,849 trending videos (28.6% of 2019’s trending videos). After Entertainment comes Music category with 10,236 trending videos (14% of 2019’s trending videos). Then at the third place comes Sports category with 7,565 trending videos (10.4% of 2019’s trending videos).
Looking at this graph gives an idea on what types of videos appear on the trending list more than others.
Were there more trending videos published on Saturday more than on Monday? Were there more trending videos published in the evening more than the morning? Let’s answer these questions with nice visualizations.
Note: The following two graphs show dates/times in GMT time zone which is now 4 hours ahead of Washington, DC.
The following graph shows the number of trending videos published in every day of the week sorted by the number of videos:
We can see that there were more trending videos published on Tuesday (11,986) than the other days of the week. All other days of the week except Saturday are not far behind Tuesday. For Saturday, there were only 7,345 trending videos published on it.
The following graph shows the number of trending videos published in every hour of the day starting with 0 which represents 12 AM and ending with 23 which represents 11 PM:
We can see that the peak hours for publishing trending videos were between 16 and 18 (i.e. between 4 PM and 6 PM). If we translate this to Washington time (with daylight saving time in effect), we see that the peak hours were between 12 PM and 2 PM Washington time.
We can also see that much fewer trending videos were published between 6 and 11 (i.e. between 6 AM and 11 AM) which is between 2 AM and 7 AM in Washington time (with daylight saving time in effect).
The two graphs above don’t necessarily mean that videos published on Tuesday have higher chances of becoming trending because Tuesday might be the day that witnessed more uploaded videos in general than other days. So we need to know the number of all videos (not just trending videos) that were published on each day of the week in 2019 to be able to make such claims. The same applies for hours of the day as well.
How many comments trending videos have? The histogram below answers this question by showing the distribution of the number of comments for our trending videos:
Notice that the y-axis is log scaled. It is 10, 100, 1000… not 10, 20, 30…
We can see that the vast majority of trending videos have less than 100,000 comments. More precisely, 98.7% of trending videos have less than 100,000 comments and 90% of trending videos have less than 23,926 comments.
We can notice that there are some videos with huge numbers of comments: we see one video with ~3,100,000 comments; we also see other few videos with numbers of comments ranging between 600,000 and 3,100,000.
The table below shows the top 3 trending videos based on the number of comments:
We can see that “Boy With Luv” song by BTS band had the largest number of comments (3,120,684). We saw previously that this song had the largest number of views as well. After this song comes YouTube Rewind 2018 video with 2,439,661 comments then “Kill This Love” song by BLACKPINK band with 1,051,015 comments.
Like we did with the number of views, we will see the number of comments videos have when whey appear on the trending list for the first time. The following graph shows us that:
Notice that the y-axis is log scaled. It is 10, 100, 1000… not 10, 20, 30…
We can see that the vast majority of videos had less than 50,000 comments when they first appeared on the trending list. In fact:
Similar to what we did with views and comments, we want to see the distribution of the number of likes/dislikes for trending videos. The histogram below shows the likes distribution:
Notice that the y-axis is log scaled. It is 10, 100, 1000… not 10, 20, 30…
95% of trending videos have less than 500,000 likes and 72.4% have less than 100,000 likes.
The table below shows the 3 most liked trending videos in 2019:
Then we move to dislikes. This histogram shows the distribution of dislikes of our trending videos:
Notice that the y-axis is log scaled. It is 10, 100, 1000… not 10, 20, 30…
99.4% of trending videos have less than 100,000 dislikes and 91.5% have less than 10,000 dislikes.
The following table shows the 3 most disliked trending videos:
We can see that YouTube Rewind videos of 2018 and 2019 are the two most disliked trending videos in 2019. Note that the number of dislikes for the three videos in the table is larger than the number of likes but they became trending despite that.
And although “Boy With Luv” song was the most liked trending video as we saw above, it is also the 5th most disliked video with 446,003 dislikes.
In other words, how many days are between publishing a video and its appearance on the trending list? The box plot below can answer this question:
On average, a video appears on the trending list after 5.6 days of publishing it. Also, 95% of the videos took less than 13 days to appear on the trending list. We can also see that there were some videos that appeared on the trending list in less than a day.
Now if we consider only the first appearance of a video on the trending list, we get this box plot:
In this case, the video takes on average 1.5 days to become trending. And 97% of the videos appeared on the trending list in less than 2 days after they were published.
