Designing the ideal society is an old puzzle. Many ideas were generated over time, and some have even been put into practise. We have tried many different ways to organize society: everything from monarchy to democracy to communism. Yet none of these systems have yet stood the test of time. Ideas that look great on paper often fail in practise.
I think that this is because when we design an ideal society, we allow ourselves to also design the citizens of that society. We allow our society to dictate how a human being should behave, and assume that they will behave as expected. For example, a communist society assumes that its citizens would give their best in return for others' best, and have all citizens' needs met together; that its citizens are willing to stand by the mantra: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need".
But it's difficult, if not impossible, to convince every person to behave in a certain way. Nobody is perfect, and certainly there will be people whose interests conflict with that of society. Indeed some people will do anything they can to game whatever system that is in place.
So perhaps an ideal society is not what we need, because we are not ideal people. Perhaps we have been considering the wrong question all along. Instead of designing the ideal society, perhaps we should be designing a robust society. By “robust” I actually mean two things: First, that the society should still function if certain assumptions about the nature of its citizens are violated. Second, that the "locally optimal" behaviour for an individual should also be optimal for the society. (This is akin to the idea of evolutionary stability in "The Selfish Gene".)
As an example, we can see that communism fails at robustness: the "locally optimal" behaviour for a person would be to produce less and consume more, which is not optimal for society; and if a few people decide not to give their best, this game would become quite unfair to those who play by the rules, and so others are likely to also cheat.
Declaring that we have designed an ideal society when we take the liberty to design its citizens seems like a rather strange exercise. If we can decide how people would think and act, wouldn't any reasonable society we create be an ideal society? Design a society where citizens are required to give up their own children and raise a random person's, but design the citizens so that they understand why this is done (equal opportunity, perhaps?), and you have an “ideal” society.
... and yet we’ve only gone in circles. Tautologies are tautological.
End of Entry
Showing posts with label musing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label musing. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
logicomix and atlas shrugged
Though Logicomix is in no way historically accurate, it portrays well a feeling that I think a lot of us share. I'm sure that a lot of people saw the delicate beauty in Euclid's Elements, in the (relative?) certainty of mathematics, and hoped that something remotely similar to Elements can be made to solve dilemmas that come up in every day life--a consistent philosophical system deduced from the basic facts that everyone would understand and agree upon.
I had the naiive thought once. It's comforting to believe that there's a way to make a limited set of assumptions about life and existence, and derive from those a consistent set of beliefs about everything from metaphysics to ethics to politics.
From what other people are saying around the interweb, I'm not sure if Bertrand Russel would be the right person to attribute this set of feelings to. Actually, this might sound weird, but a more appropriate person would be Ayn Rand.
I recall in Atlas Shrugged, she speaks of people -- even philosophers (and logicians?) -- using logic to prove that logic is flawed/inadequate. These people were, of course, the "bad guys", the people that are held by the masses to be the "leader" of their chosen fields, but who are really there to foil the heros, the proponents of logic.
I loath hearing things about so and so "used logic to prove that logic is inadequate". I heard it once on numb3rs, too, so it's quite annoying. I had no idea that this in fact had been done. It's Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. Of course!
Did Ayn Rand know about Gödel? Would that changed her mind in any way? If we make the assumptions that (1) human life/experience/society is much more complicated than the natural numbers, and (2) a system of philosophy (built up from a few axioms, for our purpose) can be thought of as a model of the world, then Gödel seems to imply that any of our philosophical system is either incomplete or inconsistent.
I'm probably missing something very important here.
End of Entry
I had the naiive thought once. It's comforting to believe that there's a way to make a limited set of assumptions about life and existence, and derive from those a consistent set of beliefs about everything from metaphysics to ethics to politics.
From what other people are saying around the interweb, I'm not sure if Bertrand Russel would be the right person to attribute this set of feelings to. Actually, this might sound weird, but a more appropriate person would be Ayn Rand.
I recall in Atlas Shrugged, she speaks of people -- even philosophers (and logicians?) -- using logic to prove that logic is flawed/inadequate. These people were, of course, the "bad guys", the people that are held by the masses to be the "leader" of their chosen fields, but who are really there to foil the heros, the proponents of logic.
I loath hearing things about so and so "used logic to prove that logic is inadequate". I heard it once on numb3rs, too, so it's quite annoying. I had no idea that this in fact had been done. It's Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. Of course!
Did Ayn Rand know about Gödel? Would that changed her mind in any way? If we make the assumptions that (1) human life/experience/society is much more complicated than the natural numbers, and (2) a system of philosophy (built up from a few axioms, for our purpose) can be thought of as a model of the world, then Gödel seems to imply that any of our philosophical system is either incomplete or inconsistent.
I'm probably missing something very important here.
End of Entry
Sunday, February 7, 2010
The Impostor Syndrome
The Impostor Syndrome is a phenomenon where a person is incapable of internalizing success, often attributing it to luck, good timing, or pure fluke. The person is fearful that they might be "found out" to be less intelligent or competent than people make them to seem.
It's interesting that this phenomenon is prevalent enough to be both studied and given a name. Very interesting.
(And yes, I've felt this way many times, but it also seems that I am capable of internalizing success. Or maybe I'm just giving myself credit for effort, in which case I should remind you of this quote.)
End of Entry
It's interesting that this phenomenon is prevalent enough to be both studied and given a name. Very interesting.
(And yes, I've felt this way many times, but it also seems that I am capable of internalizing success. Or maybe I'm just giving myself credit for effort, in which case I should remind you of this quote.)
End of Entry
Saturday, December 26, 2009
on birthdays
It's a no brainer that birthdays mean different things to different people. Some people take it to be a time when they can hoard attention, when they get free gifts, and when they have an excuse to have fun. Others take it to be something completely arbitrary and meaningless - after all, your birthday really just depends on the calendar system that you happen to use.
I agree that the actual date of your birthday is quite arbitrary, but to me birthdays do have a special meaning: it is the realization and celebration of something that we take for granted -- the existence of a particular individual. For me, this realization and celebration is felt strongly only for people who are either closest to me, or whose existence had a lot of positive impacted on me, or whom I felt was really worth celebrating. When I say "happy birthday" to them, what I really mean is, "thank you for your existence, you are truly worth celebrating."
Yes, I have said watered down versions of "happy birthday" before, but I try to avoid it. It's why I don't show my birthday on my facebook. (I actually have a friend whose wall is covered with nothing but birthday greetings, and if you look carefully you'll see that these greetings are actually from a few different years!)
Since I'm being so secretive, I was astonished that there are people who actually remembered my birthday this year. I wasn't expecting anyone to remember, and I know that correlating how much a person cares about me with their ability to remember an arbitrary date is naiive. I expected my birthday to be something just between me and "life", and no one else. So this was truly a surprise.
I was also astonished at how smoothly that day went. I got practically everything I could ever want -- not in terms of presents of course, but in terms of the things that matters more. People were really, superbly good to me, even though they probably had no clue that it was my birthday...
Well, if you happen to know who you are ... =)
End of Entry
I agree that the actual date of your birthday is quite arbitrary, but to me birthdays do have a special meaning: it is the realization and celebration of something that we take for granted -- the existence of a particular individual. For me, this realization and celebration is felt strongly only for people who are either closest to me, or whose existence had a lot of positive impacted on me, or whom I felt was really worth celebrating. When I say "happy birthday" to them, what I really mean is, "thank you for your existence, you are truly worth celebrating."
Yes, I have said watered down versions of "happy birthday" before, but I try to avoid it. It's why I don't show my birthday on my facebook. (I actually have a friend whose wall is covered with nothing but birthday greetings, and if you look carefully you'll see that these greetings are actually from a few different years!)
Since I'm being so secretive, I was astonished that there are people who actually remembered my birthday this year. I wasn't expecting anyone to remember, and I know that correlating how much a person cares about me with their ability to remember an arbitrary date is naiive. I expected my birthday to be something just between me and "life", and no one else. So this was truly a surprise.
I was also astonished at how smoothly that day went. I got practically everything I could ever want -- not in terms of presents of course, but in terms of the things that matters more. People were really, superbly good to me, even though they probably had no clue that it was my birthday...
Well, if you happen to know who you are ... =)
End of Entry
Sunday, December 20, 2009
suspension of criticisms
In grade 7, I was (re?)introduced to music. I wasn't curious enough to use Kazaa or care enough to download music on my own accords. In fact, I didn't really listen to music at all. That is, until I had a friend who started sharing Chinese music with me. We had dial-up back then, and I remember it taking forever.
Since I didn't listen to songs very often, I was easily distracted by the details. I told him why I didn't really like each particular song -- this part of the lyrics seemed so cheesy, that sound there seemed uncalled for, and that random bit of Japanese is weird... Oh, and please don't send me another English song! They're so awkward.
Did I know anything about music? Actually, not really. I didn't. All I knew was that the songs didn't sound "right", whatever that was supposed to mean. I was just like one of those arrogant literary critics who pretended to know.
