What would make a fulfilling life ?

[Note] It's been a long time since I published a blog but just in case my whole 3 readers actually care, I'm going to start making some private ones public again (with names/places mostly redacted). Maybe someone will find it interesting one day...

It was actually a pretty relaxing weekend. I was here and we all sat down to watch Daughters of Destiny on Netflix for 4 hours which is basically just a documentary about this wealthy guy who took it upon himself to built a school in India for the underprivileged. It helped me to reflect on my values and what was important to me in life - I've always wanted to help others and I think if I was able to complete a project like Dr. George then I would feel like my life was very fulfilling and the time I spent living it would seem worthwhile.

Thinking about it more concretely, I think the only "real" worthwhile things one can do to have a fulfilling life are:

1.) Create some art form of great value (that captures a generation or a major theme - such as 1984 or House for Mr Biswas or Rabbit Run)

2.) Make some fundamental discovery in science/technology or advance engineering/build useful infrastructure.

3.) Educate and help others who are underprivileged 

I think beyond that, nothing else really matters when it comes to living a fulfilling life. Of course, just from a statistics point of view, not everyone can make some major contribution to society but what's important is to view it as a goal that you strive towards. I do believe that our time and presence on earth is a rare gift and we should utilize it the best that we can.

Of course, I don't want to see it as a chore. I want to see it as my mission and something that I enjoy - while it's fun to sometimes just relax and play video games, I think without an over-aching goal to work towards I would easily get depressed.

Another thing that documentary did is make me question my current situation in life. I'm not so naive to think that I'm doing something fundamental or amazing for society - I think it's a decent product and has some usefulness to people (unlike, say, FB which is kind of evil). But, when I think about what I really wanted it was more about just like chasing the prestige of a fancy ML job and for my own ego and to solve interesting technical problems. However, more and more, I'm starting to think that I'm over that phase now - I wrote a paper and by doing so I've proved to myself I can win at that game so why not try something else ?

Maybe that new game is about working on more fundamental research in AI, maybe it's something completely different like VR, maybe it's about finishing a story that I'm actually proud of and can get published. It could be a lot of things - but I think it's time to do something new. I was waiting for a sign and now that ?? announced he was leaving today I think it's time for me to seriously consider moving on as well.

Internal Motivation

There are numerous reasons to be motivated in this world. Some of us are driven by the accumulation of wealth while others are propelled by an insatiable thirst for knowledge. But ultimately, our motivators fall into two broad categories — they are either internal or external. We are either motivated to accomplish certain goals because of our own internal beliefs or due to external influences such as society, family or friends. My goal in writing this article is to remind you that your own internal motivators will always be more reliable than external ones and far more instrumental to your success.

Of course, this seems natural at first — why would anyone not be motivated to do something they truly wanted for themselves? The answer is because of inertia. Inertia, as defined in physics, is the ability of any object to resist changes in its state/motion. If one applies the concept of inertia to their own life then things begin to make a lot more sense. Inertia is the reason why it seems so difficult to change your lifestyle especially when you don’t have a lot of external support. External support effectively reduces inertia — it’s easier to get started on a new journey when you have friends and family cheering you on.

Thus far, it seems like I’m doing a poor job defending the idea the idea that internal motivators are superior. But, let’s take a closer look at what external motivational really is. Being motivated by an external force means that the fuel which drives you is essentially the (positive) actions of others. But, we can’t fully control the actions of others — the only actions we can truly control are our own. As such, external motivators tend to influence you to rely less on your own mental strength and more on the positive feedback loop created by the praise of others. This leads one down a very dangerous path.

Essentially, living a life which hinges on external motivators is akin to taking a car on a road trip but having no control over when you can stop for fuel. If there’s a steep hill you need to climb then you better sincerely hope someone or something provides you with the fuel you need to overcome it. Sure, your friends and family might be supportive of your startup at first — but after a few months without any progress perhaps they’ll begin to give up hope. At that point, you need to rely on your own internal motivation to push through this obstacle and succeed. The bottom line is that if your energy comes from within then your success is less contingent on the actions of others and more on your own abilities.

I recently struggled with this conflict between internal and external motivators in my own life. I’ve always enjoyed playing sports, especially badminton, but for the last few months I decided to spend more time working out at the gym instead. The reason for this was, quite honestly, very external. Many of my co-workers go to the gym religiously and it kind of influenced me to start going with them as well. I enjoyed the feeling that came when my friends consistently told me I was looking more fit and in shape. But something happened when I went home for the Christmas break and didn’t interact with my usual circle of friends for a while — I stopped going to the gym for over a month.

The explanation behind my actions was quite simple — I just didn’t care enough on a personal level about going to the gym. Thus, when I encountered this first hurdle and my sense of external motivation was no longer there, this habit could not be sustained. On the other hand, when I came back from Christmas break, I started playing badminton again because it was an activity I legitimately enjoyed “deep down”. It didn’t matter that very few of my close friends or co-workers barely even understand what competitive badminton really is. At the end of the day, I felt more satisfied because I did it for me. After a few months, it’s clear to me now that I am much more dedicated about going to play badminton than I ever was about going to the gym.

At the end of the day, I’m a firm believer in the fact that true happiness comes from within. We don’t need to be told what should make us content — it’s something we are all innately aware of on an intrinsic level. You know when you’ve done a good job not because someone told you but due to the fact that you performed to the best of your ability. That is why you should always pursue what you believe in — even if the journey will be arduous. There are a plethora of examples where great individuals achieve success simply because they pursued a line of thinking that seemed unconventional at the time. They were able to preserve because of internal motivation — they truly believed in their cause even if no one else did.

