Author Archives: Kevin L

I know it’s rare, but a narrative that will probably find its way into a page in my memoir in future…

It used to be simpler, you have a friendly face telling you what you are not allowed to bring in, picking out stuff from your bags and informing you what you should deposit into the lockers. No, it wasn’t an intrusion of privacy or anything – it was to prevent evil deeds of vandalism on the sacred scrolls on the shelves of Lee Kong Chian Reference Library, it was to prevent abuse of the library facilities. Laws were laws and a 20 cents saves you of leaving your stuff insecurely at the security check counter (pretty ironic huh?).

Today, you have to obtain clearance after you deposit your stuff into the lockers (which are now free, and this also means that they are rarely available). The experience was daunting. I wanted to access the Business section of the majestic reference library, which is located on the 8th floor of the grand building; unfortunately, the lockers on that floor, and both those above and below it directly were taken. I had to climb right up to the 10th floor to find an empty locker. I found a couple of them, which was rapidly snapped up by those locker-hungry looking intellectuals standing behind me. Armed with ONLY my box file which contain almost nothing besides a couple of Irvin’s notes and foolscap paper and my pencil case, I tried going to the section I wanted to.

I can only blame myself for not reading instructions on the notice in front of the security counter carefully – the lady security guard told me in the most polite tone you can possibly use to a person whom you think have committed some heinous crime that only blank pieces of paper were allowed and I only manage to get permission for a little slip of paper containing call numbers of the books I was looking for. I climbed back to my locker, stuff everything into it except my slip of paper, and my pencil case. ‘Finally’, I exclaimed to myself, marched down 2 flights of escalators, determined to access the section I need to.

“Highlighters are not allowed” the same kind lady spoke in a tone now much more benign though with no sympathy for the young academic apparently shocked by the rules, after giving my unzipped pencil case a glance. She then pointed to and gave me the little pamphlet sits on the desk of the security check-point. I had no choice but to go back 2 storeys, deposit my highlighters (3 of them fortunately, to make things more worth the effort) and back to the lady now in front of a couple of angry looking teens carrying their bags and without lockers to deposit them into. I waited patiently for the little quarrel to end (the teens lost to the petite lady) and then showed the same few stuff to the lady for the 3rd time in 10 minutes.

‘Markers are not allowed’ she pointed at the fat, tube-like construction in my pencil case that had a button on one end. Yes, it was a marker but no way I am going back to place it in my locker; I have wasted almost 15 minutes by now and I decided to leave them at the counter. The kind lady granted my wish but emphasized that she is not going to take responsibility for its loss and shall pay no special attention to them.

I finally entered the library section and cherished my short 30 minutes between the shelves containing the sacred scrolls that have to be protected from highlighters, pen knifes, markers, and the great tomes, whose splendor is so great we are asked not to bring any books into the section for fear our shabby ones self-destruct in shame.

A technical economic analysis of the experience is covered in Restricted Tomes & Scrolls.

Reading Eric D Beinhocker introduced me to the concept of Evolutionary Systems, which I hope to talk about. I’ll be reviewing Origin of Wealth when I am done with it. It’s definitely a great book and I am so glad I bought it (despite the price – my price elasticity of demand for books is very very low). The reason I have decided to pen this short piece on Evolutionary Systems is that I see its application in a wide spectrum of reality and I would like to demonstrate how this idea can help weave ‘Man & Nature’ with ‘Science & Technology’, domains that our General Paper is currently delving into.

Evolutionary systems obeys certain characteristics of evolution – a process that can proceed infinitely without an equilibrium (in the traditional sense though you have no problem isolating periods of time and define them as a moment of equilibrium, albeit one that vanishes rather quickly). In Beinhocker’s words, the system is governed by the ‘evolution algorithm‘ that searches for the fit ‘interactors’ in the ‘fitness landscape’. I hope this is not too overwhelming for general interest readers. I’ll deviate briefly from my main focus on ‘Man-Nature & Science-Technology’ Argument (MNST) to explain the terms I have just introduced. ‘Interactors’ are basically agents within the system, like man within nature, technology within society and so on. ‘Evolution Algorithm’ refers to the seemingly systematic formula in which interactors constantly evolve to adapt to changing conditions within the system (whether the changes are results of endogenous or exogenous factors). Finally, the ‘fitness landscape’ refers to how fit the different characteristics the interactors can possibly assume would be given that they really manifest in the system. This is a little complex but just take it that the ‘landscape’ refers to a library of collection of strategies for interactors to survive within the system. How good the strategies are is constantly changing and what evolution does is to pick out the best of all these strategy constantly, occasionally eliminating some lousy ones and so on. This process is essentially what quantifies evolution.