Yet as I listened to more and more music, these details stopped bothering me. This seemed counter-intuitive at the time. Have I merely accustomed myself to mediocrity?
I'd like to think that at some time or another, I just got the point. There are different levels that I could focus on: there's the level of the individual sounds, and there's the level of the song as a whole. When I learn to suspend my criticisms (much like the "suspension of disbelief"), I learned to appreciate a song as a whole and became more forgiving. It was no longer about "how many things about this song I would change", but the appreciation of the message. I focused more on connecting with it, emotionally and otherwise. I could do that without the song being absolutely perfect.
"But the individual sounds are important!" Sure. I'm not saying that we should shun all criticisms. But sometimes, it is worthwhile to let the details slide for a moment, just to gauge the actual message being sent. The arguments might still hold regardless of innocent mistakes.
It's always easier to criticize than to create, but it's much more worthwhile to give someone the benefit of the doubt and to focus instead on the message they're trying to send.
End of Entry
Since I didn't listen to songs very often, I was easily distracted by the details. I told him why I didn't really like each particular song -- this part of the lyrics seemed so cheesy, that sound there seemed uncalled for, and that random bit of Japanese is weird... Oh, and please don't send me another English song! They're so awkward.
Did I know anything about music? Actually, not really. I didn't. All I knew was that the songs didn't sound "right", whatever that was supposed to mean. I was just like one of those arrogant literary critics who pretended to know.
Yet as I listened to more and more music, these details stopped bothering me. This seemed counter-intuitive at the time. Have I merely accustomed myself to mediocrity?
I'd like to think that at some time or another, I just got the point. There are different levels that I could focus on: there's the level of the individual sounds, and there's the level of the song as a whole. When I learn to suspend my criticisms (much like the "suspension of disbelief"), I learned to appreciate a song as a whole and became more forgiving. It was no longer about "how many things about this song I would change", but the appreciation of the message. I focused more on connecting with it, emotionally and otherwise. I could do that without the song being absolutely perfect.
"But the individual sounds are important!" Sure. I'm not saying that we should shun all criticisms. But sometimes, it is worthwhile to let the details slide for a moment, just to gauge the actual message being sent. The arguments might still hold regardless of innocent mistakes.
It's always easier to criticize than to create, but it's much more worthwhile to give someone the benefit of the doubt and to focus instead on the message they're trying to send.
End of Entry
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Gödel's theorems -- transcending transcendence
It occurred to me that perhaps I should have preceded the previous post with this one, a discussion about the consequences of Gödel that would answer the question "so what?" So what if Principia Mathematica is never going to contain all of mathematical truth? What does that have to do with anything?
Logic is Inadequate
Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem exposes a glaring weakness in any formal system. It points at a strange disconnect between logic and truth. The beauty and austerity of formal logic become questionable -- we can't know everything there is to know about the world using formal, deductive, logical reasoning!
I guess this is old news. But personal experience suggests that it is still easy to fall for the misconception that deductive reasoning is somehow "better" than other types of reasoning. Yes, it is much cleaner, but heuristics, induction, abduction and analogical reasoning are so much more powerful, and play such an important role in intelligent behaviour.
Truth is Weird
Gödel's theorem shows that there are lots more subtleties in truth than we give it credit for. Perhaps the crux of Gödel's result come from our misunderstanding of what truth really mean in our world. I guess the other question is: what exactly do mathematical truths mean in our world? Especially strange results like the Banach-Tarski paradox, so called the paradoxical decomposition of spheres...
Argument against strong AI
J.R. Lucas argued using Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem that machines can never be as intelligent as human beings. He argued that since machines are inevitably formal systems, Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem applies. Thus, there must be some truth that machines ought not to be able to discover, but that humans can -- we can follow the construction from the last post to construct a statement that means "this theorem is not provable by the machine". While we know that this statement is true, the machine would never be able to prove or disprove it. Thus humans will always have the upper hand.
Although this is an appealing argument, consensus is that it doesn't quite work. Two of the possible arguments against Lucas are:
Themes that come up in Gödel's theorem and its proof are quite ubiquitous. The futility of the formal system in attempt to "break out" of its bound of incompleteness is like Escher's dragon, below, trying to break out of the 2-dimensionality of your screen.
There's a certain "zen"-ness to all this. Even the distinction between provability and unprovability is very much like the concept of the knowable versus the unknowable. The existence of an unprovable statement is akin to the proposition that there will always be unknowable truths. (Reminds me of this quote from Douglas Adams, the first one under "The Universe", for some strange reason)
The common theme here is, I believe, the desire to transcend, coupled with the inability to transcend. If right now, someone asked me to bet on what the meaning of life is, then I would put on my "pretend to be Zen" hat and answer: to transcend transcendence.
End of Entry
Logic is Inadequate
Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem exposes a glaring weakness in any formal system. It points at a strange disconnect between logic and truth. The beauty and austerity of formal logic become questionable -- we can't know everything there is to know about the world using formal, deductive, logical reasoning!
I guess this is old news. But personal experience suggests that it is still easy to fall for the misconception that deductive reasoning is somehow "better" than other types of reasoning. Yes, it is much cleaner, but heuristics, induction, abduction and analogical reasoning are so much more powerful, and play such an important role in intelligent behaviour.
Truth is Weird
Gödel's theorem shows that there are lots more subtleties in truth than we give it credit for. Perhaps the crux of Gödel's result come from our misunderstanding of what truth really mean in our world. I guess the other question is: what exactly do mathematical truths mean in our world? Especially strange results like the Banach-Tarski paradox, so called the paradoxical decomposition of spheres...
Argument against strong AI
J.R. Lucas argued using Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem that machines can never be as intelligent as human beings. He argued that since machines are inevitably formal systems, Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem applies. Thus, there must be some truth that machines ought not to be able to discover, but that humans can -- we can follow the construction from the last post to construct a statement that means "this theorem is not provable by the machine". While we know that this statement is true, the machine would never be able to prove or disprove it. Thus humans will always have the upper hand.
Although this is an appealing argument, consensus is that it doesn't quite work. Two of the possible arguments against Lucas are:
- In order for Gödel's theorem to hold, we must assume that the formal system is consistent. Computers need not be to be a consistent formal system. (Humans are quite inconsistent as well.)
- There are paradoxical sentences that humans cannot assign truth value to; thus perhaps we are formal systems that are more powerful, but not something that cannot be surmounted by computers.
Themes that come up in Gödel's theorem and its proof are quite ubiquitous. The futility of the formal system in attempt to "break out" of its bound of incompleteness is like Escher's dragon, below, trying to break out of the 2-dimensionality of your screen.
There's a certain "zen"-ness to all this. Even the distinction between provability and unprovability is very much like the concept of the knowable versus the unknowable. The existence of an unprovable statement is akin to the proposition that there will always be unknowable truths. (Reminds me of this quote from Douglas Adams, the first one under "The Universe", for some strange reason)
The common theme here is, I believe, the desire to transcend, coupled with the inability to transcend. If right now, someone asked me to bet on what the meaning of life is, then I would put on my "pretend to be Zen" hat and answer: to transcend transcendence.
End of Entry
Monday, November 9, 2009
Life as an entity
Reading "Ant Fugue" in GEB made me think of a way to defend my talking about "life" as a conscious, intelligent entity that I interact with, as I did in my previous entries (e.g. here and here).
Holism is the idea that the whole is more than a sum of its parts. The relations and interactions between the parts can give the whole characteristics not found in any of the parts. This is why an ant colony can be seen as an entity, with perhaps intelligent behaviour, while each individual ant is not very intelligent. In the dialogue "Ant Fugue" in GEB, the characters talk about their conversations with an ant colony -- one that is intelligent and seemingly conscious. This "intelligence" and "consciousness" come not from any particular ant, but the interactions between the ants. Hopfstadter describes how the concentration of the cast distribution can contain information, which when grouped into higher and higher levels can lead to intelligent behaviour. The ants themselves are not very important - they are constantly being replaced, without really affecting the colony. Incidentally, this is very much like how our brains supposedly work. We are conscious, but this consciousness doesn't come from an individual neuron -- it's more likely to come from the way the neurons interact. As before, normal neuron deaths and replacements do not affect us.
You can begin to see where this is going - "life" is like the ant colony, and every object in my vicinity (perhaps also everything in my past and future) is like an individual ant. These objects, taken together and allowed to interact, display a kind of behaviour that seems intelligent. The actual objects in my vicinity will change, but that doesn't destroy the integrity of the entity. By living my life and in doing so making certain decisions, I am in effect communicating with this being. It seems to be helping me, teaching me, and prompting me with interesting experiences. Maybe it really is intelligent and conscious. Maybe I'll know one day.