We know that each YouTube video can have a description and that the maximum length of the description is 5,000 characters. Now we ask: How long are the descriptions of trending videos? The box plot below tells us the answer:
Here are some facts about trending videos descriptions:
The following word cloud shows the most common words in the descriptions of trending videos similar to what was done for video titles. This word cloud shows the most common 100 words after excluding stop words and after expanding the contractions (See the titles section above for the meaning of that).
We can see that “https”, “http”, “com”, and “www” are among the most common words. This indicates that trending videos descriptions contain many URLs. We also can see that names of social media platforms like “instagram”, “twitter”, and “facebook” are quite common also. This indicates that trending videos descriptions contain links to these platforms.
The following table shows the 10 most common words in the descriptions of trending videos with their exact frequency:
And the following word cloud shows the most common 2-grams in trending videos descriptions (Again, see the titles section above for the meaning of 2-grams):
We can see that websites URLs are very common 2-grams in trending videos descriptions.
How many trending videos contain hashtags (like #abc) in their descriptions? It turns out that 33% of trending videos include hashtags in their descriptions. This leads us to another question: How many hashtags do those descriptions have? The following box plot answers this question. It shows the distribution of the number of hashtags in the description:
Note that this plot considers only videos that have hashtags in their descriptions. We can see that most of these videos have less than 6 hashtags. The average number of hashtags in description is 2.7 hashtags. And 94% of those videos have less than 6 hashtags in the description.
When you upload a video to YouTube, you can add tags to the video. Tags are not displayed on the video page; you can see them by viewing the source code of the page or by using browser extensions such as TubeBuddy and vidIQ. There is a lot of debate on whether tags affect how YouTube algorithm deals with the video. Does adding effective tags make the algorithm show the video to more people on YouTube? Do tags affect where a video appears in the search results? No one knows certainly. When you upload a video, you find this written above the tag section:
Tags can be useful if content in your video is commonly misspelled. Otherwise, tags play a minimal role in helping viewers find your video.
But if that was true, why would YouTube add a lot of tags to their videos? For example, YouTube Rewind video of 2019 has all of these tags:
Rewind, Rewind 2019, youtube rewind 2019, #YouTubeRewind, MrBeast, PewDiePie, James Charles, Shane Dawson, CaseyNeistat, RiceGum, Simone Giertz, JennaMarbles, Lilly Singh, emma chamberlain, The Try Guys, Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, Marshmello, Garena Free Fire, GTA V, Lachlan, Anaysa, jeffreestar, Noah Schnapp, Jennelle Eliana, T-Series, Azzyland, LazarBeam, Dude Perfect, David Dobrik, KSI, NikkieTutorials, Kurzgesagt, Jelly, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, BLACKPINK, Year in Review
Apart from this discussion, this following violin plot shows the distribution of the number of tags in trending videos. This plot lets us know how many tags trending videos have:
We can see that most of trending videos have between 10 and 30 tags. Here are some interesting facts about trending videos tags:
After we explored the number of tags for trending videos, let’s see now the length of the tags of trending videos. YouTube allows you to put as many tags as you want, but the limit is 500 characters. So all the tags of a YouTube videos combined must not exceed 500 characters. Let’s see the tags lengths of trending videos.
The following violin plot shows us the distribution of tags length for trending videos:
Tags length ranges from 0 to 457. Almost all tags lengths are equally common, but we see the peak between 400 and 450 characters. Here are some facts about tags length of trending videos:
As we did with titles and descriptions, let’s see the most common words in the tags of trending videos. The word cloud below shows us the most common 100 words:
We can see that words like “video” “2019”, “funny”, etc. are more common than the other words. The table below shows the most common 15 words with their exact frequency:
After we saw the most common words in video tags, let’s now see the most common tags used in trending videos which are shown in this word cloud:
Now let’s see how different metrics of trending videos are correlated. We want to see how views are correlated with likes and how title length is correlated with views and more. Let’s visualize the correlation between different metrics by using a heatmap:
In this heatmap, lighter colors indicate higher positive correlation and darker colors indicate lower positive correlation (and sometimes negative correlation). The highest possible positive correlation is 1 and the highest possible negative correlation (which is the lowest possible positive correlation) is -1.
We can see that there is a high positive correlation (0.81) between views and likes. This means that they tend to increase together in trending videos. We can also notice a significant positive correlation (0.61) between comments and views. Also, there is a significant positive correlation between comments and likes and between comments and dislikes.
