Author Archives: Kevin L

Weekend Vib

What do you call a person who spends his/her weekend reading about Quantum Tunneling, Socrates’ Moral Philosophy from a book The Great Philosophers, Wave-particle Duality, History of Netherlands, Summation of the Grandi’s Series and it’s cousin, and finally, a poor attempt with the Hwa Chong Ionic Equilibria Lecture Notes? Vib.

As if a single term would suffice to describe such a person. I didn’t read all those topics on Wikipedia. I mean I do that sometimes but for this weekend, I really went into the books sort of knowledge and truly understood many things that I haven’t when I was surfing through Wikipedia. While I spared myself of Schrödinger equation, I took de Broglie’s hypothesis pretty calmly and understood what it means. In fact, de Broglie’s PhD thesis presented one of the most elegant relation that I can imagine (as compared to the one that I can’t imagine, which is Euler’s Equation; ironically with the imaginary term in it), and I read about it quite long ago when I was being introduced to the field of Quantum Mechanics. Quantum tunneling is something that helped excite me further about the quantum world. I must say all the quantum thing that I was ever interested about was more to do with Unifying Theories, which I have been brought into by Brian Greene several years ago with an online version of The Elegant Universe. I seriously think anyone concerned about natural forces should watch this. I spent quite a fair bit of my Secondary 3 life pondering over the stuff the video mentioned but then exams set in and so goes Relativity, Superstrings and stuff. Now it’s time for a revival. In fact, this weekend of exploration made me visualize wave-particle as an entire continuum where you either behave like a wave because you have too small a mass that you are almost pure energy or you behave as a participle because you have too large a mass that makes your wavelength so small and undetectable. Whatever in-between are just the quantum stuff. More importantly, I suspect a connection between gravity and electromagnetism. I just have this feeling that gravity is just the ‘electromagnetic’ counterpart of particles.

Then on to Socrates, I discovered how his idea of man being creatures of perfect rationality (but not wisdom) is actually coinciding with economic thought. His ideas banished Altruism almost entirely, by suggesting all good is done to cultivate one’s soul and gain happiness. Well, from a Kantian perspective, if you believe in Socrates, just twist the whole means-end thing around. I do have my doubts about Socrates but I must say that his spirit is absolutely commendable – exemplification of a rather ideal moral person, though his wits and playful rhetoric often work against him in terms of him being a philosopher or at least a pillar of thought. To put myself in his shoes, I suspect he would rather be a commoner, forgotten, rather than to be father of philosophy itself. I guess unless philosophy is purely a study of techniques of inquiry, Socrates should not like his position as the ‘father’ at all.

Finally, the mathematics I have just to learn to appreciate is really fun! Grandi’s series, and a whole lot of mathematically counter-intuitive stuff has helped make it less rigid. I mean, for a pseudo-arts-quasi-science student like me, it wouldn’t be fun for me if there was a universal and perfect answer to every problem in the world. I truly enjoy the fact that we can sit down and discuss whether the sum of a particular series should be this or that, or whether the series converges to a particular number. That’s more Mathematically Vib, or Vibbishly Mathematical whichever you would prefer. The (1 – 2 + 3 – 4 + 5 – 6 +7…) series actually sums up to (in the Euler’s revised definition of summation sense) a quarter! Can you believe it?

While reading a lot of crap brings down your grades quite very occasionally, I do enjoy the moments of epiphany of realizing how Superfluid defies gravity (it’s quantum jiggling supersedes it’s tendency to form solids; or to put it in another way, the quantum rule against non-motion of the particle overcomes any potential inter-atomic forces), or why on Earth would an electron orbital consist of two spaces with a node of discontinuity in between and yet the electron can move within the two places simultaneously. I do hope to be a Polymath but that can easily cause myself to stray into the abyss of a ‘Jack-of-All-Trades (And Master-of-None)’. Well, I’ll just explore what I like for the moment.

Business Crap

Like last year, I devoted to what hopes to be one out of infinity units of my life on playing the lamest computer-simulated business game ever. Well, you can say this is just a dumb rant on going to lose in the game (the game is ending in about 1.5 hours and my team is still far behind), but I’ll surface extremely valid points that will demonstrate how the game cannot reflect anyone’s business ability. More importantly, the entire spirit of business is lost as we look at the varying commitments of players to the game. Our team is one of the slackiest and un-serious so that’s perhaps why we have such problem. In any case, I still have the urge to flame the organizers.

