ambivalence

Sometimes perceiving the fine line between right and wrong is simply stemmed from what we believe or what social norms have made us believe. In Moral Minds, Hauser raised an interesting point.

Norms wouldn’t be norms if we could tamper with them, constantly questioning why they exist and why we have to follow them. Their effectiveness lies in their unconscious operation, and their power to create conformity. On the other hand, although social norms often exert an unconscious hand of control, we do sometimes violate them. When we do, or observe someone else in violation, our brains respond with a cascade of emotions, designed both to register the violation and to redress the imbalance caused.

Every culture offers a distinctive palette unique to its own people, including a few which may seem peculiar to others outside that circle. Norms serve as a safety net on which we can fall back and introduce order in an otherwise chaotic world, allowing our interactions to be sufficiently predictable as a result. However, it inevitably causes distress when one faces a situation that challenges these norms. Such circumstances are bound to arise and we find ourselves questioning what is really best for us, proceeding with what we think is right because occasionally the limits of norms may be put to a test.

Tags: morality, norms, society

Not many of us would get enthralled at the thought of immortality, despite how empowering and enticing such a condition would be. We have seen our  fair share of sorrow and happiness, and experienced countless heartbreaking and joyous moments. As much as we desire for world peace, we are delicately aware that the day the human race become peaceful and the wars stop raging in nations is the day we cease to be humans. Knowing the human condition, nothing can make us yearn to be unfettered from the clutches of death.

It is undeniably the very fleeting nature of life that makes life itself bearable, making every event memorable, and eliciting a passion for life in many. Would we bat an eye if eternity were bestowed to us? If we had eternity, would we then feel the need to live life to the fullest as if everyday was the last? Would we feel the need to hold on to a love or life and have aspirations or ambitions? Would we even bother to set targets or goals for ourselves? If we had eternity, we would have forever to think about.

Tags: mortality

Wired, Issue 16.02

Morality, spirituality, the meaning of life — science doesn’t handle those issues well at all. But that’s cool. We have art and religion for that stuff. Science also assumes predictable cause and effect in a world that’s a chaotic, bubbling stew of randomness. But that’s OK, too. Our approximations are usually good enough. No, the real reason science sucks is that it makes us look bad. It makes us bit players in the Big Story of the universe, and it exposes some key limitations of the human brain.
Look at it this way: Before science, we humans had dominion over Earth, the center of the universe. Now we’re just a bunch of hairless apes on a wet rock orbiting a minor star in a marginal galaxy.
Even worse, those same cortexes that invented science can’t really embrace it. Science describes the world with numbers (ratio of circumference to diameter: pi) and abstractions (particles! waves! particles!). But our intractable brains evolved on a diet of campfire tales. Fantastical explanations (angry gods hurling lightning bolts) and rare events with dramatic outcomes (saber-toothed tiger attacks) make more of an impact on us than statistical norms. Evolution gave us brains that crave certainty, with irrational fears of crashing in an airplane and a built-in weakness for just-so stories about intelligent design. Meanwhile, the true wonders revealed by the scientific method — species that change into new species over time, continents that float around the planet, a quantum-mechanical world where nothing is for sure — are worse than counterintuitive. To a depressingly large number of us, they’re downright threatening.
In other words, thanks to evolution, half of all Americans don’t believe in evolution. That’s the universe for you: impersonal, uncaring, and ironic.

Tags: evolution, math, morality, physics, science, wired

During the very humdrum and monotonous chopping of fruits earlier today, I was once again reminded by the temporal nature of life and that nothing is permanent, while changes reign as the only permanence. Before the thought conquered my mind, I almost yield to grumbling about my responsibilities in the kitchen. Certainly, thinking about the ephemeral essence of our experiences may sound bleak, but I have learned to see it in a way that alleviate my tendency towards self-induced melancholy.

