in the name of charity

lots of things are done in the name of charity, especially big, shocking calamities.

charity sales, charity concerts, charity classes.

we're touched, and we'd like to help. on one hand, better do something rather than never do anything. on the other, we do a little bit, feel like we've done something, and move on in our lives. the 5.12 disaster is an increasingly distant memory already. while reconstruction and suffering is still going on, there are already many other immediate and pressing concerns in the world.

it's a characteristic of human cognition that big huge calamities are going to claim our attention. chronic problems often remain just that, chronic. in US alone,where statistics are in theory more transparent and better documented, cigarettes apparently kill 440,000 per year (all statistics are subject to interpretation but a fraction of that number it's still huge). there are maybe five natural disasters that exceed that in the history of mankind, and they were all one-off rather than annual occurrences. (as a side note, man-made disasters are unlikely to evoke similar sentiments. imagine some mining company that inadvertently caused a devastating earthquake. yes, the company's going to go bust from lawsuits in any case, but the level of public sympathy for the affected will probably be different. people will likely assume that the government will somehow step in and take care of them).

yushu, for instance, is one of the relatively better-off tibetan provinces. what about the other poorer regions that have been suffering since the beginning of time? for any kind of destitution, there is essentially always something more destitute (by definition, there is only one "most destitute"). why not first help the ones who have been "in line" from a long time? of course, it doesn't work like that. fortunately, sometimes donations for particular calamities can exceed so much that funds can be redeployed to address this.

maybe, the world simply has two kinds of people. the vast majority respond to the big eye-catching ones. a minority will toil away silently, like 阿福 who is famous solely because he had died. (of course there are many in-betweens, many of us donate monthly to charities of our choice, have regular volunteer and fund-raising we do on our own).

(and how much "regular" stuff is enough? it's once again the "we don't live in a cave" problem. and if you do so much "regular" stuff already, there's probably little bandwidth for these unexpected shocks. that being said, there are probably enough people who pop up to help in the immediate aftermath of unexpected disasters)

maybe the question at hand is how to let the people who in fact want to be part of this minority, to have an easier time finding out how to do so.

comparing impact

let's say i wanted to do less damage to the world.

what should i do? since i can't live in a cave?

never drive?

go vegan?

unless absolutely necessary: never turn on lights, flush, take long showers, use disposable anything, buy new things?

ok, since this is pretty unrealistic, how do these things compare?

(ok, comparing is pretty dumb. what do you do when people compare you all the time, and pick your one possible weak spot and keep shoving salt into it?)

being productive

with my limited time on earth, i'd like to do many things, achieve many things, or simply be "productive". what is it to be "productive" anyway? i suppose i know the result of that feeling - a sense of satisfaction with time well-spent.

what is time well-spent?

making as much money as possible?

spending time to think about how to make as much money as possible?

spending time to think about why it is important to make as much money as possible?

spending time to think about why we think what we think in the first place?

alternatively...

what about spending quality time with loved ones?

spending time to think about how to spend as much quality time as possible with loved ones?

spending time to feel this quality time, rather than to think about this feeling?

or spending time to wonder why some of us feel more often, and some of us think more often, or are they the same thing but just at different brain speeds?

certain things don't need maximizing

different things strike different chords with people. yes, it might seem obvious, but in my world of optimization it's a bit of a strange concept.

there really are certain things that people are inexplicably passionate about, whether they make sense or not.

going to far off places just to see some nice mountain/lake seems to be one of mine. i can't say it has any real value other than i get inexplicably excited just thinking about it.

yes, i can analyze it by saying these places gives me a sense of awe and peace, as sometimes the scale of nature can make us feel either really small or really connected to it, depending on our prior mental disposition.

i can try to psychoanalyze myself and conclude that either i lived such a sheltered life in childhood i'm trying to overcompensate by being adventurous now, or that my current life is simply lacking fulfillment and hence the need to seek external stimuli in this particular form.

or, perhaps deep down i'm still addicted to the praise that people politely give when i return with photos (pictures that would probably still look beautiful if one were to take them with eyes closed)

i still don't know where this is taking me, but perhaps figuring out what these things are is a first step...

people in glass houses

aren't supposed to throw stones. which, actually, is relatively easy. just stay silent and let others go their merry way.

sometimes it's pretty important to throw these stones (without malice, of course), to open ourselves to have, well, other people chucking stones back at us. it's a sure good way to learn.

starting somewhere

where the somewhere is the hardest part.

the following features would be nice:

bite-sized

immediate results/gratification

feels like it is somewhat substantial

satisfies some vanity-counter

publicizable without sounding like a douche

more fun with more people

repeatable

and ideally, urges us to think and do more.

who pays what for what?