Ultimately, both external and internal motivators can have a powerful effect on our actions. However, the difference between them is that internal motivators will always be more sustainable in the long run whereas the external motivators tend to be much more fickle. That is why one should not be afraid to overcome inertia and follow their true interests.

The Reason

The past is something that has always fascinated me. It simultaneously motivates us, condemns us and reminds us of our mistakes among other things. The past is something that always exists in our minds but just how real is it?  I read a very profound line in a novel once which went something like:

 "When it comes to the past, we all stack the deck." 

Which basically means that, at one point or another, we've all altered our memories to remember things in a different manner. I think this is most noticeable with emotions. Sometimes we try to be tough and not remember ourselves being as frightened as we really were during a confrontation. Or perhaps, upon ending a relationship we try to convince ourselves that we were never really in love with a specific person. It's actually extremely disheartening to think that I might actually be manipulating real emotions with false ones that are seemingly better to remember. I never want to forget the truth, no matter how mundane or ugly it might be - and that was my initial motivation for this blog. Sadly, the vast majority of people don't even reflect on the past but only worry about the future without wondering how they arrived at the present. I don't believe my life is defined by a few key events but rather incrementally by the actions I choose to make everyday - that's why I'm obsessed with having a record of my past. And that's the reason this blog exists.

East of Eden

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."








I've often wondered, in the whole scheme of human history, if we could somehow tally up all the "good" deeds and "bad" deeds that people have committed and assign a point value indicating the relative goodness/badness of a deed (ie. stealing from your brother = 1 badness point, killing your brother = 100 badness points), what would be the finally score? Is humanity overwhelmingly good or bad?


It seems to me that, unfortunately, the answer would have to be evil. Each new generation faces the same struggle between good and evil in their hearts as the one before it. Humans have done some cruel and terrible things - like enslaving fellow humans, torture, killing others for religious purposes. And I guess, to be fair, sometimes we remember the bad times more than the good times. But, no matter how egregious the acts we commit may seem,  as long as one still believes in the hope that they can change their ways, goodness will be present in society. And, I don't ever think that humans can fully extinguish the hope that things will get better. Well, except maybe people who commit suicide - but even that could just be due to them not realizing the magnitude of their decision.  Even Cathy Ames, the most "evil" character I've read about in literature thus far, showed remorse at some point.

So, the topic behind this post is basically due to the fact that I recently finished reading the acclaimed novel East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I thought it was one of the most thought-provoking and interesting novels I've read in a long time. I mean, I've read several good novels this summer that made me think but East of Eden made me want to just keep reading and not put it down. Anyway, the point of this post isn't to convince you to read the novel, but rather to talk more about what it means to me.

Basically the entire essence of the novel centers around the struggles of the main characters between the good and evil they have in their heart. Some characters, like Aron, are foolish and naive because they are too scared to accept that everyone is inherently evil in some way - or, at least, has the potential to be. This realization can be shocking. But evil is a part of humanity just as good is.  The most important idea the novel postulates is that we have the decision on whether we want our lives to ultimately be composed of good or evil deeds - and everyone has a basic idea of right and wrong.

This got me thinking about the role of good and evil in my own life. Do humans really have some kind of innate sense of what is right and wrong? Or does it just depend on the individual? Do people like serial killers and mass murderers really believe what they are doing is "OK" or do they just not care? Why do people derive happiness from seeing others suffer? Are we just build this way?

I guess I'm not so naive to not accept there's some "bad" parts of my psyche that kind of disgust me. But, it's a part of who I am. Is there any point trying to block or hide it away? I guess all I can try to do is find a balance that I can live with. I thought I'd have more to say but I really don't - this struggle, as Steinbeck says, is really the only struggle I have. Will I succumb to all my fears and inadequacies? Or will be able to make a positive impact with the brief time I have here? I guess, only time will tell.

Subway Story

If you read this blog, then you probably know my outlook on life can be rather cynical sometimes. I believe that there are certain things that inately come with society - such as discrimnation and stereotypes. Heck, maybe they are even consequences of us simply being human beings - our natural tendency to distrust and alienate those who are different than us for our own safety.

However, even though it happened a few weeks ago, today I was reminded of a very interesting scene on the subway that helped me remember that, as humans, we aren't all that bad. It was late at night and I was coming home from a friend's house on the subway. I was tired and like most people on the subway, was avoiding contact with everyone. I was standing by the door and overheard a conversation between a father and his son about black history month. The son was inquiring about why there was slavery and why black people were treated that way. The father seemed ashamed, when he explained to his son (only about 9 or 10) that "back then" people didn't see people as different colors as equals. Then the son said something that I won't forget, he simply said "well even if they look different, they could be the same as us inside". Now, I"m not one to really get sentimental over phony things but my heart did warm up for a moment there. It's one thing to hear a child say that on t.v. or the internet...but to hear a child say that in real life did give me hope about how people really thought.

It helped to remind me that human nature is also one of curiosity and that, as humans, we are all the same on some fundamental level. It helped to remind me that progress has been made and I think in society most people are treated more equally than before. While there will always be stereotypes and progress towards how society views different people in general is slow, it is progress nonetheless. And it helped remind me that maybe the norm is naturally being cynical or dis-trusting. Maybe people were just too scared to change anything or stand up for equality. Anyway, I just believe that as humans we should embrace our commonality to move our society forward.

It's been awhile...

I've definitely taken a long break from blogging. This was partly due to a variety of reasons, but nonetheless, I think its time to return. I still believe its important to record my thoughts and how I feel as I continue along my journey in life.