End of Entry
Holism is the idea that the whole is more than a sum of its parts. The relations and interactions between the parts can give the whole characteristics not found in any of the parts. This is why an ant colony can be seen as an entity, with perhaps intelligent behaviour, while each individual ant is not very intelligent. In the dialogue "Ant Fugue" in GEB, the characters talk about their conversations with an ant colony -- one that is intelligent and seemingly conscious. This "intelligence" and "consciousness" come not from any particular ant, but the interactions between the ants. Hopfstadter describes how the concentration of the cast distribution can contain information, which when grouped into higher and higher levels can lead to intelligent behaviour. The ants themselves are not very important - they are constantly being replaced, without really affecting the colony. Incidentally, this is very much like how our brains supposedly work. We are conscious, but this consciousness doesn't come from an individual neuron -- it's more likely to come from the way the neurons interact. As before, normal neuron deaths and replacements do not affect us.
You can begin to see where this is going - "life" is like the ant colony, and every object in my vicinity (perhaps also everything in my past and future) is like an individual ant. These objects, taken together and allowed to interact, display a kind of behaviour that seems intelligent. The actual objects in my vicinity will change, but that doesn't destroy the integrity of the entity. By living my life and in doing so making certain decisions, I am in effect communicating with this being. It seems to be helping me, teaching me, and prompting me with interesting experiences. Maybe it really is intelligent and conscious. Maybe I'll know one day.
End of Entry
the "common sense" view of life
Professors seem to love to point out how the "common sense" view about life is a dualist view: that there's a mind and a body, two separate things, with the mind capable of existing without the body. They say that this is the view of life that most people grow up with, but that it does not make as much sense as materialism. Funny thing is that I (and some of you) have got it all reversed! We grew up with the opposite view, an atheist and materialist view. Only later are we introduced to the idea that there might be a God, a soul, and a distinction between the material and - perhaps - the spiritual.
Then comes the myriad of oddities about life: OBE's, NDE's, certain lucid dreams, strange psychic-like experiences. What do we make of it? The explanations from my professors are that these are illusions, hallucinations, pseudo-science, folktale... but wouldn't it be so much harder for them to say that if they themselves had similar experiences? Perhaps they are stuck in sleep paralysis and met a ghost who helped them wake up. Perhaps they have a friend who consistently sees ghosts, or a friend who talks about having psychic experiences. It's so much harder to discount those experiences when they're close to you. I think that difficulty comes from an intuitive knowledge that these individual experiences, though not scientifically testable or reproducible, does give us legitimate information about this strange, strange world.
It does complicate things when many people lie about their experiences. Yes, there are lots of people who are willing to deceive, lots of people waiting to drain the pocket of the gullible by falsely claiming that they have "special powers". They're horrible people, but they don't change the fact that the universe might be much more complicated than we give it credit for. I really want to know whether this experience is real. I want to know whether there are any critics of Robert Monroe, and whether they found anything wrong with his institute, or with the Stargate Project.
I think that the typical materialist should open their eyes to a new set of observations. Sticking to objective, repeatable, and "scientific" knowledge got us pretty far, but it might also restrict us. Maybe this is just one of those things that you can't rely on other people to tell you. Maybe there are things that we just have to discover for ourselves to know.
End of Entry
Then comes the myriad of oddities about life: OBE's, NDE's, certain lucid dreams, strange psychic-like experiences. What do we make of it? The explanations from my professors are that these are illusions, hallucinations, pseudo-science, folktale... but wouldn't it be so much harder for them to say that if they themselves had similar experiences? Perhaps they are stuck in sleep paralysis and met a ghost who helped them wake up. Perhaps they have a friend who consistently sees ghosts, or a friend who talks about having psychic experiences. It's so much harder to discount those experiences when they're close to you. I think that difficulty comes from an intuitive knowledge that these individual experiences, though not scientifically testable or reproducible, does give us legitimate information about this strange, strange world.
It does complicate things when many people lie about their experiences. Yes, there are lots of people who are willing to deceive, lots of people waiting to drain the pocket of the gullible by falsely claiming that they have "special powers". They're horrible people, but they don't change the fact that the universe might be much more complicated than we give it credit for. I really want to know whether this experience is real. I want to know whether there are any critics of Robert Monroe, and whether they found anything wrong with his institute, or with the Stargate Project.
I think that the typical materialist should open their eyes to a new set of observations. Sticking to objective, repeatable, and "scientific" knowledge got us pretty far, but it might also restrict us. Maybe this is just one of those things that you can't rely on other people to tell you. Maybe there are things that we just have to discover for ourselves to know.
End of Entry
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Das Happyend
The German word "das Happyend" was borrowed from English, and acquired a neuter gender (hence the article "das"). It's such an inconspicuously word - so pure, simple, and lasting. Indeed the concept is very intuitive in stories, plays, and novels. Yet the complexity of "das Happyend" as a real life phenomena is very much under-appreciated.
My life has been full of these "das Happyend" moments. Take the High School & University Go Tournament in 2005 for example. I had wanted a school tournament for a long time, in hopes of drawing together all the high school go clubs in the area. Seeing everything happen was absolutely stunning. I remember the day I got the email from CPAC telling me that they're willing to let us use their room. I was ecstatic! It was one of the three times in my life when I actually did a happy dance.
Running the actual tournament was more tedious than I had imagined. There were very few teams, so I paired the teams by hand. There was the problem of assigning tables. There were other problems that I didn't solve as well as I could. Thank god Edward Chung, president of the Canadian Go Association at the time, was there to help me. It's unfortunately that I didn't appreciate Edward's help as much back then - a grave mistake on my part. All in all, things went fine. I was happy. The tournament happened. Das Happyend.
Then I woke up the next day. Did whatever I had to do. Read for a bit. Slept.
Then I woke up a week later. Showered. Ate. Did whatever I had to do. Slept.
I ran the same tournament a couple more times.
I'm here, now.
Thing is, you can't really have a "happy ending" in life, because there is generally no real "ending" involved, unless you happened to die. Eventually you have to move on, keep living, and keep asking the question "Now what?"
This is why life this term has been the strangest thing ever. Every co-op term thus far has had a "das Happyend" story attached to it. Looking back, that's what all my co-op terms had in common: I consistently chose an adventurous path. Of course I needed help at times in seeing the obvious, as you guys helped me with choosing San Francisco, and yes I've once I chickened out of the real adventure. Yet I'd be pretty damn bored if I just aimed for or picked any half-decent job! Adventure! Yes! Fun! Yes! Excitement! Challenge! Exploration! Home!
Every time I come back to Waterloo, it almost feels like I've cheated death. There's that "ghostly" feeling, that confusion that would last for at least several days, and sometimes weeks. This term, this "ghostly" feeling was really prominent. I resigned to the thought that the best of co-op had already passed. Naturally, my expectations had increased over time, so I didn't know if there will be many things to look forward to in the near future. I didn't even try very hard in applying for co-op jobs and preparing for interviews.
So is this really the end? If so "das Happyend" would be the most awful thing you could have. You might as well replace the phrase "and they lived happily ever after" with the phrase "and from then on they lived a not-to-spectacular life, always doting on the time when there was a story worth telling".
I have to admit that until a few days ago, I did feel trapped. "Now what?" is a depressing question if you don't have a sufficient answer. I knew that Microsoft China would reject me. The other positions weren't bad, but they was no thrill associated with any of the positions. Normality. Mediocrity. Maybe the best I could do is to readjust and refocus while the wind is calm, to prepare for the next storm. Maybe I should have quit co-op.
Yet life has a better plan for me - perhaps one good enough to be considered an adventure. I wouldn't call it a happy ending, though. A happy ending is something you at least had to work for. I didn't. I applied to the job without any intent on taking it. I didn't go to their information session (because talking about math with a potential new friend was more interesting and productive). I'm not sure if I left a good impression when I checked google calendar on the recruiter's laptop, when he asked about my availability for second round interviews. Heck, I didn't even get second round interviews!
Well, I guess I was too pro for second round interviews -- because next term, I will be working as a Data Science intern at Facebook.
End of Entry
My life has been full of these "das Happyend" moments. Take the High School & University Go Tournament in 2005 for example. I had wanted a school tournament for a long time, in hopes of drawing together all the high school go clubs in the area. Seeing everything happen was absolutely stunning. I remember the day I got the email from CPAC telling me that they're willing to let us use their room. I was ecstatic! It was one of the three times in my life when I actually did a happy dance.
Running the actual tournament was more tedious than I had imagined. There were very few teams, so I paired the teams by hand. There was the problem of assigning tables. There were other problems that I didn't solve as well as I could. Thank god Edward Chung, president of the Canadian Go Association at the time, was there to help me. It's unfortunately that I didn't appreciate Edward's help as much back then - a grave mistake on my part. All in all, things went fine. I was happy. The tournament happened. Das Happyend.
Then I woke up the next day. Did whatever I had to do. Read for a bit. Slept.
Then I woke up a week later. Showered. Ate. Did whatever I had to do. Slept.
I ran the same tournament a couple more times.
I'm here, now.