"We were born in America; had terrific parents who saw that we got good educations; have enjoyed wonderful families and great health; and came equipped with a 'business' gene that allows us to prosper in a manner hugely disproportionate to that experienced by many people who contribute as much or more to our society's well being." - Warren Buffett in his annual letter to shareholders, Feb 26, 2010.

this cuts to the heart of something that has long bothered me (and still), and i first came across this in 2008, reading Sasha Dichter's non-profit manifesto. in this, the part that got me thinking was the following:

"How much is your time worth? Start at the low end: if, instead, you had worked at a big company or started your own company or worked at an investment bank or a consulting firm, how much money would the world pay you for your skills? A few hundred thousand dollars? A few million dollars?

That’s your baseline. Now ask yourself: how important is the problem you’re trying to solve? Are you trying to make sure that women have a safe, affordable place to give birth? Creating a way for people to have clean drinking water so they and their children don’t fall ill? Protecting refugees from genocide? Providing after school tutoring for at risk kids? Giving people with chronic disease a place to come together and support one another?"

does society have it right in terms of who pays what for what? depends who you ask and the definition of "right", but the best and most impactful school teacher who changes the lives of thousands of kids simply won't be paid as much as an investment banker, that much is a fact of life.

it is up to the individual, i.e. myself, to come to terms with the issue of relative value.

best wishes for the best?

generally, we never wish ill will on others. we hope they have a nice life with smooth sailing, few or no obstacles, and live happily ever after.

of course, we also know that the obstacle-free life is essentially fiction, and how smooth one's life is, is a matter of perspective. everyone prefers to think they overcame crazy difficulties in their own lives - despite my amazingly smooth life, i will be able to bring out any number of seemingly gigantic road blocks that would be mere pebbles for others.

but perhaps, what we should be wishing our close ones is to have a somewhat difficult life - the right amount of difficulty to grow as a person, but not so difficult enough they can't get back up. (yes, it's probably too much to wish for). but difficulties are the only tried and true instigator of personal growth. smooth sailing certainly does afford us time for introspection, although we rarely take it (unless we've reached some pinnacle of our careers and now realize there is something more to life than the rat race).

would i wish myself to have a difficult life? well, i secretly wish i could achieve growth without the tough medicine. double standards? yes, probably. can i have some kind of light/medium-strength medicine? maybe i should start looking for some... so when the strong kind gets splattered on me i'll stay reasonably sane.

principles and consequences

when do i stand firm by my principles and deal with the consequences, and when do i tolerate differences and bend my principles?

(by the way, who says my principles are the absolute truth and unassailable?)

if i know i have to endure pain anyway, but how do i know if i'm supposed to stick to my principles and endure the resulting firestorm, or i'm supposed to be patient and endure the pain of silence and acquiescence?

where do you draw the line?

i'm tempted to say doing what feels most right would be fine, but that seems just not that helpful. if we knew how long we had to endure, it might be an easy decision, but since we don't, we're still stuck.

the only comfort we can draw is whatever stance we make, there will be both good and bad repercussions, not just bad. and if even we pick the worst possible path to walk, perhaps it will turn out to be the best one in teaching us about life.

90%, 99%, and 100%

being kind 90% of the time is actually not that hard.

being kind 99% of the time is really, really difficult.

being kind 100% of the time borders on impossible.

over time, it's pretty easy to see the difference.

the problems of moral progress

in trying to advance along anything that is "more good", naysayers invariably outnumber supporters.

if you want to be a vegetarian and start explaining you'd like to ingest fewer dead animals, people ask you why you aren't vegan. why you use any animal products at all.

if you want to help the world and start explaining the great disparities in the world, people ask you why you don't quit your job and volunteer in africa.

if you want to be environmentally conscious, people ask why you drive, why you order take-out, why you use anything disposable, and why you don't live in a cave instead.

they're not trying to have a constructive conversation here: they feel threatened by the fact that you might actually be right and hence prefer to throw out all-or-nothing arguments to demoralize you. (they're not wrong either, by the way, there is more that any one could be doing)

of course, the preachy people who smugly tell people that they're on a higher moral plane aren't helping either - they're suspicious and annoying.

well, no one ever said it was easy...

reasons we don't want to volunteer

exploring some darker elements...