Having established this, I must propose that it is nature that has created this process of evolution, and this mindless but innovating process – it is no different from the laws of physics laid down by the very same nature, as well as the interactors of systems, and even systems itself. I shall not engaged in any quarrels on intelligent design right here and mindlessly assume all my readers to be intelligent followers of the idea of ‘design without designers’. In my MNST argument, I believe that nature lays down the ground rules for things to happen and whatever happens is part of nature, and the natural order. Therefore, Science & Technology is not only part of nature but relies on the laws and forces that nature has laid down in order to work. Man, has essentially leveraged on the evolution algorithm to construct ever increasingly sophisticated stuff.

Okay, now you are saying Man is emulating nature, so isn’t he trying to play God or something? Well, yes and no. Evolution, all these while, have only searched through all the possible lifeforms, object shapes, idealized forms, whatever you can conceive, using a very crude method of trial and error that closely resembles the perturbation that cutting edge physics theorist use to approximate Unified theories. Whatever characteristics that the agents may have that can help him given the existing conditions would be played out and then depending on what characteristics survive the conditions, the evolution process duplicates or eliminates the characteristics according to the fitness assessed. As such, evolution have so far been a slow and extremely painful process of extinction, disasters. The intensification of the use of deduction by man has allowed the evolution to speed up. Logical deduction has allowed quicker elimination of flawed characteristics or strategies for interactors and so they are not even played out in reality. Technologies are products of elimination both by deduction and by the market. The residual stuff that remains are basically what’s left after evolution has stripped it of its unfit cousins. Nature has essentially created man, who in turned, emulated the same innovation (ie. evolution process) that spawned the specie of homo sapiens itself in an attempt to ground its kind in the entire of a new reality – a science-tech reality.

The problem (a sort of disequilibrium occurs) when the changes in fitness landscape triggered by endogenous factors (in this case the emergence and proliferation of products of deductive evolution) has arisen a little too fast for the evolution algorithm of nature itself to catch up. Evolution is on going because the emergence of a new strategy or at least the manifestation of it can easily alter the fitness landscape and changes the fitness of existing strategies that may have worked well for a long time (and thus harder to fade away). The appearance of technology – a product of deductive evolution sent out ripples across the fitness landscape that radically altered the fitness of individual characteristics because products of deductive evolution are often able to extract itself from existing manifestations (all the intermediate evolving stages were transversed in the minds of the innovator). This made it hard for the other interactors, with strategies that are rendered useless, to be able to adapt quick enough. Because of that, man has taken a big bold step to dictate the paths of evolution, to alter genes, to tailor species to the new fitness landscape after the rise of technologies that caused the original patterns of existence to undergo an overhaul. I must say, this may have been one of the natural pathways evolution has decided to assume. Mankind have been selected through this mindless innovating algorithm to further its function. Nature overseen the process and will continue to oversee it. Nature cannot cease to be.

Nature, is essentially just a set of laws, forces governing everything. That carbon was chosen to be the main elemental building block of life is perhaps a result of evolutionary process itself. The rest that we classify as nature are mere manifestations of these laws. Man’s being is part of this algorithm, and so is Science & Technology, a subset of man, and thus Nature itself.

Given all the hoohah about gambling, casinos and counseling on compulsive gambling – I believe nothing beats the power of pure demonstration of payoffs from the games using Mathematics. I hate gambling, not only because it is a vice but also how it epitomizes people’s ignorance of the workings of probability and chance. Perhaps I should have a little lesson teaching people how to calculate their payoffs from their bets. I’ll just use 4-D as an example. Betting on ‘Big’ will yield the possible prizes: 1st – 2000, 2nd – 1000, 3rd – 490, Starter – 250 & Consolation – 60. Betting on ‘Small’ yields 1st – 3000, 2nd – 2000 & 3rd – 800. Note that the numbers are the rewards on a dollar stake, which means winning consolation would yield 60 times your capital (stake), when betting ‘Big’.

So in effect, betting ‘Big’ on a single number would yield payoffs calculated as follows:
Payoff: Reward – Cost (stake)

Payoff from 1 dollar bet on ‘Big’: 0.0001 X (2000 + 1000 + 490) + 0.001 X (250 + 60) – 1 = -0.341

Note that the net payoffs of lottery is almost always negative (unless the lottery organization is a sucker) and for a dollar bet, the net loss in this case is about 34 cents. This means long term betting of $10 on the same number for ‘Big’ would produce expected loss of $3.41 and so on.