The idea of using computer simulation for business is a great idea – we simulate economic models, theoretical physics model and environmental models and they are all helpful when they allow us to see things in the real world. The problem with any simulation, is then that they are far-fetched from anything that’s real – then it cease to be a simulation but simply an imagination. The whole idea of attempting to predict the real world is the fundamental basis for having simulations in the first place. A business simulation, is thus highly flawed in a few aspects: (1) Uncertainty, (2) Timing and (3) Strategic.

A business simulation is unable to bring in uncertainty into the game properly. It is 2-dimensional but no elements from the 3rd dimension are entering this plane. Typical things like ill rumours, reputation index, strategic moves and tactics involving the temporal dimension is not allowed, reducing uncertainty only to mere fluctuation in prices that can be predicted quite precisely based on understanding of all rival teams (and in our case, the understanding of their level of devotion and amount of temporal devotion available). Of course, I can easily explain where I failed at – time; I didn’t have time sitting by the computer, hecking my tutorials and lectures, pretending to go to the toilet (but end up in the computer lab adjusting parameters), or even attempting to plot a demand curve by adjusting prices and looking at the consumer index that is given by the system.

The second point, with regards to timing in business, the simulation is such that things get problematic when transactions peak. The sounds more like some speculative stock market than a business arena. Worst, the timing is serious distorted by time lags. The movements in the demand market lags behind the dynamics of the input market, making it unrealistic for any players who does anything at all between each hours. To make the explanation clearer, I shall describe the game: you face a dynamic price system with regards to inputs where raw material prices fluctuates based on the demand for them but your demand is not so quick-changing, you only know whether your products are sold at hourly intervals. The general strategy: Rush to the computer at the exact hour when your products are bought, stock up raw materials to maintain supply before others does (so that you enjoy the assumed lowest prices) and then adjust any parameters as desired, and then get back to your life. Very realistic huh?

Finally, with regards to strategies. The simulation reduced your strategy options drastically compared to the real world but that’s fine; problem is parameters such as advertising should not be allowed because it sends out the wrong information that the more money you put into advertising, the more you can differentiate your demand. Simple economics and perhaps some common sense would suffice to tell you that’s not true at all. The game is strategically flawed in the sense that there are fixed strategy that works, and although there’s a threshold for the number of players who are allowed to play the strategy before it collapses, the way the demand manifest is such that all players faces similar market conditions and thus strategies to be played out are expected to be similar – leading to faster collapse of workable strategy (assuming they are worked out quickly by players). The information asymmetry in the market is not well-simulated (all players are given the same market report, meaning that players do not attempt to gain more information if they are willing to buy it) as well, further reducing the strategical realism.

Well, let’s just forget about it anyway. It’s time to get a life, geeks out there still fiddling with your company parameters!

Broke-Bag

Damn it, my USA POLO bag that’s barely 1.5 years old gave way. It was the weakest part of it, the fastening plastic that broke, partly due to the heavy weight and partly due to the fact that I have this bad habit of carrying just one side of the bag for prolonged periods. The last bag I used before this switch was a Hayer bag and it totally rocks. In fact, after washing it in the washing machine, it looked absolutely new, not a single clue of having been used for more than 5 years. I guess the brands sometimes do matter after all. Well, no choice, that bag that failed me was bought from Carrefour at a rather low price so it’s probably time to get a new bag.

Problem is I won’t be able to get one that soon – that’s what happens when you don’t have enough money, not even enough income. Pity I am not a civil servant (or minister), neither is any of my parents. Anyway, with a politically incorrect blog, I shouldn’t be expecting a pay rise even if I have a public sector job. Life’s tough when you are not on the right side of the fence.

Reference Anxiety

General Paper Comprehension forced us to discuss an extremely interesting issue on happiness and the problem? I kind of screwed the paper up because I ended up talking about equality instead. The comprehension passages were actually the ones that inspired me to write the article ‘Happiness Equation‘ here on my blog. The feeling of reading something during an exam when I read it for leisure a few months back felt terrible. It’s bad to be too widely-read. Anyway, after the paper, we were asked to discuss it and I came up with the following argument that’s really out of this world (or maybe it has been around but people are just not accepting it too well).

