Or: why the Hungarian future is not decided in sunflower-seed VIP boxes — a network argument for a global thinker.
Before a 2027 presidential election it is worth asking: what kind of mind does this role need? In a post-AI era, in a globally interconnected world, the suitable president is someone who sees the whole network — not locally overtrained, but system-level. One concrete proposal: Albert-László Barabási.
Ha ezt a bekezdést gond nélkül elolvassa, Önnek nem ez a kiadás kell: az eredeti a tanul.io/elnok címen várja, és Önnek a szotyit sem kell elmagyarázni. Ha viszont egy szót sem ért belőle, ne aggódjon: a hálózatnak Ön így is csomópontja.
P.S. If the paragraph above meant nothing to you, relax: you are still a node in this network. By the end of the essay you may even be a hub.
Before proceeding, a structural note for travelers: the President of Hungary is a largely ceremonial head of state, elected by parliament, not by the public. He signs laws, represents the country, and — this is the essay's entire premise — carries symbolic weight: what he embodies, the country slowly practises. The Guide notes that a role with little formal power and large symbolic power is precisely where the choice of mind matters most, which is why this essay is not about politics but about topology.
The question is simple: who should be the President of Hungary? The stock answers have exhausted themselves. "Moderate." "Reliable." "Respected." "By cross-party consensus." These are all kickstands propped against the answer, not the answer itself.
The real question is deeper: what kind of mind does this role require in the Hungary of 2027?
The president's role is constitutionally limited — the symbolic weight matters more. What he embodies. What he can see of what is happening around Hungarian society. From where he looks, and at what scale.
This is where the real question begins.
Most Hungarian public leaders of recent decades share one trait: they optimise locally. They are exquisitely sensitive to every tremor of one very specific Hungarian context — a village, a VIP box, a Budapest district, a world the size of Felcsút. They are at home in that world. They shell sunflower seeds in the VIP box with complete credibility. They know what a branded shoe means at a christening, what an unsuitable relative means in the environment, what a weaker mood at a district party meeting means.
Szotyi: sunflower seeds, cracked one-handed between the front teeth, shells spat with practised economy — a gesture of total at-homeness, performed at football matches. The essay's recurring image, "shelling seeds credibly in the VIP box", refers to a specific box in a specific stadium in Felcsút — a village of some 1,800 inhabitants with a 3,900-seat football arena, built a garden fence away from the childhood home of the prime minister of the sixteen years (see the founding entry). The Guide confirms that shelling szotyi credibly is a genuine and unfakeable local skill. The essay merely asks whether it is the same skill as reading the future.
This is not a bad trait in itself. In some respects it is even touching — appealing, even. But it has a boundary.
This style of thought overtrains locally. Like a machine-learning model that memorises the fine detail of its training set and loses the ability to generalise to the global pattern. In the language of Hungarian politics: the man who knows what the car mechanic thinks at the Józsefváros market often does not know what the mid-century global shift in capacity means, or the AI transformation, or the climate crisis, or the new models of work, or the behaviour of a networked economy.
In plain terms: shelling seeds in the box is no sin. But if that is all a man can see, he cannot read the Hungarian future.
Consider an alternative pattern of thought. A man who, for thirty years, did not overtrain on a single local pattern — but studied the global structure of networks. Who tried to understand not the music of the district party meeting, but why the distribution of protein–protein interactions is scale-free, and why that resembles the topology of the Internet, or the spreading pattern of a coronavirus, or the shape of human careers.
This man is Albert-László Barabási. Born in 1967 in Marosvásárhely (Târgu Mureș), a Hungarian physicist from Transylvania, who at Notre Dame and then Northeastern University did the work that, since the 2000s, established "network science" as a discipline of its own.
Linked (2002) sold in the millions. The Network Science textbook is required reading at 200+ universities. The Formula (2018) maps the network foundations of success.
I am not saying Barabási is "a man who understands science". I am saying Barabási understands the whole network as such. The connections. The role of hubs. Robustness. The function of the periphery. Diffusion. The consequences of scale-free distributions.
Four very concrete things. None of them because Barabási wants to be a politician — but because the core teachings of network science automatically shape what a person sees.
One of Barabási's central findings: scale-free networks are astonishingly vulnerable when someone targets the hubs. Hungary's brain-hubs: the universities, the academy of sciences, the cultural institutions, the hospital system. A president who understands this does not let politics degrade them for short-term advantage.
A central theorem of network science is that the hubs are not all that matters — the long tail of the periphery matters too. A small village on the Great Plain is not a "loss statistic". It is a living, often invisible element of the network. A president who understands this does not think in the metropolitan-versus-rural dichotomy — he thinks in topology.
The Hungarian future is not decided inside a single Hungary. The Hungarian future is decided in the global node pattern of the Hungarian scientific, cultural and diaspora networks. Whoever sees this works on connection — not on secession.
Network science teaches: surprise is the norm, not the exception. In non-linear systems, extreme events are more frequent than a normal distribution would permit. A president who understands this does not manage 2027 with 2008 thinking.
Now for the concrete qualities. What would Barabási bring as president that the current political field does not?
First: globality without the prestige act. Barabási does not carry the "celebrity scientist" attitude visible in parts of the Western circuit. The Hungarianness of the Marosvásárhely–Notre Dame–Boston route runs deep — ironically, much deeper than that of many loudly Hungarianising politicians. Such a man can represent Hungary as a global node, not as an isolated, sulking micro-region.
Second: the gentle return of science-informed leadership. The past decade of Hungarian politics dismantled the interwoven organism of science and public life. A president who is part of an actual, living, working scientific network can bring that connection back — symbolically and practically. Not by preaching an ideology. By being it.
Third: respect for complexity. Barabási's whole body of work says that complexity is not the enemy. Complexity is structure. A significant part of Hungarian public discourse lives on the exact opposite: it calls complexity confusing, and promises simple solutions. A president who sees complexity as mappable structure can change the collective conversation.
A nation's future is not decided in the weaker mood of a district party meeting. It is not decided in a stadium's VIP box. It is not decided in the seating chart of a diplomatic dinner.
A nation's future is decided in its connections — in the living topology of its scientific, cultural, economic, friendly, familial, global networks. A president who understands this looks at a small Hungarian village and sees a node. Looks at a diaspora and sees a living bond. Looks at an international negotiation and sees a diagram of information flow.
That is a wise man. Wise in this sense: not merely clever. But someone who has spent his whole life mapping how everything connects to everything.
It may be that such a man does not shell seeds in the box. It may be that he does not enjoy going to football matches. It may be that he once admitted in an interview to liking chicken paprikash — but he will not campaign on it. It may be that he does not know this week's biggest fixture in the Hungarian league.
But he knows precisely why the node statistics of the Hungarian scientific community and the New York subway network follow the same pattern. And he knows precisely what that means for the Hungarian future.
Albert-László Barabási is such a man. One discussion-starting sentence — I think it is worth considering. The comments await your verdicts.