How about betting ‘Small’? The payoffs are worse (a greater loss):

Payoff from 1 dollar bet on ‘Small’: 0.0001 X (3000 + 2000 + 800) – 1 = -0.42

Needless to say, this mathematics should be simple enough for grown-up gamblers to understand. They are basically feeding the lottery staff with their compulsion and I guess this doesn’t really differ much from contributing to corrupted charity organizations. So what sets [lottery] gamblers apart from fools? I guess nothing much.

Penning an assault on the manifestation of religion in the world today in 1.5 hours wasn’t an easy task, for I had too much points, and too much to cover. Sam Harris helped a little, but I drew my examples from readings that I cannot really recall. My attack was more the political side and blaming on how faith itself should be an artifact that should no longer be in use rather than faith itself. I described it as a natural reaction to our curiosity but it’s time mankind grew out of it. Yea, that’s the crux.

I thought it’s pretty late to be saying this but it would be nice to share some sites that would very much help with your mugging, whether it’s for Blocks (if you are seriously desperate) or for your A Levels (final dash).

Tutor2u Economics Site: A collection of notes and presentations that features qualitative economic concepts and suitable for those who don’t really give a damn about Mathematics in the study of Economics. The topics adheres to the A Levels Economics for UK Cambridge so Singaporean students should find them handy as well. Eurocentric examples are used but if you really need more Singapore-slant examples, I would very much recommend you to read Henri Ghesquiere’s Singapore’s Success: Engineering Economic Growth – it has a whole lot of things about policies, which would extremely relevant to students desperate for Singapore-based examples.

The Integrator: Who says brute force computing doesn’t work for High School and College Mathematics? It’s only when you are armed with the machines from Texas Instruments. ‘The Integrator’ by Wolfram Research is an amazing brute calculator that does the Integration operator particularly well (not that it can do anything else). Using crudely worked out algorithms that have been done tediously by hand, the calculator compiles wholesome general formulas that uses no short cuts in working out your sums. Best of all, they help you generate general formulas, which means you can happy key in some unknowns and they would generate the answer with the unknowns factored in. Of course, learn how the inputs works first.

SEAB Syllabus Site (for 2007 A Levels): Confused with what is tested or at least what you need to know? Go download the relevant syllabuses and check them out. It’s hard to interpret some parts though, so try to study everything if you can. It’s good to know more anyway. Best perk about the site is that it provides you with a handy copy of Formula List MF15. So in case you can’t find your Ten-Year Series, you can see the .pdf beside your World of Warcraft icon on your desktop. In addition, the entire Data Booklet for Chemistry H2 is also at the kind of the syllabus document for it. No sweat if you misplace your Data Booklet! Same applies for the Physics Students’ list of constants.

Chemguide Site: Chemguide should be known by lots of students; a helpful Chemistry resource site that provides clear explanation of reactions and almost everything that we need to know in our syllabus. Since it’s for the UK A Levels, they have some reactions that we may not need to know so you can refer to the syllabus document to clarify any doubts you have about Chemguide. It covers all the 3 main themes of Chemistry at A Levels, ‘Inorganic Chemistry’, ‘Physical Chemistry’ and ‘Organic Chemistry’, and the topics and separated distinctly so you shouldn’t have any problems finding the information you need.

Physical Geography Fundamentals: Great site for students of Geography, though most stuff there are out of syllabus and may not be useful for Singapore A Levels Geography students. Nonetheless, the fundamentals are concise unlike the paper textbooks and there are relevant diagrams that we are required to know. The language used are highly accessible in contrast with some difficult research papers we may receive as readings. Useful for brief revisions.

That’s all the featured ones, in addition to the common sites people visit but often overlook their academic value, such as Wikipedia, The Economist and Miniclip.com. Oh, the last site is for relieving academic stress after your mugging.

I have spent the recent 2 to 4 years studying with the top talents in the nation, and in the experience, I have interacted (and is constantly interacting) with the polarized crowd of what the public would term elites. This would probably be a short commentary on those right at the top, but not conspicuous. I guess this is the group of people, silently slogging, and accomplishing who deserves our attention, since those ‘rah-rah’ councilors of different institutions would have easily caught it. Before the social commentary on this group of people, I guess there’s a need to first delve into how the system has created different kinds of people.