1. i can't be bothered, i have enough things on my to-do list. it simply is not a necessary or key part of my life. i'll get to it when i really have lots of time.

2. i hate being guilted into volunteering, i don't like to commit to things as other priorities may come up, or i simply don't feel like doing it that day.

3. if i do volunteer, i want to be the star volunteer. i want to be head of that volunteer organization. i would like everyone to look at what a great charitable philanthropic humanity loving person i am. i want to do things my way, not listen to some do-gooder who is impractical and has no business sense.

4. i don't mind helping, but i secretly don't like to deal with "those" people - the people who don't look, feel, smell as nice. i like to cuddle cute children, but not other than that.

5. i want to be the change that i wish to see, but is there an easier way to do this rather than this grueling tedious stuff? is there some way i can not do that much work but feel a lot of the impact?

6. i don't want to feel i'm piggy-backing someone else, i want to see myself as the driver of this change, to feel empowered that i am doing this myself.

7. my skills are in the high value kind of volunteer work, not selling low value raffle tickets. it's just not a good use of my time to try to get fifty bucks for an hour's work. and i don't know where to find this kind of high value volunteer work.

8. there are a million charities for a million different causes. i have no idea where to start and they all seem deserving of attention, and everywhere i look, is pain, and more pain. if i don't do anything, i'm insulated from this kind of thing and hence i can go on living my happy life.

9. i've volunteered some and most of the time people don't even like us, and they have little interest in being helped, and i feel like i'm bothering them more than anything else. the impact i make is truly so small (if any at all) it makes absolutely no difference in the big scheme of things.

10. being a successful businessman is the best kind of philanthropic work that i will do - creating jobs for people, driving the economy, bettering people's lives. that is the work i should be focusing on, not volunteering at random agencies where my impact is at best limited and at worst building up a culture of social welfare reliance.

probably need a response to these points soon...

believing the illusion

according to a recent article, understanding that freewill is a pure illusion (driven by physics) actually causes people to engage in more selfish, antisocial behavior - and this runs counter to many philosophies and religions where people become more ethical when they believe they have some sort of free will that needs to be reigned in, in order to appease a particular deity (hence their lives are driven by a higher spiritual order, rather than some cold, hard physical law.

so, believing in freewill is generally a good thing, even though we may understand at a deeper level, it simply is an illusion?

quantifying the quality of life

is it possible to quantify the quality of life?

my earliest memory of such was a friend who left her investment banking job to teach at her secondary school. while ivy's teaching job paid her about 10% of what she was making, she had tripled her free time, derived three times as much joy from her work (approximately really - since you can't really multiply negative numbers), so she was convinced she actually had gotten a incredible deal.

of course, it's actually really difficult in practice to say doing this makes me twice as happy as doing that. or is it? can we assign "relative values" to things we enjoy? or variety is the essential element hence so even hanging out at a luxurious beach resort will get really boring after a while?

how about, thinking about how much time we spend doing things on a day-to-day basis that really matter to us? that matter to the world? and how do these things change with the time test, i.e. from a one year perspective, five year, ten year, thirty year perspective?

should the quality of life be defined by how much enjoyment i derive, or how much enjoyment other people derive?

齋口不齋心

a friend of mine posted an article regarding fake meat and its toxic chemicals, as well as general over-reliance on soy for many vegans and vegetarians.

it's something i've thought of on and off. on one hand, i sometimes have an inexplicable craving for the taste of meat, and this kind of fake meat is like a nicotine patch, offering some temporary relief. the other view point is that the whole point of fake meat is to remind us of meat, hence animal suffering, so if one really felt the pain of animals, fake meat as such a reminder should be avoided.

but, the slippery slope is difficult to climb back up. a pig can have 185 uses - from cosmetics to shampoo to crayons to bullets to gum to beer. totally avoiding animal products is probably not practical for most of us. perhaps the thing to do is at least be informed - and to consider the sources of the daily conveniences we enjoy, be it from dead animals, or the blood and sweat from laborers in the depths of the industrial machine.

external pain

i don't know if dean karnazes was the first the say this, but it was the first time i had heard of it: "somewhere along the lines, we have confused comfort with happiness". the corollary is, we have also confused pain with suffering.

how is pain not suffering? and, how is comfort not happiness?

perhaps...