It's Reading Week now and I've just recently been at home relaxing. It's been two years, but I feel like high school memories have really, truly, started to fade. When I talk about high school with my old friends now it really does feel like the PAST as opposed to, in my previous blog posts, when I'm pretty sure I expressed the sentiment that high school felt like just yesterday. I don't feel so attached to high school memories anymore either - which is good, because maybe it means I've made some new ones in university now as well. Nonetheless, there's always a sense of tranquility and calm about being home that makes it unique from anywhere else - even if its going for walks by myself or just staying up late doing nothing in particular. Being at home makes me feel like all the responsibilities of university and living by myself are more than physically just far away.

I also recently came to realize in life that sometimes you'll be forced to make decisions without knowing all the information about the possible alternative paths you can take. This realization was definitely triggered by my job dilemma for the past few weeks. Finally, I think I've decided on something though - I guess, in some sense, I went with the safer approach. It was difficult though - choosing one option over another without knowing what the other offer truly was. But I guess sometimes in life you just have to take what you know you have. I don't feel particularly great about this job, I don't feel like its the /perfect/ job for me, but I know it is a good one overall.

It's a fine balance in life between not looking back on your choices and also questioning if you are happy where you are and need to change. On one hand, when you choose something or make an important life decision I feel you need to pursue it fully and not half-hardheartedly - you need to try your best with respect to the path you've chosen. However, if you never question whether you are really happy or not with where you are in life then you won't ever be motivated to change. Personally, I think people require constant change and new interests to really be happy in life. But that's something I think I should elaborate on in a later post.

The last thing I wanted to mention is that I feel that my goal in life is just to improve and connect humanity as a whole. I don't want money or fame or even to be well-known, but I want to change the way people think. I had a conversation with my friend the other day about how religion serves to create divides between people and there's so many other things like that. I want unification and progress of the human race for us to move forward - scientifically and philosophically. It bothers me when I think about, for example, how much scientific progress we could have made if we did not get into these petty human squabbles about the correct religion or race. Anyway, maybe that's kind of ambitious and cheesy. But more and more I feel like the things that I am truly passionate about point towards goals such as that.

Well, that's it for now....

Outside Your Bubble

Despite the cruel, violent and paranoid world often portrayed by the media, I feel as is still plenty of hope left for humanity if one is only willing to look. Just today, another woman in my building who has previously parked in my parking spot when she wasn't supposed to came over to apologize and give me quite a pricey gift. While an apology was nice, she really went the extra mile and it made me appreciate that sometimes people really can just be kind to others. Whether or not people are kind just because they want to feel good about themselves is perhaps a more philosophical topic for another time and another blog.

The point of this short blog was simply to say that I feel there are still good people out there willing to help out. Whether is the person who gets you a wad of tissues when you spill coffee all over your desk in a lecture or the person who gives you a (seemingly) random gift, there is still good in the world despite what the news might indicate. As a more general critique, I feel as if the news tends to downplay these simple acts of human kindness and people helping others to devote more times to stories of violence and hatred. In turn, this scares people and only breeds distrust and skepticism. While the media should report the truth, it should be as untainted as possible.

One could argument that it would be trivial for the media to focus on such seemingly small acts. Which is a sad point in itself  in that perhaps I think it is rare for someone to even do something kind to another random person. Have we become so isolated in our circle of friends/family that we can't reach out and be kind to one another? If people refuse to connect with one another for reasons other than social/material gain, how can we ever expect to understand each other and move ahead as a race? 

Relationships and Age

It’s been a while since I went to a typical dinner party with my family. Now that I’m back home for the long weekend, I ended up going to my first one in a long time. It wasn’t much different than how I remember – the food was good, but the conversation was pretty mundane. As per usual, the topics the “adults” always seemed to talk about seemed superficial and never seemed to interest me. But then I started thinking – it wasn’t just about the “topics” that didn’t interest me but rather the whole cordial tone of the conversation. It was hard to imagine that these were what I would say were my parents “so called” best friends and yet their conversations seemed so much…less shallow than how I felt when I converse with my friends. Is this the fate I would be ultimately doomed to as well?

            Now, of course, there are several reasonable explanations for this. For one, I’m not my parents and maybe they really do enjoy this type of talking. Secondly, maybe I’m just biased because the topics they do talk about in general don’t interest me. But I  think it’s rather depressing that adults seem to talk about things that are less “deep” and focus on the bigger picture – almost everything they talk about it just centered on their lives or jobs or how their kids are doing etc. Why does it seem like as we get older we lose our ability to talk about things bigger than ourselves? Why do we never have those conservations where we talk about what we want to be when we grow up or in a few years? Is it because we’ve already got there? Is there nothing left?

            I hate to imagine myself in 10 or 15 years as the kind of person who can’t just sit down with a friend and talk about, REALLY talk about, how I feel about my life and society and the universe. I feel as the years go by these invisible walls separating the deepest part of us from others slowly are built up. We seem less reluctant to share who we really are, because who we really are has been buried under layers of societal indoctrination. Is the only ray of light the possibility of having a significant other whom we can share these things with? Or has everything sacred been stripped away by the machine that is modern society?

Coloring within the lines

I first wanted to start off by lamenting how fast summer is going by. It is almost the middle of June now and I haven't done completely nearly as much of my "summer goals" as I initially had hoped I would. My days seem to be busy and filled with obligations. While there is room for fun here and there, I find it mostly in unplanned things - going out for ice cream, playing tennis with friends, or just gaming. However, I do think there is a certain satisfaction from crossing out a book from your "to read" list or finally cracking open that textbook for that course you said you'd study for - in a way, accomplishing planned tasks can be more rewarding than just "spontaneous" fun. Though, like so many others things in life, there should be a balance between the two.

I wonder if I even care about these lamenting posts when I go back and read them in the future. The posts I seem like re-reading the most are the ones about specific moments in my life. Since, I try to capture that as best and genuinely as I can. Just the other day, I was reading one about high school and geeze...was I ever indecisive and insecure or what?