The education in our nation has created extremely distinct, polarized groups of students; but that’s not to discredit the role of the environment, family, and culture played in molding these students. I am, in essence, saying that there’s distinctly different approach or perceptions towards the same system that I speak of here. Sparing the lower extremes, the hierarchy starts from those between going out of school and in school; those in school but failing tests and willing to continue with failing; those failing, or just passing but working hard to move on; those who are average but hoping to get out of the system fast; those who are doing well but want to be at the top; those who are doing great, and have exceptional portfolio; and finally, those who are simply out of the world in intelligence, would hope to remain so, but also to remain excluded from the rest. Well, I can insert some more groups in between, or expand the list, and go on rambling but I’ll just stop here. I am saying that the attitudes instilled and held by the students belong to such vast categories that I really have to doubt they are really thinking about the same thing. In any case, I guess it’s because of the different position they are in the hierarchy that affects their attitudes and perhaps their subsequent actions and that would mean that the information flow within the system, between different hierarchy is not consistent and there’s informational asymmetry that would potentially further escalate the differences between each of these ‘classes’.

I am starting to sound like I am criticizing a social system, a society but I guess we can’t escape from the fact that the education system is essentially a society manipulated partially by the authorities and subjected to differing artificial conditions that have intended and unintended consequences on these players involved. There’s a greater need for communication between the hierarchy, to let everyone see for themselves what everyone else’s lives are about. Information flow is the prime factor that determines the incentives for individuals to work hard, that reveals the prospects of any individual and spur them on, that democratizes opportunities, that enhances the true competition and eliminates the ‘crony’ tinge in our systems. And perhaps, in writing this tract, I am essentially contributing to this body of information that may spur some on and encourage others while placing some others in less complacent positions and thus would continue to work really hard for what they truly want. It is the different barriers in information, the uneven distribution of information that stifles and block opportunities from some who really want them and further polarize the attitudes that students have.

Going back to the key topic, I have discovered that out of the people whom we normally identify as the top, there are those who are really noisy and ill-disciplined although they can study hard and produce results. On the other extreme, there are really studious people who studies really hard and get really good grades but they are extremely quiet, conservative and they believe fun lies in reading books and surfing really educational websites (they probably also think MSN is evil). Finally, there are those who balances things really well (plus a glib tongue that is tinted with truth and sincerity, compounding on their strong capabilities and sometimes the lack of need to sleep) and are easily considered the best of all students and indisputably the Crème de la crème. I guess those who grabs our attention enough are good enough with that and so I’ll turn my attention to really quiet people.

The system has emphasized on grades and results so there the quiet hardworking group of people who pushed on, even after the system emphasized on speaking up. Many people actually talks often but there’s a difference between those who daren’t talk and those who have nothing better to say. I have met people who are simply average who can speak a great deal about movies, fashion and chic fic but when it comes to academic stuff, they simply have nothing to say. To them, the body of knowledge they draw from is both academic and social but that which they contribute to is essentially that of social. In this sense, these people don’t interact and involve themselves in the things they learn in school and simply take them at face value and apply them wherever deemed fit on conditioned so. The quiet workers, on the other hand, is highly involved in what they are learning and are constantly thinking if not interacting with this intellectual body of knowledge. They engaged themselves if not the others in the learning process and have their own ideas, which perhaps, more often than not, they daren’t express for fear of rejection and criticisms. The system has created a culture of fear of criticism that has impeded some students from reaching the top notch where scholastic potential is concerned. Those perfectly and conspicuously on the top has gone pass that barrier but these quiet workers have failed there despite their innate abilities. Of course, the noisy but hardworking bunch are simply unable to hit the top because of their natural abilities or simply because their skills are not demanded if not for the fact that their noise may have been too much to bear.

Singapore has ample talents, it is just that they don’t show themselves. There are simply some exceptional people who believes that overt demonstration of talent is wrong. The system, instead of over-focusing on molding people into the way they want them to be, they should be actually eliciting more information from the crowd, fostering a culture of self-promotion and finding out how to channel the different talents into the jobs they need to fill. People can be perfectly suited for a job, specially trained [sometimes against their wishes] for the job, or [something which is so often overlooked] grow to meet certain of the job’s requirement and then redefine the job scope such that the job also evolves to accommodate them. This unexplored means of work distribution and defining or grooming talent may prove to work exceptionally well for our current nation of shy people, since the culture has not been altered. The local talents should have their brand and style of being talented while conforming to global standards of what constitutes a talent and not allow our system’s definition of talents to be the only one in the market.

