Yeah, you’re right, if he was caught carrying an explicit manifesto with him while he was in a McDonalds, he indeed doesn’t seem discrete and subtle.
I thought about the possibility of hidden messages left by him due to three reasons: firstly, because he seem to have left “riddle-like breadcrumbs” (the Monopoly money inside a backpack, the writing on the bullets, etc) which sounds like a puzzle to be solved. Second, because he’s both a programmer and an AI-enthusiast, he’s even Master in Computer Sciences (IIRC), which does involve lots of math passion and logic. Last but not least, because I’m also a programmer and I like math, unorthodox thinking, ciphering, steganography and cryptography.
My apologies for the long text ahead…
But to contextualize: ciphering is a set of techniques used to conceal a message behind a code (for example, Caesar cipher, Vigenere cipher, Playfair cipher and so on), while steganography is a set of artistic techniques used to hidden a message in plain sight (for example, a text hidden within the initials of another text, as in how the seemingly innocuous phrase “He is definitely driving every night” hides the word “HIDDEN”: just notice each initial letter from every word).
You see, most platforms have a “Scunthorpe problem” when a message triggers a false alarm due to an isolated word or string (sequence of letters) which otherwise would be dependent on a surrounding context. And I myself suffered several “Scunthorpe” censorship episodes throughout the social platforms, especially after the emergence of LLMs and Sentiment Analysis models, due to specific choices of words, for example.
Publishing ipsis literis an anti-capitalist manifesto that is definitely seen as “extreme” and “radical” by many people is something very likely to trigger algorithms, especially in major social platforms (such as Facebook, even X). This is easily circumvented through ciphering and steganography because LLMs can’t (yet) understand ciphered texts (with maybe the exception of simple alphabet substitution ciphers such as Caesar shift which is something really straightforward for LLMs to decipher), let alone steganographies (due to how LLMs struggle basic lexical tasks such as counting how many "R"s are there in the word “strawberry”, and hiding a message within the initials of another message is not the only way of steganography, there are many many other techniques). Some platforms have more censorship than others, and while GitHub isn’t used to deliver everyday messaging, its GitHub Gists is a perfect platform for unconventional thinkers to publish something (concealed within a code) that wouldn’t be welcomed on platforms such as Facebook.
A person like Luigi, a tech-savvy, a programmer, a master in Computer Science, AI-enthusiastic, someone deeply dissatisfied with the status quo, someone who seems to navigate across several fields of knowledge (therefore, a polymath kind of person), such person is someone very likely to be an unconventional thinker, almost in the edge of being a real-life Elliot Alderson (edit: he’s not, see below). I can sort of visualize how such a person could think outside the box and creating a whole puzzle with digital breadcrumbs, comparable to a Cicada 3301 back in the past… (because I dealt with similar things throughout my entire digital life since the Orkut times, puzzles and riddles involving ciphering, linguistics, math, art, cultural and historical references, because it’s something that pleased me both to create my own puzzles and to solve puzzles from others). Seems like it’s not exactly the case for Luigi, tho… Well, perhaps… Things are yet to unfold, I guess.
Edit: I just saw a screenshot of one of his past tweets criticizing someone because they “Overcomplicates everything he says aloud, wasting everyone’s mental bandwidth in having to decipher it. The best teachers are the best communicators: clear, succinct, simple language”. This sadly rules out every possibility for puzzles and riddles, doesn’t seem like a person that really values the beauty of math, linguistics, cryptography, ciphering and steganography. Welp, maybe I went too far in fantasizing some real-life thrilling plot of Elliot Alderson’s Fsociety. Anyway, I’m keeping the reply and my explanation about some (perhaps) useful concepts/knowledge (for anyone who finds it useful).
Yeah, you’re right, if he was caught carrying an explicit manifesto with him while he was in a McDonalds, he indeed doesn’t seem discrete and subtle.
I thought about the possibility of hidden messages left by him due to three reasons: firstly, because he seem to have left “riddle-like breadcrumbs” (the Monopoly money inside a backpack, the writing on the bullets, etc) which sounds like a puzzle to be solved. Second, because he’s both a programmer and an AI-enthusiast, he’s even Master in Computer Sciences (IIRC), which does involve lots of math passion and logic. Last but not least, because I’m also a programmer and I like math, unorthodox thinking, ciphering, steganography and cryptography.
My apologies for the long text ahead…
But to contextualize: ciphering is a set of techniques used to conceal a message behind a code (for example, Caesar cipher, Vigenere cipher, Playfair cipher and so on), while steganography is a set of artistic techniques used to hidden a message in plain sight (for example, a text hidden within the initials of another text, as in how the seemingly innocuous phrase “He is definitely driving every night” hides the word “HIDDEN”: just notice each initial letter from every word).
You see, most platforms have a “Scunthorpe problem” when a message triggers a false alarm due to an isolated word or string (sequence of letters) which otherwise would be dependent on a surrounding context. And I myself suffered several “Scunthorpe” censorship episodes throughout the social platforms, especially after the emergence of LLMs and Sentiment Analysis models, due to specific choices of words, for example.
Publishing ipsis literis an anti-capitalist manifesto that is definitely seen as “extreme” and “radical” by many people is something very likely to trigger algorithms, especially in major social platforms (such as Facebook, even X). This is easily circumvented through ciphering and steganography because LLMs can’t (yet) understand ciphered texts (with maybe the exception of simple alphabet substitution ciphers such as Caesar shift which is something really straightforward for LLMs to decipher), let alone steganographies (due to how LLMs struggle basic lexical tasks such as counting how many "R"s are there in the word “strawberry”, and hiding a message within the initials of another message is not the only way of steganography, there are many many other techniques). Some platforms have more censorship than others, and while GitHub isn’t used to deliver everyday messaging, its GitHub Gists is a perfect platform for unconventional thinkers to publish something (concealed within a code) that wouldn’t be welcomed on platforms such as Facebook.
A person like Luigi, a tech-savvy, a programmer, a master in Computer Science, AI-enthusiastic, someone deeply dissatisfied with the status quo, someone who seems to navigate across several fields of knowledge (therefore, a polymath kind of person), such person is someone very likely to be an unconventional thinker, almost in the edge of being a real-life Elliot Alderson (edit: he’s not, see below). I can sort of visualize how such a person could think outside the box and creating a whole puzzle with digital breadcrumbs, comparable to a Cicada 3301 back in the past… (because I dealt with similar things throughout my entire digital life since the Orkut times, puzzles and riddles involving ciphering, linguistics, math, art, cultural and historical references, because it’s something that pleased me both to create my own puzzles and to solve puzzles from others). Seems like it’s not exactly the case for Luigi, tho… Well, perhaps… Things are yet to unfold, I guess.
Edit: I just saw a screenshot of one of his past tweets criticizing someone because they “Overcomplicates everything he says aloud, wasting everyone’s mental bandwidth in having to decipher it. The best teachers are the best communicators: clear, succinct, simple language”. This sadly rules out every possibility for puzzles and riddles, doesn’t seem like a person that really values the beauty of math, linguistics, cryptography, ciphering and steganography. Welp, maybe I went too far in fantasizing some real-life thrilling plot of Elliot Alderson’s Fsociety. Anyway, I’m keeping the reply and my explanation about some (perhaps) useful concepts/knowledge (for anyone who finds it useful).
I think he’s more straight forward about his actions, which is good given the context. I don’t think we will have a treasure map to follow.
What we can do is learn from his mistakes.