The real topic I wanted to address in this blog was about coloring within the lines. This is a metaphor that just floated in my head about society one day when I was...probably walking to work or something. It is perhaps a metaphor I hope a decent number of people can relate to - coloring books seem to be a pretty common past-time in childhood after all. Anyway, in a coloring book you are basically  presented with a predefined shape whose outline is pre-printed and you proceed to color it however you please. There is a lot of versatility with color, however, and not everything makes sense. Just last weekend, I remember seeing my little cousin color in pink leaves, for example.

The point is, society, religion, family are all reminiscent of those lines that are already there for us in the coloring book. They dictate the guidelines that we follow. There are two major problems when using color books.

1.) You color outside the lines. This is equivalent to just  blatantly disregarding any rules set forth by society. The picture ultimately makes no sense and well...you just picked the wrong page of the book to start coloring on, I guess. But that can't be helped. No more than being born into a poverty stricken, geographically isolated family can be.

2.) You color the picture in a way that is unconventional and doesn't make sense. The picture is still there, and you can still recognize what it is. But you've added your own unique flair to it. Some say its unconventional, others say it makes no sense at all. This is how I feel most of us live. We don't stray outside the lines of society but color in the picture according to "loose" guidelines. Some of us are more brazen than others. Some of us restrict ourselves to merely different hues - a navy blue when a sky blue is required. Some of us throw caution out the window and color the leaves pink and the sky purple. The question is - how do we strike a balance between individuality and an expected coloring scheme?

The question is - how will you color the page you've turned to?

I've answered this question many times before to myself. I don't want to just follow the lines even if I have the artistic ability to do so. Similarly, I don't want to do have a career that will secure me a "safe" life in society - even if I had the potential to do so. If everyone who could do more settled for what was safe, the human race would never evolve. And it is sad, because some people do settle for what is safe and secure even though they could do more than that. And I'm not just talking about jobs, I'm talking about thinking and ideas. Be open-minded. Look to explore new ideas. And above all,  try to do something more than worry your moment on the stage away with whether or not you are coloring within the lines.

Lawful

"The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be." - Phillip Marlowe


I've noticed lately I've been blogging about my life too much. I want to take some blog posts to step back and look at some broader issues in the (first?) world today. I think this is a good idea for two reasons. For one, I seem to care more about my thoughts than wishy-washy feelings and two, I think it is probably more interesting to other people and if this blog can get even one person thinking, I've done my job.

I was talking to a close friend yesterday about a topic I distinctly remembering blogging about before - the law/justice system. We both agreed that the role lawyers played in the course of justice was definitely unfair. In that, a "good/component" lawyer could mean the difference between a person going to jail/being committed of a crime when in reality the outcome should be intrinsic to the deed that the accused committed. However, in many cases, it /seems/ like it could be quite subjective.

I don't want to make big claims here, because in reality, I don't have any statistics or knowledge about how big of a difference having a "good" lawyer makes in terms of perhaps, someone going to prison for life, or what not. I do know, however, that having a sibling in law school who I am very close with has taught me that the law/court system is more than just fancy speeches and big revelations like we are so often led to believe in today's television courtroom dramas. However, just the fact that the outcome of justice depends on something other than the actual event seems enough for this issue to warrant concern.

But that brings me to my next point. A while ago I blogged about this issue, I suggested, drawing inspiration from a sci-fi novel I had read once, that what if we simply built a super-computer AI/software entity who could "judge" us? By this I mean, it would observe our actions and evaluate our actions impartially on a certain scale (lets say 1-10) and then decide the outcome based on the score. It could take into accounts all the parameters of the situation (self-defense etc) probably more "fairly" than humans or a jury ever could (of course we'd program it...somehow). Would this theoretically be a better option?

In my last blog, 3 suggested people would not like this. Because deep down, perhaps humans realize they only liked to be judged by others because they are just as flawed as they are. In a way, machines are perfect. They have the ability to obey rules all the time - even if an algorithm has a sort of "random" factor intrinsic to it...that factor is still /known/ to be there. Also, I used the idea of a machine but I could have just as easily used the idea of an omniscient god, which perhaps, more people would be comfortable with. I have no idea why however, as personally, I don't see how we could ever connect with such a Being - is "love" or any human emotion so powerful that it could bind those who know nothing and those who know everything?

Err...Anyway, I'm sort of digressing. But my point is, that this seems to just be another catch-22 about humanity. We want the law to be as just as possible but yet it also has to conform to our innate randomness/feelings/wishy-washy part of being human or else it just seems so removed and unnatural. As such, we are simply stuck as a society. As the quote at the beginning of the post suggests is the mechanism of the law more important than what really happens or what those laws really are? Is it perhaps right to say that we want to be metallic, soulless robots, but at the same time we also want to feel and remember who we are. How can we move on from this?

Turbulence

I've been gone on quite a long hiatus for blogger the past few weeks. I think this might have been the longest I've gone without writing a blog for a very long time. But nonetheless, here I am.

There's been a lot of ups and downs in my life since my last post. However, I sometimes wonder if these ups and downs look like nothing but turbulence in the grand scheme of things. I imagine if I could plot my happiness on the vertical axis with time on the horizontal how my life would look on a plot. Would it simply be a straight horizontal line from a distance, but when you zoom in there are a multitude of variations? Or would there be some events which truly stand out - is my life one continuous function or just the sum of tiny piecewise events? Can we accurately compare happiness in one moment with that which we felt in another? In my opinion, I think humans are pretty terrible at that.