The past week seen me struggling with SAT, and I am pretty sure I am not going to America for any sort of tertiary education, at least at this moment, after taking the test. I guess I subconsciously took the test to strengthen my resolve not to go over there (this has absolutely nothing to do with Mib though) – a decision I made previously after hoping to strengthen my Mathematics in the field of Microeconomics. Then I took on the challenge to finish Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe (book version), in a week. I am still at it, and I think I can do it. Besides getting fascinated by the beauty of General Relativity and the freaking Weird phenomena of Quantum Mechanics, I got to immerse myself in String Theory’s description of the world and challenge the limits of my imagination.

Mathematics wasn’t included in the book but just imagine my attempts to conceive the fact that every single space we are experiencing now is full of tiny dimensions curled up in Calabi-Yau Spaces that are six-dimensional. Try again to imagine that every moment you move your hands across the space, the particles may have entered and left these tiny-dimensions without you discovering. Well, all these may still be a dream given that String Theorists haven’t quite grasp the mathematics of everything necessary to explain our phenomena but all we can tell is that the Occam’s Razor hardly works in the fundamental theory of the universe given the complex nature of dimensions, resonance patterns, string tensions and relativity.

The rest of the time have me reading a couple of Economics related stuff – getting to know how playful and active was Keynes’ life, and how Milton persevered to show Velocity of money was stable and advocated passive monetary policy. Was also looking for details on how David Riccardo made a fortune but it wasn’t available anywhere. In any case, I am pretty sure economists don’t get rich based on their knowledge of economics. I was also thinking of writing a ‘Tract on Problems of Economics Education’ but I decided not to. I need to come up with a more elegant name before writing it. I have identified the outline of the essay though. Although labeled a tract, it may well be rather long. It is going to take on the rather tough stance that Economics, at least at A Levels under the Singapore education system, is heading the wrong way. Despite great macroeconomic achievements in our nation, the education fail to help students appreciate the ingenuity of our policies or for that matter, the beauty of economic analysis. It will elaborate on a few aspects that is vital but have been left out, namely ‘Social Indifference Curves’ as a tool for welfare analysis, Mathematics of competition is also left out and historical backgrounds to the debate on macroeconomic theories. All these would not only stimulate the interest of student but provide better tools, if not basis for other content to be built upon.

I would also like to highlight redundant topics that can be left out absolutely, like that of the loanable funds theory that cannot even explain interest rate determination for any economy in the world. There’s a need to really set the basis right and establish the true identity of economics. As far as I know, students like many of my peers are still unable to grasp the essence of what truly constitutes economics and how it is a science in its very own sense. Teachers of Economics will have a long way to go before shifting their emphasis from pure aiding students to score well to inspiring them to be economists – and more importantly, they will have to learn to look beyond this holy document we come to know as the ‘syllabus’ and stop discouraging students interested in pursuing the subject by saying ‘this is not important since it’s not in the syllabus’ when asked things beyond their area of expertise (which incidentally, could be just teaching students the means of attaining good marks). I guess I sounded too angsty – if you have nothing better to do besides reading this blog, you might like to check this out!

My sister has tonnes of tuition for her schoolwork and so she gets lots of cool encounters with tuition teachers. There’s this English one:

Tuition Teacher: Hey Jess (not real name), did you do your essay outline?

Jess: Oh yes! I wrote it in my palm.

*Tuition teacher wide-eyed stare at my sister*

*Sister realizes the joke; took out her palm handheld computer*

Tuition Teacher: Oh okay. So hi-tech.

Language is getting kinda complex huh?

The Elegant Universe – Borrowed one. Micro SD Card – Verified One. Cliptec Cardreader ZR-418BK – Insulted One. Logitech Two-Button Mouse – Dismantled & destroyed one. Economics Essay – Wrote one. The Sixth Singapore Economic Roundtable – Made sense of it. Singapore’s Success, Engineering Economic Growth – Cheers Henri! WordPress Theme Generator – Discovered it. My Thumb – Scalded it. Today – Slacked one. SAT – Going to screw it. New Ideas from Dead Economist, End of Faith, MicroMotives and MacroBehaviours – On my table, half-read. The Joy of Freedom (Chinese Version) – In my shelf, Unread. Blog – Neglected, until now.

Kinda summarizes my week.