YouTube video thumbnails are the small images you see when you browse YouTube videos:
Thumbnails play now an important role in the success of a YouTube video because they affect the click-through rate (how many people click on your video when they see it). Click-through rate have a significant impact on how YouTube publishes your video. Higher click-through rate means that YouTube will show your video to more and more people. High click-through rate communicate to YouTube algorithm that your video is attractive because people are clicking on it.
So now that you know the importance of thumbnails, you should also know that many successful YouTubers spend big amounts of time trying to create the perfect thumbnail that will attract people and make them click on their videos.
And because we have all of 2019’s trending videos to analyze, let’s analyze the thumbnails of these trending videos to see what are the most used colors in those thumbnails. To find the most used colors: First, we downloaded the thumbnails of the trending videos without considering duplicates. This means that for a video that became trending more than one time (say 5 times), we downloaded one copy only of its thumbnail (not 5 copies).
After downloading the thumbnail image for each unique trending video, we counted the colors of the pixels of these thumbnails. We had 11,177 thumbnails for 11,177 unique video. Each thumbnail image size is 320 x 180 which means that each thumbnail contains 57,600 pixels. This means that all thumbnails have 643,795,200 pixels. We got the color of each pixel and then counted the number of occurrences of each color. The resulting dictionary looked like this:
{
(255, 255, 255): 7572881,
(254, 255, 255): 660165,
(251, 255, 255): 280416,
(249, 255, 255): 154100,
(248, 255, 255): 131042,
(255, 254, 255): 626143,
...
}
This dictionary contained 4,098,274 unique colors. For example, the snippet above says that 7,572,881 pixels are white. The RGB color (255, 255, 255) represents the white color. It says also that 660,165 pixels are white but their RGB representation is (254, 255, 255). The two RGB colors (255, 255, 255) and (254, 255, 255) are white; you cannot distinguish between them by your eye, but they are different in the RGB representation.
So we cannot use that dictionary to find the most used colors because if you look at the 100 most common colors in that dictionary, you will find them either white or black (different but very similar shades of white and black as we saw in the example above). Here in the following image, you see the 100 most common colors according to that dictionary:
As you can see, they are essentially white and black colors with a few grey colors.
The approach we followed then to find the most used colors was by taking the most common 10,000 colors from that dictionary then removing “duplicate” colors. For example, we kept only one black and removed all other blacks that were similar to that black.
To measure the similarity between two RGB colors, we converted the colors to Lab colors and calculated the Euclidean distance between these Lab colors. Then we considered the colors similar if the following quantity fell between 0.9 and 1.0: \(\frac{375.6-\text{Euclidean distance}}{375.6}\) where 375.6 is the maximum possible distance between two Lab colors.
After this process, we ended up with 19 colors which are the most used colors in video thumbnails. Here are the colors sorted by popularity:
Similar to what we did in the previous section when we analyzed unique trending videos thumbnails to find the most used colors, now we will analyze the thumbnails to find what is inside those thumbnails. People? Cars? Buildings?
As we saw in the previous section, we have 11,177 thumbnail images. We cannot look at them one by one to see what’s inside them. Instead, we will use artificial intelligence. In particular, we will use computer vision to see what’s inside the thumbnails. We will use an object detection algorithm that can find objects (people, cars, etc.) in images.
We used the TinyYOLOv3 algorithm. For more technical details, you can view the code by following the link in the “Code Used” section above. After running the algorithm on all the thumbnails, we got the objects that appeared in the thumbnails and the number of occurrences of each object.
The bar chart below shows the top 7 items that appeared in trending videos thumbnails the most:
So a person image appears more than 1,000 times in trending videos thumbnails. This makes it more common than all other objects detected by the algorithm like ties, cars, bowls, bottles, etc.
As mentioned above, we used TinyYOLOv3 algorithm which is fast but may not be the most effective algorithm. We might try running a more sophisticated algorithm to see what objects it will detect.
In this post, we saw the results of analyzing YouTube trending videos of 2019. For me, the results were interesting and insightful. Hope they were the same for you.
If you want to download the data used in this analysis which describes 2019's trending videos in the United States, you can buy it securely on Gumroad on this link or by using the button below. Along with United States, you'll also get trending-videos data for United Kingdom, Canada, Denmark, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and other countries as well.