To be more specific the ups and downs in my life have mainly been the usual stuff. For example, not receiving some awards/jobs I think I deserved or receiving marks higher than I expected. I realized in some ways that I am pretty selfish in that I would rather feel better if no one got something that I wanted rather than a peer receiving it. But, like so many things in life, I've gotten over it (I hope!) and I am trying to learn from it and become a better person. OK, maybe I just typed that line so it sounds like I believe I care about changing more than I actually do. But it is something I should work on and I definitely don't want to go through life being secretly bitter at others over trivial things.

I think lately its been difficult not to compare myself with others in many regards. In terms of where I want to be in the future, where I am now (jobs, school etc), and who I was before. Again, I have come to realize there is a very fine line between individuality and maintaining relationships to satisfy the need for social interaction that we all have. On a vaguely related note, I've also thought about, for the umpteenth time, how I just can't possible study/do everything interesting in life. One needs to make decisions at one point or another and hope they end up on a path which is makes them happy.

It seems like just yesterday I was talking to Heinz about how one day I feel like I'll just blink and be 60 or something. I don't think I'd mind too much. In the simplest sense, I just want to go through my life being reasonably content - it doesn't matter if I'm married, have lots of friends, have a well-paying job or not. I just want to go through life knowing that I'm content with who I am and what I'm doing/where I'm going. While it'd be great to have a positive impact on others and accomplish something which I internally can be proud of, I'm not sure if that will realistically happen.

The last thing I just briefly wanted to mention is about high school. Recently on facebook someone posted a video from our graduation. It made me feel pretty nostalgic but I realized I couldn't really remember what it/felt/ like to be in high school anymore. It was like...I couldn't even think of what it'd be like to go back or think like how I use to think back then. Perhaps this is true for all memories...eventually, after some point, our sensations about an event seem to dull and we are only left with memories here and there which puncture our thoughts once in a while. For example, I can't even imagine what it would be like to go back to that kind of high school environment again. It's like a friend who I met in first year said how you can only miss something for so long before it just becomes a good/bad memory. I think I really do understand the significance of that statement now.

Oh, one last thing I wanted to mention. I guess lately I've been more wary about when others are being "phony" or when they really mean things or not. In fact, sometimes I feel like even /I/ know when I'm sounding phony, but all I can really tell someone to reassure them is that I genuinely mean what I say. Perhaps, like Holden in Catcher in the Rye, our need to separate the world into black and white kind of views such as when Holden assumes that all adults are phony stems from a need to just model the people of the world in a simpler way. If we didn't make initial judgments on others based on information we could quickly gather about them then how would one sift through all the plethora of people they interact with on a daily basis and decide who they should pursue trying to get to know or what not? I guess, in the end, we all need to start somewhere - perhaps arbitrarily but it makes more sense to be based off our beliefs?

Criteria

So, it's almost time for exams but I decided to take a break from studying before I sleep to just blog for a bit. I like doing these kind of blogs - a post exam blog, where I talk about how I feel before exams so then I can reflect on it once the experience is over. I guess, that wasn't intended to be the point of this particular blog though, since I'm sure I've said the same thing before every exam I'm written/am ever going to write. I feel a bit nervous, but wish exams would come sooner to just be over with.

Do we just go through life constantly experiencing the same sort of reoccuring feelings about events that are more similar than we'd like to think? How limited just is our range of emotions?

Anyway, what I wanted to talk about today was Criteria. I was thinking today about how fortunate I was to acquire a job over the summer, and same with my sister as well. But we realized that both of our jobs (and probably most "good" jobs out there) are extremely difficult to attain and require meeting a lot of specific criteria. However, when it comes down to actually doing a job, I feel there's a sort of discrepancy between the criteria that's required to preform to task and the criteria that is used to asses/distinguish between potential candidates. Which is clearly unfair. Why are people being judged on seemingly irrelevant traits or abilities?

Perhaps this is just another way that society breeds people to be more competitive for reasons which seem both impractical and incomprehensible to me. If two people both have the ability to do a job, why bother delineating between them on the basis of traits which are not relevant to doing a particular job? Sometimes, I just don't understand things. It would be nice if things were more fair, even if it meant there had to be an element of randomness introduced into a job application process or what not. Maybe it gives people some sort of closure if things are deterministic...even if to the point where it's not really logical...?

Society and Control

     The last blog I wanted to write is a quick one about an idea I had when I was driving home with my dad and brother. We were discussing about how police give people speeding tickets and how it takes up a lot of police resources just in order for this task to be accomplished. I suggested that why not just have radar traps along the highway at intervals to track when a car is going over a certain speed and then tag their license plate. Despite the fact that it might be hard to actually get a good picture of someone’s license plate with a roadside camera my brother brought up an interesting point that people would actually hate this. And it’s definitely true. People would protest at the thought of not being able to bend the rules a little bit or at the thought of the fact that they would almost ALWAYS get caught for exceeding the speed limit.

Anyway, I didn’t mean for that anecdote to be too long it was just to lead into a more general thought I had about society. It seems that while people in society are constantly clamouring for control and order and stability, there is a definite need for the enforcement of laws to be somewhat ambiguous. In order words, there needs to be obvious imperfections in the laws and how they are enforced for people to really be happy. If everyone was flawlessly caught every time they broke a law, people would hate it. They would call it totalitarian and an invasion of their privacy. 1984-esque, no doubt? But at the same time, one could argue that these invasions of privacy or totalitarian laws are only to strengthen society by allowing no one to be above the law.