- human beings are remarkably adaptive to comfort. we get used to nice things in no time at all and the happiness neurons stop firing.

- we are not so adaptive to pain, but it can still happen. (perhaps evolutionary speaking pain can be actually detrimental to our actual existence so we don't want to get used to it too easily)

- there is an "externalness" and "internalness" about pain. long periods of duress seem to be remarkably good at separating the two. that is, overriding the pain with the internal mind appears possible.

- there is the neurological explanation that external pain reduces one's self-consciousness and sense of individuality, which can produce a feeling of connection to god or a higher plane.

i don't know what it is - but somehow the ability to activate the "internal mind", perhaps the "true self", or the "buddha/god/choice-of-deity in us", or "elevation" in modern psychology terms, or any of the many descriptions - this is a real good feeling.

in the face of immensity

from a video by Neil deGrasse Tyson - he came across how certain people feel really small and insignificant in the face of immensity - because their egos were so large in the first place, they couldn't handle the immensity of the university. others, however, somehow feel empowered.

i don't know if it's smallness or largeness i feel - it's a sense of wonder and awe, that's for sure.

our own little movies

i know life ends up like being everything, and everything being like life, and when one looks hard enough, it's actually difficult to find things that don't have commonalities with each other.

but no matter - sometimes, i don't really know why, but certain things seem to strike me a bit more interesting than others.

seeing the flight full of people each watching their own TV screens, each enjoying our own little movies. it's nice to watch our own little movies - and striking up some conversation with the neighbor would just be plain weird and probably annoying.

i don't know, are we enjoying our own lives too much to see other people's movies?

the nature of intention

how does an intention, good or bad, arise?

what differentiates one from reflex, intuition, deep thought, cold calculation? don't they all come from the brain, and only a matter of "processing time" and "past experience"?

when do things cross from non-conscious things to conscious beings?

thinking about thinking

what is the most basic element of human thought? is there the "first thought", the "first step" towards thinking?

what is the difference between the hypothetical first reflex, i.e. "not warm", then reflex = cry, and the first actual thought?

when do reflexes become thoughts, or that first reflex is a thought nonetheless?

labels that bother me

increasingly, am finding out that my views are drifting towards certain group labels that i have historically avoided at all costs:

socially responsible/socially conscious/fair trade (food that sounds expensive and probably has tastes bad)

environmentalism (tree huggers who never shower)

humanism (spending too much time loving everyone and not doing anything constructive)

spiritualism (dreamy and generally weird)

i guess the only label i haven't avoided has been "agnostic", which is in itself a position of "no position". which is possibly spineless by certain viewpoints. but, i guess, i really still kind of like it.

the belief contradiction

ok, i can't get my head around this.

if everything follows strict physical laws, there really is no place for belief or willpower that comes from "ourselves". what we perceive as willpower are chemical reactions in our brains, products of our past. if some machine that could replicate me exactly (implausible as it might be), under the same circumstances, it would have the exact same amount of willpower as i would.

in that sense, there really is no "self", only a set of complicated circumstances that created this temporary being that exists for a while and then returns to dust.

yet, we have all experienced some situation where by sheer force of will (real or otherwise) we were able to overcome some difficulty or achieve some physical feat. we had to dig deep in our reserves and simply believe that we could do it, singularly focusing on our goal.

if we totally subscribe to determinist theory, doesn't that make us lazy? can we subscribe to the determinist theory yet believe we could influence things by ourselves? can we create intention out of thin air that is totally our very own effort, so we don't feel like we're just messengers in the grand game of life?

well, suppose we are only messengers - suppose one day this someone did tell us we actually were cogs, albeit complicated cogs, but still cogs. the first reaction would be, how do i stop being a cog, dammit? but the "this someone" tells u the harder you try not to be a cog, the more you are fulfilling your destiny as a cog. then you say, i'll do my best to be a cog then. then "this someone" says, great, i expected that from you too.

which leaves us with a no-win answer. does the futility of it all demoralize us? or do we realize we might as well enjoy life to the maximum? does it lead us back to the premise that we might as well do what suits us best and makes us feel best? afterall, there's no point in inflicting unnecessary pain on ourselves just to spite "this someone", as it couldn't have gone any other way anyway.

