me. So, so much work. And so much satisfaction, considering your recognized excellence. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine a professional sprinter, whose running times are always around very narrow space of variations: a few tenths more or less make the difference between winning or losing, between participating or setting a new record and becoming an excellence, allow me to make use of your same term. In order to implement that minimum variation of time - one or two tenths of a second less - a sacrifice is needed which includes enormous variations: the type of training, diet, sleep, the whole lifestyle. But one detail sometimes escapes us: several behaviour variations - in sport, in art, in scientific research and in all those potentially totalizing professions, where a high level of performance is required - do not always occur at a conscious level, they are not always rational choices, and above all they are not necessarily virtuous. Alan Alan Turing was notoriously introverted and unsociable, while Steve Jobs Steve Jobs was irascible and aggressive. Rolling Stones Rolling Stones’ music is inseparable from their lifestyle. Take alcohol away from Jim Morrison Jim Morrison and maybe we wouldn't have had Jim Morrison. The list of unquestionable excellences that, in life, behaved in an easily labelable as ‘wrong’ or ‘unpleasant’ way, is almost infinite. Curiously, a synonym for pleasant is agreeable, which also means ‘tending to agree’; but the practice of rewarding those who are always perfectly conforming to social rules can sometimes involve some risks, as demonstrated by Asch and Milgram’s Asch and Milgram’s social psychology experiments7. Talking about experimentation - and given infinity of mind as an axiom - which are mentalism’s areas still to be explored? I always loved to point the finger at those thoughts caging us, those deceptions of subjective perception [synthesized by Anaïs Nin Anaïs Nin’s Jungian thought «We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are»], but if before I faced these illusions of the mind from the point of view of the individual, with my most recent show8 the criticism has shifted to a cultural and societal level, facing the dark side of social dark side of social networks, the dependence they generate, the progressive dehumanization in interpersonal relationships through toxic surrogates of true friendships. In the future I would like to expand this work, perhaps by taking a "mentalistic" look at some aspects of the system. For example, what does progress mean today? Obviously, the aspect on which I could express myself is mainly that of communication, which is also the most open to manipulations worthy of the best illusionist. The impression I have is that television, journalism, politics, but also economics, science and medicine, are today compromised by the simple fact that everyone follows a model primarily based on the economic profit. We already knew this, but today more than ever we are witnessing the polarization of the debate’s trick in order not to accept an honest dialogue. Any idea outside the box is, for instance, labelled as conspiracy. But saying that the Earth is flat or that 5G can be dangerous to health are two very different things. Reptilians hidden on Earth are one thing, doubts about the safety of certain products on the market are another story. It's funny, because I grew up by means of a scientific approach, but today I find myself having kind of dislike for debunkers9, which define themselves as the defenders of rationality. But curating communication, I realized that the narrative of debunkers can be summarized in a few words: «It's all right! Rest assured: what the system tells you is reliable, and if you worry you are not being rational». Yet it’s not all right, it seems clear to me. The main accusation that debunkers address to conspiracy theorists, that is to be simpletons fascinated by mysterious theories, is essentially the same trap into which debunkers themselves fall: simplifying complex realities, in which short circuits of thought, poor communication between the parties, economic interests, corruption and - trivially - some aspects of human nature are indissolubly intertwined. I see the problem of fake news. But, as a matter of principle, I find it more dangerous to exert force to censor any doubt. E =O 110
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