Thing is, you can't really have a "happy ending" in life, because there is generally no real "ending" involved, unless you happened to die. Eventually you have to move on, keep living, and keep asking the question "Now what?"
This is why life this term has been the strangest thing ever. Every co-op term thus far has had a "das Happyend" story attached to it. Looking back, that's what all my co-op terms had in common: I consistently chose an adventurous path. Of course I needed help at times in seeing the obvious, as you guys helped me with choosing San Francisco, and yes I've once I chickened out of the real adventure. Yet I'd be pretty damn bored if I just aimed for or picked any half-decent job! Adventure! Yes! Fun! Yes! Excitement! Challenge! Exploration! Home!
Every time I come back to Waterloo, it almost feels like I've cheated death. There's that "ghostly" feeling, that confusion that would last for at least several days, and sometimes weeks. This term, this "ghostly" feeling was really prominent. I resigned to the thought that the best of co-op had already passed. Naturally, my expectations had increased over time, so I didn't know if there will be many things to look forward to in the near future. I didn't even try very hard in applying for co-op jobs and preparing for interviews.
So is this really the end? If so "das Happyend" would be the most awful thing you could have. You might as well replace the phrase "and they lived happily ever after" with the phrase "and from then on they lived a not-to-spectacular life, always doting on the time when there was a story worth telling".
I have to admit that until a few days ago, I did feel trapped. "Now what?" is a depressing question if you don't have a sufficient answer. I knew that Microsoft China would reject me. The other positions weren't bad, but they was no thrill associated with any of the positions. Normality. Mediocrity. Maybe the best I could do is to readjust and refocus while the wind is calm, to prepare for the next storm. Maybe I should have quit co-op.
Yet life has a better plan for me - perhaps one good enough to be considered an adventure. I wouldn't call it a happy ending, though. A happy ending is something you at least had to work for. I didn't. I applied to the job without any intent on taking it. I didn't go to their information session (because talking about math with a potential new friend was more interesting and productive). I'm not sure if I left a good impression when I checked google calendar on the recruiter's laptop, when he asked about my availability for second round interviews. Heck, I didn't even get second round interviews!
Well, I guess I was too pro for second round interviews -- because next term, I will be working as a Data Science intern at Facebook.
End of Entry
Thursday, October 15, 2009
The Fear of Mediocrity
University used to be a time for reflection. It was time well spent away from all distractions to figure out how to live the 40-60 years ahead of you, what to accomplish within that short time. I wonder how much of this kind of musing still occurs today, in the daily lives of undergraduate university students. I won't expect there to be many.
Perhaps they already figured out what they want to do, where they “fit” in society. Maybe they feel that the economy does not allow for that kind of luxury – the luxury of doing something beyond mere stagnation. Well, idealism is a luxury, isn't it?
Norman Bethune is said to have feared mediocrity. He had a peculiar intolerance towards it. Bethune is a surgeon who helped the Chinese resistance against the Japanese invasion, and is one of the few westerners hailed as a hero by the Chinese. In some sense he is the perfect idealist – he gave up the comforts of Canada to work in the battlefields in China, because that's where people needed him the most. Yet his lonely life in China made his life anything but ideal. During his days in China he longed for an English newspaper, yet what he got was a case of blood poisoning that resulted in his death in a tiny Hebei village.
It's fitting to recall this saying about how you should aim for the moon, because even if you don't make it you'd land on one of the stars. What they fail to mention is that the journey to the stars is both lonely and lengthy, and the years spent in the darkness of space are irredeemable. In fact, you often don't know where you're going, and may never get there! The universe is big – so incredibly big – and the chances that we can make a true impact are so tiny that some of us think of it as negligible.
If idealism is not luxurious, what does mediocrity have to offer? The work-8-hour-days-till-you're-40-then-have-a-midlife-crisis plan? The rat race? The push to publish, publish, publish? I'd say that the concept of mediocrity is much like the concept of degeneracy in Mathematics: you see the endless possibilities, the countless dimensions that can be spanned by the hyperplane, only to find that all the parameters cancel out and you are left with a single point in the space. The mediocre life is also the unexamined life, and as Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living.
I remember in philosophy class in grade 12, we had to answer the question, “Is Socrates a great man?” As I loved being the devil's advocate, I wrote a piece about how Socrates was not a great man. My argument was this: many other people at the time may have mused about life as well, and had similar ideas. Socrates could have been an average man who happened to be vocal and have a large follower. Thinking back, I'm ashamed of having argued that. A man who could think like Socrates is indeed rare. Besides, would anyone else but the idealist die for his ideas?
You may comment, quite rightly so, that the insane person may do the same. You may go further to say that the idealist is insane. What is more precious than a simple life enjoyed, pleasure maximized, and happiness sustained? If Bethune could live again, would he have stayed in Canada?
I hope that even if Bethune choose to stay in Canada, he would do so not because of a shift in ideology, but as a result of knowing that China is not as glamorous as he had thought. He may not choose China again, but I don't think he would stoop to mediocrity. He will shine in other ways.
Mediocrity is too safe. The riskiest thing one can do in today's society is to play safe. It guarantees the bare minimum out of all that life offers: the dull and unexamined life that have zero impact on your person and the world. It is a life that you can live over and over and over again without growth. No matter how little chance we have of making a difference in ourselves, our own world or the world at large, that chance is worth taking. Because really, what else can we live for?
I sit here befuddled. Where would I go in the next 40-60 years? I don't know. I know for sure, though, that I will continue to be marveled by the beauty and intricacy inherent in our world. Sometimes I feel as if life is saying to me in that whimsical voice, “Come on Lisa, you should be able to figure everything out now! All the clues are out there, just put them together...” I wonder if many others hear that same voice.
End of Entry
Sunday, September 6, 2009
The Gaia Hypothesis, Meaning of Life, and Pascal's Wager
Let's muse for a bit, and have a thought experiment. Let's imagine that our cells are conscious in some form. Suppose also that they can perceived their existence and that they are intelligent enough to find patterns in their immediate environment. Perhaps we can assume at this point that our cells have basic control over its functions, i.e. it performs tasks such as cell-cell communication, excretion, and mitosis knowingly.
So far so good. We can imagine our white blood cells living a courageous life battling enemy intruders, our skin cells staring lazily outwards as nutrients are delivered to them, and our muscle cells so often torn so we could make them stronger. There are also nerve cells happily(?) transmitting signals to the brain like children playing the telephone game, and the cells lining our stomach screaming (or equivalent) as its burnt to death by the acidity. Their lives are as diverse as our lives!
For the fun of it, let's make them even more similar to us. Let's make them wonder about their purpose in life. We know one of their purposes very well: to help us survive, so that we can live and achieve our purpose, whatever that is. But our world and our existence is so different from the world the cells live in. How could our cells possibly understand that? How could they even guess that there's a world much bigger than it knows?
Let's try one method. Let's imagine that these cells are capable of having thought experiments, and that they know of the existence of atoms and molecules. Let's suppose that on one fine moment, one of the cells is having this thought experiment: "What if atoms are actually conscious, and can perceive their immediate environment? What if atoms can find patterns in their environment and have a basic understanding of it? What if they can question the meaning of existence and their purpose?" You get the gist of it.
How would the cells react, faced with the possibility that they, too, might be an insignificant part of something larger? How would they feel about knowing that the world doesn't revolve around them?
It's what western science had been pointing at, isn't it? The world does not revolve around us humans. Astronomy destroyed the idea that the sun revolves around the earth. The theory of evolution is making us question whether our domination of the world by chance, and whether it will even last. Are we really the black swan? Or is our search for meaning a hopeless quest, a quest that is now taken by only the most naive?
Perhaps, but let's muse some more. The cell might noticed that it's quite different from atoms: notably, atoms outlive cells. This means that at different stages of the atom's existence, it must have had different purposes, and it was a part of many different things. The cell, on the other hand, eventually faces death. But wait... could it be possible that something that is a part of the cell can "outlive" the cell, and have another purpose? Could it be that the cell is more complicated than what we think it is? If so, does the cell have another purpose? Who creates that purpose?
That brings us back to square one, with little insight to the real question: what's the purpose of our lives? Are we just an insignificant part of something bigger? Must we be the creator of meaning?
Well, of course you didn't expect me to give you real answers. I'm a human, after all (female, young, idealistic - you know the drill). Though there's this much my feeble mind can grasp - and there is going to be a "Pascal's Wager" involved:
Suppose you live your life as if there is a purpose, and finds out (or not) that there is none. What would you feel? Probably dejected. Maybe really depressed. But in the end there's no real harm done, you got the best out of it given what you know, and nothing matters anyways. Just have to get over it. Now, what if you lived your life as if there is no purpose, and find out after death that there is one? Now there's real loss - potentially infinite loss, something that we can't begin to fathom. Would you risk it?
Of course, there are way better reasons to explore the notion of a "purpose" than a Pascal's Wager. I'm sure that there are more solid ways to reason about things than random thought experiments. For now, though, this is all I've got.