      So it’s a real catch 22. People want security, but at the same time I guess they need to believe there’s little loopholes and not everything will be seriously enforced. In other words, I guess they need some room to breathe. Why is this the case? I’m not entirely sure. Apart from the obvious part about society failing, I don’t see the big deal as long as it was not another human judging us. Maybe a computer system that could analyze whether someone was doing something right/wrong without any bias. But this leads into a whole other philosophical debate…about humanity building god with it’s own hands and how counter-intuitive it would be for some kind of software entity to judge us since of course, it’s not even human. Yet the irony is, why would some kind of higher “god” be anything like a human anyway? As in, have emotions like a human…to be omnipotent would it not have to judge us in an unbiased way? I think it’s almost demeaning to ascribe human emotions to a truly omnipotent “god” or one which might’ve created us. How could we /possibly/ relate to its emotions? It’s like an ant trying to relate to a human. Either way, it doesn’t make much sense to me.
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Lifestyles && Aspirations

I was listening to a discussion with my parents in the car about the how different the people were in North America as opposed to back home. The basic premise was that most people in NA are driven by the American Dream. That is, the dream to make money (ie. get a good job) and then buy progressively better material things that they apparently need. For example, a big house, fancy cars, swimming pool, yachts etc etc.

This was definitely in contrast to the Caribbean way of life where a job is merely something you need to live comfortably and the lifestyle is more focused on working towards the weekend - where you party/drink and have fun with family/friends. I don't want to say that obviously everyone in NA or The Caribbean conforms to these mindsets since I'm sure there's exceptions. But I think its safe to say, living in Canada after all, that there's a definite push towards the American Dream. Ever since we're young we know the goal is to get a job that pays well...but then what? Then we use to money to buy useless things, it seems. To use the quote from Fight Club:

"Advertising has got us working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don't need"

Of course, that quote kind of exaggerates things as I'm sure not everyone in America hates their job. But its just the total capitalist mindset that I don't like. Initially, I thought like the Caribbean way of life seemed much more appealing and something I should strive for. I don't want my happiness to be dependent on material possessions which can be so fickle. But at the same time, why should happiness that's based on socializing with a person/people be any better? A person is perhaps just as fickle/fragile as a material object...maybe even more so.

I guess it doesn't really matter how you attain happiness as long as you're...happy by whatever means you've obtained it (no pun intended). But personally, it seems like it'd be more stressful to try the American Dream route. It's stressful enough to try and land a stable job without worrying about how to constantly acquire more wealth and buy more material things. Or maybe the best way would be a compromise between both things. Material things do make one happy once in a while but I feel like they only make me happy in a very shallow kind of way. But why should people make me any happier? Are we just wired this way? I guess humans inherently want to bond with others...or else society would never happen.

Of course, I guess there's lots of other paths to happiness. I just think its interesting how paths to happiness can change so drastically across cultures/age groups/geographical regions. There could be things like religion that people could claim lead to happiness. In the end, what if happiness is just some neurotransmitter in the brain? What if it's really not as deep as our brains seem to think it is? What would be the point then, in order to work in some way to achieve this so called happiness?

Are Pictures Worth 1000 Words?

I sometimes wish that I'd get more views on my blog. Or more accurately, that more people would read what I have to say and give some feedback. It's hard to tell how much a "view" really entails. It could be a misclicked link, a glance at a page, or someone starts reading and has a tl;dr moment and leaves.

I have often thought about including pictures to maybe capture the attention of others who stumble upon this blog. I chose not to do this for two reasons. First, I'm lazy and don't want to spend time finding pictures related to the topic I'm blogging about. Second, and most importantly, because I sort of don't like the "instant gratification" idea that pictures bring to a blog. In a age where we have sites like tumblr where most people just post a bunch of interesting pictures and call that a blog I think it's pretty useless. Pictures are good and can convey ideas but in an society where the internet allows one to access almost an infinite wealth of information with a few seconds of typing and clicks of a mouse, they only serve to worsen the problem. Look at facebook, for a example. Many people argue (myself included) that if you really -cough- stalk someone on facebook you could find out a lot about their life rather than taking the time to get to know them in person. These examples only serve to show that we're spoiled and have gotten far too use to having all this information at our fingertips to the point where we've forgotten the magic that comes with meeting someone completely new from the first time.

I guess the tl;dr version of this would be that pictures seem too convenient for me. So what if they are flashy and eye-catching? They should be used to enhance what a blogger writes about, and not the focus of it. The internet seems to make things impersonal and, I guess with my blog, I'm trying to make things personal again. I'm trying to write about how I feel and share it in the purest way I know how - through plain old text.

Brave New World

"Happiness is never grand" 
 - Brave New World

I want to apologize to all you anonymous readers out there (if you even exist) for not blogging in a while. It wasn't that I had much going on in my life, I probably had quite a bit of free time. I've been trying to remedy this lately and make my days more meaningful by filling them with such things as gaming, hopefully doing some organic chem and finishing several books. I worry about having these meaningless days that I won't even remember, sometimes. Either way, I'd like to really apologize to myself. I was re-reading my older blogs at work yesterday and they gave me the motivation I needed to get out of this non-blogging rut. Of course, this post is supposed to be about a book. I'll ramble on about memories and the past later.

A few weeks ago I finished reading the classic novel Brave New World by Huxley. Coincidentally, Huxley (the author) is also the half brother of the Huxley who won the Nobel Prize in Physiological for coming up with mathematical models that dictate how action potentials travel down neurons. Pretty cool piece of trivia, I thought.

At first I was expecting Brave New World to be similar to the classic 1984 by Orwell. I was wrong on most accounts. While they are definitely about a future setting, they share little in common. Overall, I found Brave New World felt more like a scientific/philosophy paper that didn't really devote enough time to the story or development of the plot. You didn't really feel anything for the characters and it was basically like the story was only a mechanism for Huxley to express his ideas about a future society. Which, in retrospect, it probably is.