The entire idea of reference anxiety rest upon the notion that one’s happiness varies with the relative difference between the wealth of oneself and that of those whom he can perceive. Therefore, the manipulation of one’s perception of reality can make a whole lot of difference to the way he feels.

As the passages have pointed out, the ‘very increase in money – which creates the wealth so visible in today’s society’ triggers the very dissatisfaction we seek to eliminate in an attempt to make ourselves happier. Tackling this idea of reference anxiety on its own grounds, the acts altruism prescribed do have an immense impact on one’s happiness as it directly affects our perception of the world. To visit a nursing home, or help a friend’s child with homework and perhaps even listen to a friend venting frustration about his public sector job provides a huge opportunity for interaction with the relatively less privileged members of the society and in so doing, when one uses these people as reference, one’s perception of reality is radically altered. As we move towards serving communal goals of making our environment greener or conversing with elderly about their old-age ailments as a means of consoling them, we withdraw ourselves from the overt display of wealth elsewhere that has been making us unhappy. And that, makes us happier, or at least consoled of our status.

This is a real thing, a very real thing. and my thesis? “Reference anxiety causes an ‘upward spiral of discontent’ and superficial altruism is the remedy for this misery.” Everyone, sometimes we just gotta get real and admit we are at fault – sometimes we just need to acknowledge that the miserable life of our neighbours is giving us a good Saturday night joke to laugh about. We exist in the real world, there’s no need to be apologetic about it anyway – and more importantly, there’s nothing to be pessimistic about. If we cannot accept intolerance, or ignorance that arises from inability to recognize the limits to one’s abilities, it’s going to be tough.

Challenged

Challenged by Mib’s crappy definition of simplicity, I am forced to change my blog layout temporarily to reflect the nature of my arguments and the descriptors of the site used by it’s URL, which is kinda inaccurate in any sense.

By the way Mib, thePropagandaMachine was started in 2004, when we entered Secondary 3, and the time when erpz.net started. In 2002, if you still remember, we spent our days talking a whole lot of computer game crap with Yong Keob in class and wouldn’t have learn about designing websites yet. In 2003, we were doing the igroov.net with Wap so no chance for erpz.net to spring into existence. So to sum it up, erpz.net is not as old as you think.

Acceleration Problem

Talking about perspectives, I always take on multiple ones, so you can consider me as sitting on the fence, omnipresent when looking at the same object/issue/idea/dispute or perhaps as being a perfect observer but it appears that I have met my match. While I must claim capability in applying scientific principles of balance in nature with that of humanly interaction and social sciences, or using economic principles to explain behaviours, much robbing much of psychologist’s rice bowl but this time, I must seriously admit defeat. My sister, when flipping through her Physics Tutorial, was asked the question:

Is it possible for the speed of a body to decrease while the [magnitude of] acceleration increasing simultaneously?

In retrospect, the words in the parenthesis makes all the difference about how the question should be answered but the issue here is that my sister told me the answer is a ‘yes’, which is really counter-intuitive. Then she explained that you can be slowing down in speed because you are accelerating in the opposite direction. That was total ownage. Never have I expected that sort of perspective. It’s like running 2.4km, slowing down and getting scolded by the coach for slowing down halfway – what do you reply? “I am so not slowing down, in fact, I am accelerating, just in the opposite direction.” Would you take that for an answer if you were the coach? Sometimes, in fact often, we rely on our intuition more than logic because logic is often undermined by a play of words, setting certain premises down to misled people. In fact, some weird people actually dare to attempt to undermine my arguing ability by providing the following ‘riddle’:

一个告你哲学的问题：什么是人生（人参）？

Apparently, the words in parenthesis in the question reflects the actual question and despite the difference in pronunciation, it is too slight for us to detect naturally without close inspection. This would thus suggest that the question is out to trick people to give some really complicated answer when you could have just said ‘It’s Ginseng’. But yet that would not constitute an answer because of the premise being set down – that the question is supposed to be philosophical. As such, the answerer commits no mistake in producing any answer or even babbling constitutes an answer because the question itself is flawed – the answer that is expected of the question do not satisfy the premise that has been set down.