End of Entry
So far so good. We can imagine our white blood cells living a courageous life battling enemy intruders, our skin cells staring lazily outwards as nutrients are delivered to them, and our muscle cells so often torn so we could make them stronger. There are also nerve cells happily(?) transmitting signals to the brain like children playing the telephone game, and the cells lining our stomach screaming (or equivalent) as its burnt to death by the acidity. Their lives are as diverse as our lives!
For the fun of it, let's make them even more similar to us. Let's make them wonder about their purpose in life. We know one of their purposes very well: to help us survive, so that we can live and achieve our purpose, whatever that is. But our world and our existence is so different from the world the cells live in. How could our cells possibly understand that? How could they even guess that there's a world much bigger than it knows?
Let's try one method. Let's imagine that these cells are capable of having thought experiments, and that they know of the existence of atoms and molecules. Let's suppose that on one fine moment, one of the cells is having this thought experiment: "What if atoms are actually conscious, and can perceive their immediate environment? What if atoms can find patterns in their environment and have a basic understanding of it? What if they can question the meaning of existence and their purpose?" You get the gist of it.
How would the cells react, faced with the possibility that they, too, might be an insignificant part of something larger? How would they feel about knowing that the world doesn't revolve around them?
It's what western science had been pointing at, isn't it? The world does not revolve around us humans. Astronomy destroyed the idea that the sun revolves around the earth. The theory of evolution is making us question whether our domination of the world by chance, and whether it will even last. Are we really the black swan? Or is our search for meaning a hopeless quest, a quest that is now taken by only the most naive?
Perhaps, but let's muse some more. The cell might noticed that it's quite different from atoms: notably, atoms outlive cells. This means that at different stages of the atom's existence, it must have had different purposes, and it was a part of many different things. The cell, on the other hand, eventually faces death. But wait... could it be possible that something that is a part of the cell can "outlive" the cell, and have another purpose? Could it be that the cell is more complicated than what we think it is? If so, does the cell have another purpose? Who creates that purpose?
That brings us back to square one, with little insight to the real question: what's the purpose of our lives? Are we just an insignificant part of something bigger? Must we be the creator of meaning?
Well, of course you didn't expect me to give you real answers. I'm a human, after all (female, young, idealistic - you know the drill). Though there's this much my feeble mind can grasp - and there is going to be a "Pascal's Wager" involved:
Suppose you live your life as if there is a purpose, and finds out (or not) that there is none. What would you feel? Probably dejected. Maybe really depressed. But in the end there's no real harm done, you got the best out of it given what you know, and nothing matters anyways. Just have to get over it. Now, what if you lived your life as if there is no purpose, and find out after death that there is one? Now there's real loss - potentially infinite loss, something that we can't begin to fathom. Would you risk it?
Of course, there are way better reasons to explore the notion of a "purpose" than a Pascal's Wager. I'm sure that there are more solid ways to reason about things than random thought experiments. For now, though, this is all I've got.
End of Entry
Monday, August 24, 2009
why programmers rock
In a very broad sense, this entry is a pseudo review of the last few months in San Francisco. I'm very grateful that you guys encouraged me to seriously consider this opportunity. This term has indeed been a blast, and I've learned things that helped me become more of myself. One of the reasons why this term has been such an experience is because I've been around programmers. Programmers, I must say, are the more interesting people one could chance upon.
I'm referring to real programmers, of course. I know many programmers who sees programming as something they do to put bread on the table. I know many of them, especially immigrants whom I doubt really enjoy what they do. They are of a different breed. For example, my parents discouraged me from programming, saying that it's a draining job that requires a lot of brain power that I wouldn't have when I get older. That's right, it's just a job to them, just like any other job.
Real programmers don't just do it because it's a job. They're not always like artists or pure mathematicians either, who do their work for the love of its beauty. Elegance exists in programming, but that's a side effect, not a goal. Most real programmers are pragmatists that, beyond all else, just wants to get something done.
That brings me to my first point:
1) Programmers aren't just programmers.
Most programmers have ulterior motives beyond programming. They seemed to have chanced upon programming because there was a problem they wanted to solve: maybe it was to automate something, build something, or find an efficient way to compute something. Programming just happened to be the best mean to an end. It is a tool, and there are many ways that one can use that tool. Programmers, thus, have a wide range of both personal and career interests.
On the same note, if you ask some real programmers what their major was, you would hear all sorts of things: physics is very common, so is math, you might have a few sciences and maybe even arts. This is possible again because programming is a tool that people can learn to solve various problems, problems that people in every day life can chance upon.
2) Programmers are not lazy.
Some of the laziest people I know are programmers. It make sense: why else will they want to program a computer but to do all the work for them? Programmers tend not to want to waste the slightest effort in anything they do. Low input. High output. They strives to be super efficient like that. Yet none the good programmers suffer from the laziness of thought. They can't afford to; almost all of programming is pure thought-work. Unlike the rest of us, programmers have learned that the least-effort solutions requires the use of their heads. So they do.
This discipline that they gain from the "least effort" mentality is really valuable; thinking more is not only the lest cost solution, it is also the most effective solution. I don't need to blabber on about the power of our minds, and how the only way to improve it is to use it consistently. I also already said enough about this being the reason why I wanted a programming job.
3) Programmers have a different world view.
Of course I'm thinking about Steve Yegge's series about the Programmer's View of the Universe. The second in the series was, in my opinion, the most insightful (though the first is very good too). He considers the question "what's outside of the universe" by imagining a Mario car racer asking "what's beyond the wall, beyond which is outside of the game?". He effectively compare the universe to an embedded system, and compares the "outside of the universe" to a place in memory not assigned to this system. The question then becomes, "what's in the position in memory that would have been assigned to the area outside the boundary of the game?" The answer is: it could be anything! This is the notion of the term "undefined".
I understand that his actual answer to the proposed question is not insightful in any way. It's the metaphor he uses to frame the problem that is insightful. Programmers like Yegge avail themselves to metaphors from Computer Science, which they can use to discuss the nature of the universe. For programmers, a metaphysical questions such as "If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around, does it make noise?" can be more concisely state as "Is the universe evaluated lazily?" These metaphors exist because programmers spend so much of their time designing and building systems, so they can't help but compare it to the designing and building of our universe. Perhaps this allows them to see through the eye of what might have been the creator.
We must be cautious, as these metaphors in themselves may not be accurate. For example, one can argue that one thing that differentiates a system that's evaluated lazily and one that isn't, is that lazy evaluation allows for the definition of an infinite series. Our world allows for the definition of infinite series, and therefore ... the tree should not make noise! Can you tell what's wrong with this argument?
Regardless of how accurate such metaphors are in depicting how the universe works, it is an interesting lens through which one can attempt to view the universe. Even though I may not pursue a career as a programmer, I do value the fact that I'm surrounded by programmers, and that I've dabbed my feet in it for a bit.
End of Entry
I'm referring to real programmers, of course. I know many programmers who sees programming as something they do to put bread on the table. I know many of them, especially immigrants whom I doubt really enjoy what they do. They are of a different breed. For example, my parents discouraged me from programming, saying that it's a draining job that requires a lot of brain power that I wouldn't have when I get older. That's right, it's just a job to them, just like any other job.
Real programmers don't just do it because it's a job. They're not always like artists or pure mathematicians either, who do their work for the love of its beauty. Elegance exists in programming, but that's a side effect, not a goal. Most real programmers are pragmatists that, beyond all else, just wants to get something done.
That brings me to my first point:
1) Programmers aren't just programmers.
Most programmers have ulterior motives beyond programming. They seemed to have chanced upon programming because there was a problem they wanted to solve: maybe it was to automate something, build something, or find an efficient way to compute something. Programming just happened to be the best mean to an end. It is a tool, and there are many ways that one can use that tool. Programmers, thus, have a wide range of both personal and career interests.
On the same note, if you ask some real programmers what their major was, you would hear all sorts of things: physics is very common, so is math, you might have a few sciences and maybe even arts. This is possible again because programming is a tool that people can learn to solve various problems, problems that people in every day life can chance upon.
2) Programmers are not lazy.
Some of the laziest people I know are programmers. It make sense: why else will they want to program a computer but to do all the work for them? Programmers tend not to want to waste the slightest effort in anything they do. Low input. High output. They strives to be super efficient like that. Yet none the good programmers suffer from the laziness of thought. They can't afford to; almost all of programming is pure thought-work. Unlike the rest of us, programmers have learned that the least-effort solutions requires the use of their heads. So they do.
This discipline that they gain from the "least effort" mentality is really valuable; thinking more is not only the lest cost solution, it is also the most effective solution. I don't need to blabber on about the power of our minds, and how the only way to improve it is to use it consistently. I also already said enough about this being the reason why I wanted a programming job.
3) Programmers have a different world view.