As a human race, we seem almost indistinguishable on the cellular level. But as an individual, we are distinctive and unique with disparate characteristics. We are beings with a myriad of differences in characters, personalities, attitudes, interests, and beliefs. As individuals, we can always strive to improve our shortcomings and adapt to our ever-changing environments. We can attempt to embrace a positive outlook to life even if our minds are swarming with bleak thoughts. We are malleable creatures who have learned to accept our own and one another’s differences, or not.

Even if we have accepted that each individual or a collective group of people is unique, we are still at odds with one another. Sometimes, differing personalities, attitudes, and beliefs result in irreconcilable ideas or interests that cannot be resolved. Since I tend to hover over the middle and rarely take sides, I can relate to and identify with arising conflicts. And I always wonder what strong convictions people have that they cannot be swayed by other ideas or refuse to bend to another’s beliefs. But lately I became aware that it is these convictions that give a sense of purpose, fulfillment, and meaning to the unyielding mind.

Tags: beliefs, nature, science

I came across an article on Wired magazine (16.01) titled The Software That Will Take Digital F/X to the Next Level of Awesome, relaying how Jos Stam, a computer scientist specializing in 3-D graphics who loves complex problems, view “reality [as] a binary riddle to be cracked, a series of fleeting images best appreciated after they’ve been rendered into 1s and 0s”. He has already devised an algorithm that models digital smoke with astounding realism (used in Lord of the Rings and War of the Worlds) and is currently working on daunting problems involving the interactions of objects and forces, which if successful would be “the holy grail of computer animation”. He wants “software that can play God with pixels”.

The article certainly affirms my belief that nature is innately governed by mathematics, as there seems to be mathematics and numbers in every aspects of the world, think golden ratio which is embedded in arts and nature. I am ceaselessly fascinated by the fact that nature can be accurately modeled by the complex dynamics of mathematics, attempting for example to mimic how elements interact in the real world at a fundamental level such as smoke with wind or solid objects with fabrics.

Paul Dirac, a Nobel Laureate in Physics in 1933, said that “one could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe. Our feeble attempts at mathematics enable us to understand a bit of the universe, and as we proceed to develop higher and higher mathematics we can hope to understand the universe better”.

We may wonder, for example, why all the phenomena encompassed by electromagnetism, from the behavior of electrons to the nature of light, can be explained by a set of four differential equations known as Maxwell’s equations. Equally puzzling is the fact that some geometrical curves like the ellipse, invented/discovered by the Greek mathematician Menaechmus around 350 BC, were found 2,000 years later to describe the orbits of planets around the Sun. Similarly, group theory proved to be essential in the understanding of both the organization of elementary (subatomic) particles, and the structure of solids. What is it that makes mathematics fit the observable universe like a glove?

- Mario Livio, author of The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi

Tags: math, nature, physics, wired

As the quarter comes to an end, and so do all the challenges confronting me. Never had I encountered such a quarter as turmoiled as this. Always someone who is slow to accept the help of others, instead, I am indebted to many who have helped me get through. My roomate, who has to put up with my rants about dealing with these challenges. My friend Effie who saw me through the first half of the quarter in math461 by dedicating a few hours of her time to tutor me. My cse413 partner whom I cannot thank enough. And of course my special someone who is the beacon in the rough sea of challenges, lifting my spirit when the path gets too rocky.

If I pull through successfully, then the journey was worth the effort. Otherwise, at least I got through with a better understanding of where my strengths and weaknesses lie, enabling me to forge ahead in the right direction.

It doesn’t rain but it pours. Lately, failure has been staring at me in the face not just once or twice but a whole endless string of it. It taunts me to cling on while it threatens to release me from its grip. I have coasted through my life and averted failure for as long as I can remember now but it doesn’t get any easier from here. Even though a life that offers no hardship and challenges is not as enriching as one that offers a fair balance of success and failure, I very much hope to be absolutely unfettered by the looming clutches of failure.