Going back to the physics question earlier, the answer is indeed ‘yes’ if we simply consider the ‘magnitude’ of acceleration because taking on ‘magnitude’ would mean a total disregard of the sign. This being true, we can say we are accelerating rapidly in magnitude if we go to a stop from a sprint. There’s absolutely nothing wrong logically with this statement, but it irritates people. And more importantly, it irritates people more than the Monty Hall Problem. Probability is a wonder, it never becomes truly integrated into our intuition because it doesn’t satisfy our day-to-day experience and the transfer of information makes the law of large number valid but makes large numbers seem small anyways. Therefore, the Monty Hall Problem would be one that confuses naturally, and is inherently, indisputably counter-intuitive. But this, is different, it is difficult to take on a perspective not expressed in the ordinary terms – though there’s often times when you have to accept extremist perspectives, they are not as disturbing as the one raised because this acceleration problem gives rise to other connotations of laziness and so on. It is hard for us to accept such a logical argument.

That being said, we do not rely on logic, and reason is just something that managed to become housed in our intuition enough for it to play out fully in the world. Reason, as far as we know, in the context of human being, is never consistent and I believe I have mentioned in previous articles/writings that double standards is a result of the idea appealing to the different sides (emotional or intuitive reason) of our brains. Logic is not relevant when it cannot be linked to our daily experience and applied to our lives. The scientific rhetoric, or to put it nicely, philosophy of exploration of natural inquiry, should cease to generate arguments of nature so abstract and devoid of reality.

Asymptotic

Perhaps some people are just naive, but they will claim that it’s just some crappy lines, so why bother. They just don’t get the idea of an asymptote, tending towards but never ever reaching. I saw this line somewhere:

Practice makes Perfect. Nobody is Perfect. So why Practice?

And I think it makes absolutely no sense; just because something that is meant to bring you to an aim that is impossible to attain doesn’t mean you give up on it. After all, there was the Babel Attempt, we don’t seek to truly reach the Heavens but to be nearer. Yes, no one can be perfect, not wholly, and not even in a single thing, but we can tend towards perfection. We have never fulfilled our moral responsibility to everything we have to, but at least we try as best as we can to do that – if we were to give up completely on this role, the world would sink into absolute chaos. It is thus, never pointless to do anything. Every single action can make a difference, no matter how insignificant it is – you can prove that mathematically for economic phenomena and the assumption cannot hold in a finite world.

In fact, let’s just treat every single goal as a function, I guess there’s a special name for this sort of function but I am not sure what it is, these functions that can never be expressed as quadratic, or cubic, or anything else – functions like ‘ln x’, ‘sin x’, ‘cos x’ or the exponential function. All these goals that we have are these functions, and I believe there’s infinite of these in the world, except we may not have discovered so many. All right, we have got goals, but because they cannot be expressed such that fitting the variable into it’s different power, they are ‘perfect goals’, never attainable. Still, we try to express them, with our best knowledge and best efforts, perhaps using the Maclaurin’s Expansion. Every single time when we differentiate the function, when we substitute x=0 into each of the differential equations, and attempting to form the Maclaurin approximation, we are going closer to the goal, tending towards it. We can get very close, but never perfectly hitting it – but that would be enough. That’s life.

In a world without absolutes, perfect stuff, or a ceiling for anything, we just have to accept that we slog our lives just to ‘tend towards’ certain goals. We can never truly attain them, and that’s why we never manage to define success, or an exact purpose in life. Some people hope for money, and others want fame – so naive people decide to question how much fame or money we need to ascertain that we have attained our goals in life, and fulfilled the purpose of life. Let’s propose a simpler way out, a solution that we have been using long ago but never truly acknowledge it’s presence – the notion of a tendency towards success, asymptotic approach to the goals. We live like that, and as we approach the end, the function may be a close fit, with only like 0.00000145242 units away from our goals but it’s great enough, that’s all and when we decide it’s time to let go, it will leave us, very much like an asymptotic graph tapering off, out of life to spare.

Isn’t that a wonderfully elegant model of life and its rat race/paper chase of our model world?