Of course I'm thinking about Steve Yegge's series about the Programmer's View of the Universe. The second in the series was, in my opinion, the most insightful (though the first is very good too). He considers the question "what's outside of the universe" by imagining a Mario car racer asking "what's beyond the wall, beyond which is outside of the game?". He effectively compare the universe to an embedded system, and compares the "outside of the universe" to a place in memory not assigned to this system. The question then becomes, "what's in the position in memory that would have been assigned to the area outside the boundary of the game?" The answer is: it could be anything! This is the notion of the term "undefined".
I understand that his actual answer to the proposed question is not insightful in any way. It's the metaphor he uses to frame the problem that is insightful. Programmers like Yegge avail themselves to metaphors from Computer Science, which they can use to discuss the nature of the universe. For programmers, a metaphysical questions such as "If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around, does it make noise?" can be more concisely state as "Is the universe evaluated lazily?" These metaphors exist because programmers spend so much of their time designing and building systems, so they can't help but compare it to the designing and building of our universe. Perhaps this allows them to see through the eye of what might have been the creator.
We must be cautious, as these metaphors in themselves may not be accurate. For example, one can argue that one thing that differentiates a system that's evaluated lazily and one that isn't, is that lazy evaluation allows for the definition of an infinite series. Our world allows for the definition of infinite series, and therefore ... the tree should not make noise! Can you tell what's wrong with this argument?
Regardless of how accurate such metaphors are in depicting how the universe works, it is an interesting lens through which one can attempt to view the universe. Even though I may not pursue a career as a programmer, I do value the fact that I'm surrounded by programmers, and that I've dabbed my feet in it for a bit.
End of Entry
Sunday, August 23, 2009
a letter to the world...
Some noted that I don't really blog and write about things that normal people who don't know me would want to read. Perhaps I didn't have that illusion of grandeur: I didn't think that I wrote things that benefits the world. I would just add to the mess that readers have to navigate across. Here, you guys come back knowing what you're in for. Frankly, I don't know why you do come back...
If I can't make the world better, the least I can do is not make the world worse, to not add to the mountainous piles of bullshit already existent in our society. I offered nothing except for my (pseudo?)silence, which I believed to be more valuable than what a lot of people gives.
But maybe I am wrong. Maybe I should let the world decide whether my bullshit is worth reading. Or perhaps it's not about the world. Maybe it's really about me. I'm selfish, remember? Maybe the shit people throw back at me would help me. And well, maybe there're things that I do want the world to read. Here's something:
To the world: you're wonderful.
I know that the world is full of shit. People are stupid. A lot of the world is filled with irresponsible people who doesn't give a shit about their own life. I bring you to this quote, again: "...the gap between, say, Plato or Nietzsche, and the average human is greater than the gap between that chimpanzee and the average human." I believed this strongly. Once I was asked whether I liked people, and I hesitated in answering. The person who asked me this question then proclaimed that they liked people. I sighed, knowing that I was probably one epiphany short of agreeing with them.
Well, I didn't need this epiphany.
Truth is, I know that people are stupid/lazy/sad/irresponsible ... but I often fail to recognize these traits in the individual human. Yes, I see them very clearly in day to day life, but I take them for granted and gloss over them, almost. I also realized that the amount of base respect I have for each person is much greater than what I gave myself credit for: more so than the certain person who said they liked people, even. I want to ask that person, "Alright, sure, you like people, but do you like individual persons?" Of course, I don't spend every effort to give people something positive - but I wouldn't want to become a source of negativity for any person, either. I try my best not to hurt people, and under a Pareto situation I try to maximize utility. Sometimes I fail but... that's life.
Perhaps I'm an optimist in saying this, but now I want to question the above quote, because there is a gap between the average human and the chimpanzee that may be greater than the gap between that average human and Plato/Nietzsche. That gap is, of course, the mere potential for further self-awareness, for deep meaning, and art. These potentials are virtually non-existent in the chimps (individual chimps, not their species) as there are resources available to the average human being unavailable to chimps, purely as a consequence of their higher consciousness and ability to communicate/interact with other human beings. This pontential itself is worth respecting. It is sad that most of it is never realized, but we must not forge that it is there.
Once I was asked a question, about the one thing I could change about the world to make it a better place. At the time I said "nothing". One interpretation of this is that I'm a careless bum that hasn't seen the bad side of life and is too ignorant to think of something useful. Well, perhaps so, but I like the other interpretation better: that I believed that what we have right now is an equilibrium of some sort, based on conditions about what people believe and how they choose to live. Thus, even if I change the world in some way, it wouldn't last! People would pursue again how they choose to live and things would pretty soon return back to the way it was before.
Now, if I was asked the same question again, I would answer, "I'll increase how aware people are of themselves and the world." Perhaps then we would better attain our best potentials, and live more meaningful lives. The beauty of this is that the potential is there.
And that is one of the reasons why the world is wonderful.
Anyways, from now on: less emo-ness and more potentially meaningful bullshit.
End of Entry
If I can't make the world better, the least I can do is not make the world worse, to not add to the mountainous piles of bullshit already existent in our society. I offered nothing except for my (pseudo?)silence, which I believed to be more valuable than what a lot of people gives.
But maybe I am wrong. Maybe I should let the world decide whether my bullshit is worth reading. Or perhaps it's not about the world. Maybe it's really about me. I'm selfish, remember? Maybe the shit people throw back at me would help me. And well, maybe there're things that I do want the world to read. Here's something:
To the world: you're wonderful.
I know that the world is full of shit. People are stupid. A lot of the world is filled with irresponsible people who doesn't give a shit about their own life. I bring you to this quote, again: "...the gap between, say, Plato or Nietzsche, and the average human is greater than the gap between that chimpanzee and the average human." I believed this strongly. Once I was asked whether I liked people, and I hesitated in answering. The person who asked me this question then proclaimed that they liked people. I sighed, knowing that I was probably one epiphany short of agreeing with them.
Well, I didn't need this epiphany.
Truth is, I know that people are stupid/lazy/sad/irresponsible ... but I often fail to recognize these traits in the individual human. Yes, I see them very clearly in day to day life, but I take them for granted and gloss over them, almost. I also realized that the amount of base respect I have for each person is much greater than what I gave myself credit for: more so than the certain person who said they liked people, even. I want to ask that person, "Alright, sure, you like people, but do you like individual persons?" Of course, I don't spend every effort to give people something positive - but I wouldn't want to become a source of negativity for any person, either. I try my best not to hurt people, and under a Pareto situation I try to maximize utility. Sometimes I fail but... that's life.
Perhaps I'm an optimist in saying this, but now I want to question the above quote, because there is a gap between the average human and the chimpanzee that may be greater than the gap between that average human and Plato/Nietzsche. That gap is, of course, the mere potential for further self-awareness, for deep meaning, and art. These potentials are virtually non-existent in the chimps (individual chimps, not their species) as there are resources available to the average human being unavailable to chimps, purely as a consequence of their higher consciousness and ability to communicate/interact with other human beings. This pontential itself is worth respecting. It is sad that most of it is never realized, but we must not forge that it is there.
Once I was asked a question, about the one thing I could change about the world to make it a better place. At the time I said "nothing". One interpretation of this is that I'm a careless bum that hasn't seen the bad side of life and is too ignorant to think of something useful. Well, perhaps so, but I like the other interpretation better: that I believed that what we have right now is an equilibrium of some sort, based on conditions about what people believe and how they choose to live. Thus, even if I change the world in some way, it wouldn't last! People would pursue again how they choose to live and things would pretty soon return back to the way it was before.
Now, if I was asked the same question again, I would answer, "I'll increase how aware people are of themselves and the world." Perhaps then we would better attain our best potentials, and live more meaningful lives. The beauty of this is that the potential is there.
And that is one of the reasons why the world is wonderful.
Anyways, from now on: less emo-ness and more potentially meaningful bullshit.
End of Entry
Friday, June 12, 2009
Simplicity of People
Many people whom I find interesting tell me that they are a very simple person. Sometimes they say this in comparison to me. I find this interesting, because sometimes I don't find their thoughts/actions/personality simple at all.
This is not difficult to explain. Simplicity of a person comes from the amount of "focus" they have. A "focused" person would have one ultimate goal, theme, mission, motivation or statement that would explain almost all their actions. Their individual actions and decisions can seem strange to an onlooker - even insane, but if one understands the "focus" of the person, the actions would be self explanatory. This is why Howard Roark strikes us to be such a simple person: we understand his focus, and all his actions - however strange - stems from that focus.
Thus it is easy to find ourselves to be simpler than others, because we understand the motivations behind our thoughts and actions better than we understand anyone else's.
Yet most of us are not like a fictional character: we are imperfect. Even if we understand what our "focus" is, not 100% of our actions are consistent with it. Why? Fear and laziness. (And perhaps other reasons too.) Fear, laziness, and other setbacks adds complications: they make us hypocrites, acting against our true self. It is therefore difficult for an average person to be simple.