So, I'm going to try and not talk about the actual plot of Brave New World too much, since I didn't think there was anything that interesting there. But I would like to discuss the ideas. Brave New World portrays a society where people are controlled by "happiness" rather than fear as in 1984. People are divided into classes at birth with Alphas being the highest (the intellectual thinkers) and Epsilons being the lowest (factory workers). Other classes include Beta and Gammas whose intellectual abilities are determined, as you might've guessed, by their position in the Greek Alphabet. The society of BNW aims to make people happy in two ways. For one, they eliminate the feeling of closeness or intimacy between individuals. There is no such thing as a family, or significant other. As a mantra in the book goes "Everyone belongs to everyone else". Thus, people can have sex with whomever they like and as many people as they like. The book implies that people usually date for maybe a week or a bit more and then move onto someone else. Without such a feeling of intimacy between individuals it greatly reduces the probability that one will feel grief or pain upon seeing another person leave.


The second way people are made is through a new drug called Soma. Soma is basically like getting high without any of the negative side-effects. It's used to make one fall into a sleep (sometimes) where they are happy. However, it is shown that taking TOO much Soma will kill you. Of course, this threshold is far beyond what the average citizen takes. Soma also offers a release from physical pain, thus eliminating another way of feeling sad. The other interesting aspects of their society is that conditioning of very young children make everyone happy with their social class. Also, aging does not occur for the citizens at BNW. Everyone is young forever, until 60 where they are automatically killed. Also, the book implies that there is very little scientific research or updates that will ever be made to the society as it seems pretty stable as it is now.

It's pretty obvious to see that BNW tries to blur the line between dystopia and utopia. Whereas the denizens of a 1984-esque society are constantly impoverished, underfed and have poor living conditions, people in a BNW kind of society are, essentially, content with their lives. But this contentment only stems from the stability that they have. Is content through stability enough? Or is this society actually more of a nightmare due to the fact that everyone is TOO stable? Throughout the course of the novel, this is realized by some of the Alpha Plus citizens (the most intellectual thinkers). Many of them are not happy with their lives even though they realize they are free from at least emotional or physical pain. They want a type of intimacy with others or something more than what society can give them now. In a way, is this selfish? Can society never fill the void of not having an intimate relationship with another? What about religion? Drugs?

But the society of BNW is interesting because, to me, it shows that people can be happy without experiencing sadness or pain. For a long time, I use to think that happiness could only be achieved through experiencing rough times in your life as well. But, I feel now that happiness can come from stability. However, for a person who is truly a thinker, this kind of happiness through stability will never be enough. There needs to be something more. Maybe its some selfish intimate relationship you have with another that no one else does, or maybe it's some other passion for science/nature/people.

But this brings me to the question of Soma. What about drugs? Do we underestimate their ability to make us happy? I've been reading a lot of neuroscience lately and, at the end of the day, all the feelings, emotions, and thoughts we have are just a product of electrical connections in our brain. Well, along with neurotransmitters. What if people had access to a drug which simply made them feel happy all the time? What need then, for even living a life as we see today? Of course, I doubt this will ever happen. But it's curious to think what if drugs were to evolve and become more like Soma and have less detrimental side effects. Of course, its described in the novel that Soma only brings about a "shallow happiness". It's a comforting thought to think that there is still something special about attaining happiness through our life and in our own unique way. It's always a nice feeling to think that we are unique and we live our lives in a unique way. But are we? Are we bold enough to say that the way we find happiness is so special that it can't be replicated in any other way? I wish this were the case, sometimes but maybe it's just as easy as tweaking some synapses in your brain.

I think I'll end off this discussion by saying that stability is a very useless thing in the long term. While it can bring about a shallow kind of happiness, I don't feel like it makes life worth living as much as change does. I'm not talking about a radical change everyday. But I just don't see the point in wanting my life to be stable for as long as I'm alive. It's like the difference between just standing beside a treadmill and running on a treadmill at a constant speed. Sure, in one scenario you're moving faster than the other, but relative to YOURSELF, you aren't changing your speed on the treadmill at all. You might be moving, but nothing is changing. So why does it even matter that you were running the first place?

2+2=5

Is it possible that 2+2 = 5 could be true if everyone thinks it is? Who even said that 2+2 = 4? Is this some inherent property of the universe? Even if it is "true", why should it matter to humanity?

George Orwell thought so and, for some sad reason, I'm starting to think so too. Once again, I think this mentality is just another depressing truth I've discovered as I move along this tread mill of life.

For those not familiar with the particular scene in 1984, it's when O Brien informs Winston that the fundamental truth of the universes all depend on what the Party says. 2+2 = 5 if the Party wills it. Objects don't fall to the earth because of gravity, they fall because the Party wants them too. Of course, at first, Winston thinks this is absurd. But slowly, he comes to realize that when only you believe something to be true you begin to doubt the sanity of your own thoughts - despite how outlandish the thoughts of the masses might seem.

I have found myself in similar situations many times, but none of them are more profound than when it comes to memories. I pride myself on having what I consider to be quite an astute memory, I tend to be able to recall minor details and generate powerful recollections if I really think about it. The point, recently, I was creeping someone from my past on my facebook and all of a sudden all these memories suddenly started coming back to me. And the thing is, they probably seem trivial to anyone but me. I doubt the person in question even remembers the events that transpired. So that leaves me with the question - should it even be called real?

The logical response is, "Well of course, it did happen after all" but the more practical point of view is that perhaps sadly, those memories only exist in my mind now. What if that information really exists no one else but in my head now? Only existing in some complicated set of synaptic connections and even that might fade away in time. And that information might be lost forever. It's something that scares me a lot, to be honest. I think I have a big problem with things just disappearing without me knowing.