I am driven to exasperation and to the extent that I think giving up would free me from days of incessant worries. It’s interestingly germane and timely that I watched Lions for Lambs amid all my troubles, in which Robert Radford’s character seem to be speaking to me, as to many others who are facing similar stressful predicaments — It is better to try and fail, rather than failing to try (although you’d eventually arrive at the same position, but at least you tried). And in an episode of Family Guy, Brian (the talking dog character), was clearly overjoyed upon crossing an academic hurdle although he failed. He claimed that at least “he did it”. So what’s all this? Am I foreshadowing my own outcome? And yet, even when I’m inclined to think that a higher probability of failure than success awaits me at the end of this arduous journey, I’m still tenaciously persisting on, as if betting on the elusive flicker of hope that cheers me on.

Sometimes I wonder if the struggle is worth the effort if failure still holds victory over my hard work. I lamented that it’d be such a waste if I should drop what I earned so far, and I was advised not to view all these as a wasted journey (if failure reigns) but instead to treat my efforts as a contribution to my overall journey in life.

A question reverberates in my ears - What’s the worst that can happen? Life is after all just as a main course with success and failure as side dishes. What’s for dessert?

Tags: uncertainty

I take relief in agnostic views; I do not reject the existence of an almighty being nor support the notion of a God-less world, but neither can I vouch for such an existence. Certainly, religion provides an unshakable justification to the purpose and existence of mankind, injecting an undeniable meaning to life, but on the contrary, the concept of a being that arises out of nothingness is extremely confounding. Even the idea of how we even came up with the theory of God is equally overwhelming to me. I was rather amused to see a featured article in Time a few years ago that discusses the possibility of God being embedded in our genetic code because it seems to be answering one of the string of questions that intrigues me relentlessly. I once inquired a classmate in high school why and how is she so definite about an omnipotent presence in the Universe, and she nonchalantly replied that all you need is faith. I was taken aback and humbled by her answer, yet I couldn’t cultivate the same faith to believe without questioning. ( I was really expecting her to fumble at the question.) As much as I claim to be neutral in my views, I find myself thanking “God” for every blessings that occur in my life. The irony of it all!

In view of the recent book The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, in which he proposes that the rise of religious fundamentalism is dividing people around the world, I somehow believe that the many disparate religions all lead to the same God, differing only in the routes to arrive at the common destination. We share a generally mutual view in ethical and moral conduct, and as a global community we strive to uphold good as opposed to evil. I don’t understand why we should allow differing views in religion to divide and cause a disparaging gap among mankind.

I lean towards the teaching of humanism, which advocates “the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appeal to universal human qualities”, although I don’t fully embrace humanism’s “rejection of religion in favor of a belief in the advancement of humanity by its own efforts”.

Tags: agnostic, beliefs, humanism, religion

It’s been exactly a year since the passing of my roommate of 3 years and friend of 15 years. We were never really close, but I felt her presence in major turning points of my life. We grew up in the same condominium grounds and entered the same primary and secondary school. I even followed her to Seattle just a few years after she enrolled in UW, and lived with her under the persuasion of her mother. She was like the elder sister I never had, and an academic role model who excelled in all areas, socially and everything else. She was an alluring beauty. She was close to perfection.

The phone call I received from my mother in October last year changed everything. My ears have never heard anything so foreign and my brains could not register the news. Until now, I don’t think I accepted the fact that she’s truly gone, because somehow I feel that she’s still alive out there somewhere. Or maybe I’m just in denial that someone who was here for as long as I can remember can suddenly vanish from the surface of this planet.

With the idea of death following me around, sometimes all problems become so frivolous and life too feels ever so insignificant. So what if I solve all my problems? I’ll never get out alive anyway. Maybe it is this harsh reality that instills in me a strong sense of belonging to life itself, makes me embrace living to the fullest and hold on to life like it is the last straw on earth. Because one day I’ll see my last sunrise.