Simplicity requires us to align all our actions with our thoughts. To be simple is thus a true accomplishment. Kudos to all of you who achieves it.
End of Entry
This is not difficult to explain. Simplicity of a person comes from the amount of "focus" they have. A "focused" person would have one ultimate goal, theme, mission, motivation or statement that would explain almost all their actions. Their individual actions and decisions can seem strange to an onlooker - even insane, but if one understands the "focus" of the person, the actions would be self explanatory. This is why Howard Roark strikes us to be such a simple person: we understand his focus, and all his actions - however strange - stems from that focus.
Thus it is easy to find ourselves to be simpler than others, because we understand the motivations behind our thoughts and actions better than we understand anyone else's.
Yet most of us are not like a fictional character: we are imperfect. Even if we understand what our "focus" is, not 100% of our actions are consistent with it. Why? Fear and laziness. (And perhaps other reasons too.) Fear, laziness, and other setbacks adds complications: they make us hypocrites, acting against our true self. It is therefore difficult for an average person to be simple.
Simplicity requires us to align all our actions with our thoughts. To be simple is thus a true accomplishment. Kudos to all of you who achieves it.
End of Entry
Monday, June 8, 2009
Circles vs Lines
Milan Kundera makes a bold statement in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and that is this:
This is why in the biblical Paradise, man was not really the man as we know it: time in Paradise turns in a circle. Man was happy the same way Karenin the dog was happy.
Kundera plays with the notion of time being circular vs. going in a straight line, the idea of eternal return, and its philosophical implications: in particular, lightness vs. weight. At first, the circularity of time is described as something heavy. Eventually, however, Kundera's characters finds the lightness of their lives too unbearable, and finds happiness only in old age, in a country side, where life resembles a circle more than a line. (I actually find that the circle is lighter than the line... but that's another story.)
It's interesting because Rand also used the circle vs. line analogy in Atlas Shrugged, in a slightly different manner. Taggart Transcontinental is a railroad, and Rand did not fail to point out that the rails are thin straight lines leading into infinity. There was also one memorable passage (that's too difficult to find without the book) when Dagny had ran away from the company and hid in an old cottage. She felt the need to work on something that lead somewhere, something that went in a straight line. Cleaning and washing and buying vegetables were "circular" kind of work that lead nowhere and need to be redone. She needed to build something - say, a new stone path - something that would require her to think, to design a pulley system to move stones too heavy for her to lift.
Both authors agree that the straight line is what differentiates men from animals. Rand embraces this as something that gives them happiness. She believes that happiness comes from achieving one's best - in Roark's words: "my work done my way." Kundera seem to state otherwise: that the routines, the circle, works to soothe us, relax us, simplifies our lives, and makes us more happy. The desire to rise, to get somewhere, to have a mission - it distracts us from our quest to happiness.
Why the difference?
The answer, I believe, can be found in an unlikely place - an interview with Robert Monroe. Monroe talks about what he learned through his out of body experiences and his encounters with non-physical entities. Regardless of whether this encounter was merely a hallucination, the story is intriguing: he was talking with one of his nonphysical friends about goals. He tells his nonphysical friend that one of his goals was to home. The nonphysical friend commented that yes, this was a noble goal, and asked whether he wanted to go home right then, for a short visit. Monroe of course said yes.
He ended up in a place with beautiful colourful clouds and something analogous to music in the background. Immediate he found peace. But as he stayed and relaxed, he found something unnerving about the place. He observed, and confirmed that - yes - there was something fishy going on. He would see a piece of cloud moving by, swirling as it moved. Then after a while another cloud would come by and swirl the same way as the first. The tune of the "music" was also repetitive, as were the games played by the entities that lived here. This was home: the circle, the paradise.
Monroe understood why he left home: he was bored. He wanted something else, and that's why he was alive on earth. Earth was not boring to him.
I believe that the "circle" type happiness is one that is more mundane, simple and even animalistic. I hesitate in using the word "animalistic" because of the derogatory nature of the term. What I really mean is that this type of happiness takes us only to the first four levels of Maslow's triangle: our physical need would be met, as will our sense of safety, sense of belonging, and if we're good - esteem. These are things that we know that animals can achieve.
The "line" happiness is what would really lead to self actualization. The line for Rand meant progress. The line for Kundera meant a mission - a thing that Tomas considered stupid at the end of the novel. In Tomas' defense, it was probably stupid for him: if what he wanted was not self actualization, but simple, good old happiness. The circle offered that. But for those who do seek self actualization - like Dagny Taggart and perhaps Robert Monroe - the life of the circle is one of boredom. They cannot be happy that way. Once again, there's a tremendous difference between Dagny and Tomas - I dare say that it's the same difference between Plato and the average human being.
It is impossible to conclude this discussion without asking myself: where am I in this picture? Line or circle? I've known this answer for the longest time: I am striving to go forward - in a straight line - but not all willingly. Circle does give me happiness, and I know that should I sink into the life of the circles, I would not be bored. I have the ability to be happy with a simple life, but I pray it wouldn't happen. I feel like it would be a waste of a lifetime - a betrayal, even. Maybe I will stop wanting the circles. Maybe I will look back in my old age (if I live that long) and find mission to be stupid.
I hope the latter will never happen.
End of Entry
If Karenin had been a person instead of a dog, he would surely have long since said to Tereza, "Look, I'm sick and tired of carrying that roll in my mouth every day. Can't you come up with something different?" And herein lies the whole man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle: it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.
This is why in the biblical Paradise, man was not really the man as we know it: time in Paradise turns in a circle. Man was happy the same way Karenin the dog was happy.
Kundera plays with the notion of time being circular vs. going in a straight line, the idea of eternal return, and its philosophical implications: in particular, lightness vs. weight. At first, the circularity of time is described as something heavy. Eventually, however, Kundera's characters finds the lightness of their lives too unbearable, and finds happiness only in old age, in a country side, where life resembles a circle more than a line. (I actually find that the circle is lighter than the line... but that's another story.)
It's interesting because Rand also used the circle vs. line analogy in Atlas Shrugged, in a slightly different manner. Taggart Transcontinental is a railroad, and Rand did not fail to point out that the rails are thin straight lines leading into infinity. There was also one memorable passage (that's too difficult to find without the book) when Dagny had ran away from the company and hid in an old cottage. She felt the need to work on something that lead somewhere, something that went in a straight line. Cleaning and washing and buying vegetables were "circular" kind of work that lead nowhere and need to be redone. She needed to build something - say, a new stone path - something that would require her to think, to design a pulley system to move stones too heavy for her to lift.
Both authors agree that the straight line is what differentiates men from animals. Rand embraces this as something that gives them happiness. She believes that happiness comes from achieving one's best - in Roark's words: "my work done my way." Kundera seem to state otherwise: that the routines, the circle, works to soothe us, relax us, simplifies our lives, and makes us more happy. The desire to rise, to get somewhere, to have a mission - it distracts us from our quest to happiness.
Why the difference?
The answer, I believe, can be found in an unlikely place - an interview with Robert Monroe. Monroe talks about what he learned through his out of body experiences and his encounters with non-physical entities. Regardless of whether this encounter was merely a hallucination, the story is intriguing: he was talking with one of his nonphysical friends about goals. He tells his nonphysical friend that one of his goals was to home. The nonphysical friend commented that yes, this was a noble goal, and asked whether he wanted to go home right then, for a short visit. Monroe of course said yes.
He ended up in a place with beautiful colourful clouds and something analogous to music in the background. Immediate he found peace. But as he stayed and relaxed, he found something unnerving about the place. He observed, and confirmed that - yes - there was something fishy going on. He would see a piece of cloud moving by, swirling as it moved. Then after a while another cloud would come by and swirl the same way as the first. The tune of the "music" was also repetitive, as were the games played by the entities that lived here. This was home: the circle, the paradise.
Monroe understood why he left home: he was bored. He wanted something else, and that's why he was alive on earth. Earth was not boring to him.
I believe that the "circle" type happiness is one that is more mundane, simple and even animalistic. I hesitate in using the word "animalistic" because of the derogatory nature of the term. What I really mean is that this type of happiness takes us only to the first four levels of Maslow's triangle: our physical need would be met, as will our sense of safety, sense of belonging, and if we're good - esteem. These are things that we know that animals can achieve.
The "line" happiness is what would really lead to self actualization. The line for Rand meant progress. The line for Kundera meant a mission - a thing that Tomas considered stupid at the end of the novel. In Tomas' defense, it was probably stupid for him: if what he wanted was not self actualization, but simple, good old happiness. The circle offered that. But for those who do seek self actualization - like Dagny Taggart and perhaps Robert Monroe - the life of the circle is one of boredom. They cannot be happy that way. Once again, there's a tremendous difference between Dagny and Tomas - I dare say that it's the same difference between Plato and the average human being.