Are we constantly losing parts of who we used to be? And parts of who we are? Or are they just hidden beneath the surface? Anyway, I digress. The point is that, what if no one else even remembers but me? I might as well have made up a story in my head about that person and called it the "truth". In fact, what if the time comes when I can't even distinguish between what memories are real and perhaps the little additions I've subconsciously made to my memories to make things seem better? Maybe that's already happened to me.

The point is, does it even matter if you remember the truth or not? If no one is around to verify or remember it with you? It's like that old saying about a tree falling in the woods. But I believe that it is important to remember the truth. But maybe it's just too hard if no one else is there to believe with you. Maybe if everyone else believes that 2+2 = 5 then that's simply enough for it to be true. Of course, I do think that using scientific examples is a bad idea, since perhaps they can be proven empirically. But what about memories? No one can verify that the memories I still hold in my mind are accurate, because memories aren't something that can be "proven" like a mathematical proof or what not.

I think the point I want to get across to myself is that as I get older, I feel scared that everyone else will simply "forget" old memories of the past that seem important to me. And then, will I really be able to call them anything? I just wish sometimes that humans were more like computers, with reliable space where information can be stored. Instead, we're left not only knowing where information is stored but relying on others to validate that information. I guess the bottom line is that I shouldn't need others remembering to validate what I supposedly know to be true. But...memories just don't seem as special if no one is around to remember the things that you do. Then you just feel crazy.

Self Aware

I'm going to take a break from blogging about events in my day to day life and try to take a step outside the box. So without further ado...

So, I was reading this Neuroscience textbook on Monday just for general interest and ended up reading some sections completely unrelated to my research. One of the sections had to do with the theory of sleep, dreams and how they affect our brain. The other had to do with emotions and how people respond to them. However, the section I found the most fascinating was a small section about self-awareness and how it makes humans unique.

The section posed the idea that humans are clearly different from both animals (though we have no way of knowing this) and machines (we know this for sure) in that humans are self aware. More specifically, if I was to look in the mirror I can recognize and realize that the person staring back at me is...physically who I am and what others see me as. I have the very special ability to recognize myself and recognize the fact that I do exist. Whatever "existing" really means.

I believe that this is perhaps one of the only ways humans are really fundamentally different from machines. The more I read about neuroscience the more the brain seems like a biological computer. Albeit, a very complex computer which operates in a way that we can't understand or really compare that fully to how modern computers operate. But it pretty much seems like neurons process inputs and generate outputs to other neurons through means of electrical/chemical signals. Really, while I think the brain is complicated and how it functions is mysterious I don't think it makes humans special. If we really are special.

Anyway, back to why we are different from machines. A machine does not really know it's a machine, it does not know if it exists or why it exists for the function that it does. All it does is "do". Humans, for better or for worse, have the ability to question ALL that we do. What I really want to get into is something that both angers and saddens me about people sometime. That people sometimes seem to forgo perhaps the one attribute which makes us unique just for the sake of simplicity. Of course, I'm talking about self awareness.

I recently read "Breakfast of Champions" by Kurt Vonnegut. This basic plot of this book is that a man goes crazy because he gets the idea that everyone else around him is really a machine and that he is the only one who can really "think". As such, he has no problem killing or hurting other people because he simply sees them as just machines. Now, apart of the violence, I believe this is a very interesting premise. In a depressing sense, it seems like too many people nowadays are simply too focused on just moving forward in life, but they aren't taking the time to step back and really THINK about WHY. They aren't taking a step back to look at themselves in a mirror in a both figurative and possibly even literal sense. I see inklings of this trait in people all the time (even in myself), people so caught up in things for no reason other than the sake of having something to be "caught up" in. This could extend to so many areas - school, religion, relationships. It's depressing almost. It's depressing that sometimes society tries to strip us of the one thing that could possibly make humans unique in exchange for cooperation and conformity.

To whoever is reading this, including myself, I urge that perhaps you take some time to step back and look outside the box. Way outside the box. Think of WHY the things you think are important are really important. And if they should be important. Of course, I realize this kind of thinking is bad for you to an extent. There are those rare times where this state of thinking makes me feel much like the man in that Kurt Vonnegut novel I was just talking about. I sometimes feel like everyone else around me is just caught up in trivial things that have no real significance to well...anything, but perhaps some selfish part of their character. Then I invariably think about my own life, and the things I hold dear to me. Even they seem quite pointless as well. But pointless compared to what? Maybe I mean pointless compared to the capacity in which we have to think and imagine.

In a way, I think the ability of self awareness is humanity's most damning trait. For those who don't recognize it, they are missing out on what could make the human experience unique and might be simply stuck in a rut. For those who do embrace it and think about it occasionally they realize that maybe nothing in life will be good enough to compete with this fundamental idea of knowing we exist. It's a real catch 22 and the ultimate way life has found to troll us all. It's almost like giving someone the gift of being able to see colors but forcing them to live in a world that is predominantly monochrome (black and white). Of course, they know there's A BIT of color (blues, greens, reds etc) out there...but its so scarce some people would rather just pretend they only know about black and white. But for those who DO accept other colors are out there, they might never find them or never find enough of them. That's how I see the world, at least.

But I don't think I'll turn back, and I hope I never fall back into things which I think are pointless. I'd rather take nothing than something. Really, this might not even be a choice at all. Perhaps nothing was all there ever was.

Life Lessons From Tetris

I've been spending too much time on Tnet 2 nowadays so...I decided to make this post


1.) Don't spend forever waiting for the right piece

2.) Downstack, don't overstack (balance the two)

3.) Don't create impossible/unlikely situations

4.) Understand what can and can't be fixed