the way i'm wired (as i know it at the moment), it seems to make me happier that i'd believe i have some way of controlling my destiny. is it possible to know that everything's determined but to believe that we can still create intention, contradictory statements that these may be?

consider if you were to build an optimization machine - we would want it to optimize no matter what kind of consciousness it gained, and in fact, while we don't know the answer it would get to, we'd need to put in programs to make sure it believed it could do so. and this belief makes it the optimization machine we wished for.

the mind-brain problem

a variety of ways this question is asked - but the essential question is this: is there a non-physical soul that exists that controls our physical processes? do we have a mind/soul/spirit that controls our brain? is the mind simply a manifestation of a process (e.g. "fear" is a perception process by the brain's neurons, rather than a tangible thing that we can lay our hands on. we can create the circumstances for it, but we can't grasp/build/destroy/transfer it)

this question is so vexing it lies at the very core of such problems of freewill vs destiny, afterlife, or whether machines can have consciousness.

for the non-atheist, the answer is relatively simple - yes, gods, God, the Way, our higher consciousness, our astral being, these control our earthly bodies and brains. i can definitely see the beautiful simplicity of such - simply trust and believe, and be content.

for the strict atheist, this presents a more complicated problem. with no ethereal matter, consciousness can only be a physical process. it leaves no room for the soul, which presents a freewill problem. if everything is pre-determined and acts in accordance to the scientific laws of the universe, then freewill is purely an illusion.

there might still be two solutions for the freewill problem, neither i yet understand. one is compatibilism, where there is no conflict between freewill and determinism. the other is a series of blogs at 13.7, where they explore complicated quantum coherence to come to a conclusion that it is possible to have a responsible freewill.

one of my teachers gels the two concepts as follows: the place we are at is a product of our past actions and circumstances, no doubt. where we go from here is probabilistic, but can't be precisely determined. due to the almost infinite variations that can occur from today, calling the future deterministic borders on meaningless, since any one of the million possibilities could end up being true. on a day-to-day basis, it is a random walk about life. we can see why something happened, but we can't with 100% confidence foretell the future.

however, upon achieving some level of self-awareness, i.e. knowing our present actions have some sort of effect on our future circumstances, this sets in motion a long term discernible trend and pattern. once this "initial level" is achieved, the belief on whether you can change your neurons becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. can i influence probability then? at some point, is the problem is reduced to if you believe it, then you can do it. if you don't believe, then you can't. and why is that - simply the nature of things?

picking one: fairer or better

pretty much everyone seems to wish for a fairer world, where we don't have people like us consuming 100 gallons of water a day, and others consuming 2.5 gallons a day. the latest from science news seem to tell us such a sense of fairness is a result of both genetic wiring and cultural upbringing, even though it doesn't seem to make sense on an individual level.

but then, pretty much everyone wants to be better than others too, whether it's better skilled, better possessions, better social position. even if not better/best, at the very least not the worst.

for the unenlightened, this is a pretty interesting trade-off.

how much betterness is one willing to forgo for a fairer world?

my undiscovered skill

i used to think perhaps i had some hidden skill that was simply waiting to be discovered.

after some years now, i'm pretty sure i don't have some particular innate skill.

the only real secret skill is possibly, just knowing that the true ingredients of any particular skill are time and effort.

yes, we can work smarter, think harder, be more well-connected, leap frog with some shortcuts. i'm becoming more and more convinced that detours are every bit as valuable. if we realize we're wasting time, we probably aren't really wasting time?

the immensity of it all

the thing is, i will never really grasp the enormity of the universe. (not worrying about the issue of multiverses at the moment).

a couple youtubes that i have rewatched so many times.

hubble's deep field photo.

the pale blue dot.

sometimes, i think, why do these have anything to do with me? the size of the universe has absolutely no relevance for me.

at the same time, what happens in my life has absolutely no relevance for the universe either.

paralysis of choice

i'm particularly bad at this. really, quite bad.

some things to remind myself.

- it is impossible to make everyone happy

- it is extremely unlikely to pick the absolute best decision (or to pick the worst one)

- all the facts are not going to be available, so it is a toss of the dice

- whatever the choice is, try to think of the larger consequences of people other than yourself