It is impossible to conclude this discussion without asking myself: where am I in this picture? Line or circle? I've known this answer for the longest time: I am striving to go forward - in a straight line - but not all willingly. Circle does give me happiness, and I know that should I sink into the life of the circles, I would not be bored. I have the ability to be happy with a simple life, but I pray it wouldn't happen. I feel like it would be a waste of a lifetime - a betrayal, even. Maybe I will stop wanting the circles. Maybe I will look back in my old age (if I live that long) and find mission to be stupid.
I hope the latter will never happen.
End of Entry
Friday, May 15, 2009
Why I don't use Twitter
[NOTE: I changed my mind. Please refer to a newer post.]
I thought that the video titled "Twitter in Plain English" was explanation enough, but some argued that the video had done no justice at all to the real value of Twitter. I don't disagree - the mayor of Toronto uses Twitter as a channel of communication. Certain police departments are using Twitter to provide up to the minute details as to what's going on. Twitter can be used well, sure, but that doesn't mean that I will use Twitter well. (Though it begs the question of why they couldn't post something on their own website that's easily updatable and 140 chars long...)
So for one thing, having Twitter is like talking to everyone and talking to no one at the same time. Exactly what blogging is like. It's like you're just casting information out to nowhere - information about your daily lives. It's exactly like bad blogging (i.e. what I used to do, and still do to an extent): there's no audience to consider, it's just you... except there is the pretense that the fact that you're on top of emails or gmail is sending your email twice is important to someone else. Sure, other people can and do read it, but ... what's the point? I'm mowing the lawn. So what? Twitter, then, has the potential to creating pretenous people who thinks that mowing the lawn might be big news for someone else.
And guess what? I'm really suseptible to that. Blogging sortaf swayed me to that direction. At first, it was used like a journal/diary type thing - just put all the thoughts down so I don't have to think about them anymore. Not a bad idea. Until it really grows and consumes you: if you're like me, you will probably consciously think about blogging or twittering or what not, and be really conscious of the fact that it needs to be up to date. Blogging isn't so bad, because blog entries can be made thoughtful. But Twitter? I don't want to think "I should Twitter this!" every time I have a late night chess game. It's true that not everyone will have the same problems, but based on past experience, I know that I will.
So there you have it: Twitter may be used well by certain people, but I see it as another wormhole that can suck me in if I started using it, and I would be moving backwards.
End of Entry
I thought that the video titled "Twitter in Plain English" was explanation enough, but some argued that the video had done no justice at all to the real value of Twitter. I don't disagree - the mayor of Toronto uses Twitter as a channel of communication. Certain police departments are using Twitter to provide up to the minute details as to what's going on. Twitter can be used well, sure, but that doesn't mean that I will use Twitter well. (Though it begs the question of why they couldn't post something on their own website that's easily updatable and 140 chars long...)
So for one thing, having Twitter is like talking to everyone and talking to no one at the same time. Exactly what blogging is like. It's like you're just casting information out to nowhere - information about your daily lives. It's exactly like bad blogging (i.e. what I used to do, and still do to an extent): there's no audience to consider, it's just you... except there is the pretense that the fact that you're on top of emails or gmail is sending your email twice is important to someone else. Sure, other people can and do read it, but ... what's the point? I'm mowing the lawn. So what? Twitter, then, has the potential to creating pretenous people who thinks that mowing the lawn might be big news for someone else.
And guess what? I'm really suseptible to that. Blogging sortaf swayed me to that direction. At first, it was used like a journal/diary type thing - just put all the thoughts down so I don't have to think about them anymore. Not a bad idea. Until it really grows and consumes you: if you're like me, you will probably consciously think about blogging or twittering or what not, and be really conscious of the fact that it needs to be up to date. Blogging isn't so bad, because blog entries can be made thoughtful. But Twitter? I don't want to think "I should Twitter this!" every time I have a late night chess game. It's true that not everyone will have the same problems, but based on past experience, I know that I will.
So there you have it: Twitter may be used well by certain people, but I see it as another wormhole that can suck me in if I started using it, and I would be moving backwards.
End of Entry
Monday, April 6, 2009
the paradox of selfishness
This is something that I thought about for a while... and finding the answer to this delimma seemed to have become more urgent when I saw this talk on TED.
It's a delimma between individualism and ... well, one-ness with the world. Between "materialism" and spiritualism.
Around grade 8 or so, I was perplexed by the paradox of selflessness. If you cared for someone else, well, isn't it because that person is valuable to you, and hence you're really acting out of self interest? Your desire for someone else's happiness is still a desire that you own, and any action to fulfill that is really an action to fulfill your own desires - a selfish act. At the time, I was brainwashed by the thought that selfless=good, selfish=bad. I concluded, therefore, that the world was not capable of true selflessness. The world must therefore be bad. This is the main reason why I felt so liberated after reading Rand, who basically said - yes, we act out of selfishness, even when we care for others, and that is good. If one acted to benefit someone that we don't care about... then we've betrayed ourselves. Values are important, and the self is what creates and attains values.
Yet on the other hand - the abundance of compassion, mutual respect, and love for those you may or may not know personally is what makes the world a better place. We are interconnected in a great many ways - both physically and mentally, in more ways that we'll ever understand in our life time. I'm trying to find that article about monkeys dipping potatoes in sea water - the one where after one monkey found that it made the potato taste better... the entire island of monkeys started dipping potatoes in sea water. What's more astonishing was that the monkeys in a different island started doing the same thing - and the two islands are totally separated, and the monkeys had no normal means of communicating with one another. Another experiment showed that people do better on yesterday's crossword compared to today's, as if people could access a collective consciousness... well, does this mean that a collective consciousness does exist, that we really are one? Is that what Budhhism teaches? Even without the collective consciousness, community spirit makes the world better. We're affected by what people do and say, how they act. Many will say that compassion, respect, and understanding is a small commitment worth making.
So that's the paradox: in the "micro" world, selfishness is what would make a happy person: the application of ones effort in the achievement of ones values. Yet in the "macro" world, things would be better if everyone cared for one another. How do you connect the two?
Well, things would be good if all individuals judged the world as something worth caring about. Then creating a better world would be a personal value for everyone. I guess the question each person has to ask is: how much do I value the world? In what way?
With that being said, I don't think that it's a question of "Which side do you choose?" - and I don't think that Dr. Taylor is right in that the answer lies solely in the right brain, the spiritualism and one-ness. Both are beautiful in its own ways, and they do compliment each other - ying and yang, productive and thoughtful, present and past/future...
How much do I value the world? To say infinitely much is an outright lie, and to say not at all is naive. Where is that balancing point - my balancing point?
End of Entry
It's a delimma between individualism and ... well, one-ness with the world. Between "materialism" and spiritualism.
Around grade 8 or so, I was perplexed by the paradox of selflessness. If you cared for someone else, well, isn't it because that person is valuable to you, and hence you're really acting out of self interest? Your desire for someone else's happiness is still a desire that you own, and any action to fulfill that is really an action to fulfill your own desires - a selfish act. At the time, I was brainwashed by the thought that selfless=good, selfish=bad. I concluded, therefore, that the world was not capable of true selflessness. The world must therefore be bad. This is the main reason why I felt so liberated after reading Rand, who basically said - yes, we act out of selfishness, even when we care for others, and that is good. If one acted to benefit someone that we don't care about... then we've betrayed ourselves. Values are important, and the self is what creates and attains values.
Yet on the other hand - the abundance of compassion, mutual respect, and love for those you may or may not know personally is what makes the world a better place. We are interconnected in a great many ways - both physically and mentally, in more ways that we'll ever understand in our life time. I'm trying to find that article about monkeys dipping potatoes in sea water - the one where after one monkey found that it made the potato taste better... the entire island of monkeys started dipping potatoes in sea water. What's more astonishing was that the monkeys in a different island started doing the same thing - and the two islands are totally separated, and the monkeys had no normal means of communicating with one another. Another experiment showed that people do better on yesterday's crossword compared to today's, as if people could access a collective consciousness... well, does this mean that a collective consciousness does exist, that we really are one? Is that what Budhhism teaches? Even without the collective consciousness, community spirit makes the world better. We're affected by what people do and say, how they act. Many will say that compassion, respect, and understanding is a small commitment worth making.
So that's the paradox: in the "micro" world, selfishness is what would make a happy person: the application of ones effort in the achievement of ones values. Yet in the "macro" world, things would be better if everyone cared for one another. How do you connect the two?
Well, things would be good if all individuals judged the world as something worth caring about. Then creating a better world would be a personal value for everyone. I guess the question each person has to ask is: how much do I value the world? In what way?
With that being said, I don't think that it's a question of "Which side do you choose?" - and I don't think that Dr. Taylor is right in that the answer lies solely in the right brain, the spiritualism and one-ness. Both are beautiful in its own ways, and they do compliment each other - ying and yang, productive and thoughtful, present and past/future...
How much do I value the world? To say infinitely much is an outright lie, and to say not at all is naive. Where is that balancing point - my balancing point?
End of Entry
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