English posts on Weichen Liu

a year of learning to love myself and finding flow

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“I feel like nobody cares about me,” I sobbed in my room, telling a childhood story of abandonment. As I opened my eyes, six faces on screen held me in their tender, unflinching gaze. A firmer voice in my head spoke up: “That’s not true. Look at these loving people.” At that moment, I discovered what unconditional love felt like.

My journal reads differently this year. Instead of recording events, each page captures nuances of emotions and a deepening journey home to myself. January entries make me cringe — “I’m not satisfied with my journal.” “Can I really catch up?” My words read like an anxious parent who never stops critiquing.

March brought the connection course that changed everything. I experienced what’s like to notice my body’s sensations — tightness in my chest, numbness, cone spinning sensation — rather than getting lost in thought. During the most intense session, I felt myself shutting down and uncovered a surprising belief: “deep down people don’t trust and love each other.” When I listened to my resistance, it spoke: “please don’t blame me.” I realized how much I had internalized past criticism into self-blame.

My body became my guide. An April emergency room visit nudged me to seek support and confront my past. In therapy, I discovered the weight I carried from not being heard or trusted. “You knew it’s not your fault,” my therapist said. “Your body knows it.” I learned that the real work wasn’t getting others to trust me; it was learning to trust myself.

In June, I joined the master class with newfound spaciousness after a Vajrayana retreat in Colorado mountains. During anger release, I let out primal screams I never knew I had. My body trembled and went numb, then filled with unexpected lightness. I cried often in my room, feeling waves of both grief and joy. I don’t want to manage or blame myself anymore.

In fall, I tried to follow my enjoyment. I gave myself permission to rest, sought meaningful conversations, and tried new experiences. Fear showed up, but I learned that freedom comes not from overcoming fear, but embracing it. This lesson led me to New York, where a workshop invited me to embody my opposite self. It was hard, but also freeing.

When I came home and learned that I wasn’t accepted into a year-long program with the community that had shown me unconditional love, my heart broke. Yet soon I recognized my old patterns showing up. I learned to hold the part that felt abandoned while giving myself the love I needed.

Still, something was missing. I oscillated between aliveness and disconnection until winter, when a speaking class awakened my energy and confidence. I found myself moving from freezing — managing impressions, anticipating criticism, searching for “right” words — to authentic expression. Speaking from my heart gave me vitality. My body became a channel for energy. People told me how connected they felt.

I realized I had twisted enjoyment into self-sabotage again, creating helplessness to avoid love and support. My subconscious tried to protect me through isolation — a childhood survival strategy I no longer needed. I began to see the abundance of care in the people around me.

As I recognize who I am, not who I used to be or who I should be, my path grows clearer. I see myself as a protagonist free to make choices without the need to follow a “right” path, instead of a passive character constrained by circumstances.

Now I want to help others find this authentic self-connection. Three things call me forward in 2025:

Exploring coaching while deepening my understanding of psychology and human experience
Building deeper connections as I move to San Francisco, including intimate relationship
Developing trust through consistent practices in writing, publishing, and speaking

I intend to embody connection, genuineness, and passion. This means choosing to connect with an open heart even when scared, letting my natural enthusiasm guide me, and caring for my body.

20 Lessons From a Year of Self-Discovery

Fri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hey there — can’t believe I’ve left my job for a year! Here are the lessons from someone who has been trying, enjoying, struggling, learning, and growing.

Connections, not just collections of knowledge, are what I truly seek. Building meaningful relationships doesn’t require me to be the smartest person in the room.

True connections come from within. They arise from your own state of mind, not the value you offer to others.

Happiness is woven from the threads of connection. The connection with others, ourselves, our passions, our environment, and the natural world.

Trusting oneself is a skill. Deep within your bodily sensations and intuition lies the knowledge of what’s right for you. But you need to develop the skill to discern your inner truth.

Pursuing enjoyment doesn’t mean being hedonistic. Enjoyment can be a powerful source of motivation and fulfillment.

Having desire is not the problem. Attachment is the problem. Learn to connect with your desires and express your wants without getting attached to the outcome.

Intellect is only part of your intelligence. Emotions and feelings are powerful lenses. They can unlock doors that conventional thinking doesn’t recognize.

Follow your curiosity and solve your own problems, instead of believing you must tackle large, abstract, or existential issues. The constant pursuit of doing “important” things can result in overthinking and contrived meaning-making.

Your beliefs and emotional patterns follow you regardless of your external pursuits. If these inner landscapes are holding you back, having the time and space to work through them with patience and self-compassion is crucial.

‌Priorities shift, and that’s okay. Embrace rather than resist these shifts, as change is a natural part of the growth process. Self-doubt and feelings of insecurity are features, not bugs.

Mood fluctuations are normal too. You may sometimes feel deeply sad or anxious without a clear external cause, and that’s okay.

Go exercise. Get hydrated. Rest. Emotional states are physiological, not just mental.

You’re a social animal. Experiencing something through conversation as opposed to reading it in a book can exert completely different effects. While learning may appear to be an individual pursuit, it is more impactful and enjoyable when undertaken with others.

Money is a neutral tool for exchanging value. One person’s gain doesn’t mean another’s loss.

Every idea contains both elements of truth and falsity. When you learn a new theory, you also learn a new misunderstanding. Actively seek out disconfirming evidence and avoid going to extremes. What has been working for you may not be effective in the future.

Embrace iterations over the pursuit of absolute truths. While we can strive to get closer to objective truth, no truth we derive is immutable or beyond questioning. Personal truths are subjective. Rather than seeking definite answers, engage in your own experiments and discover what works for you.

Be careful of reductionist thinking. Complex systems cannot be fully understood by breaking them down into components, and historical trends do not determine future outcomes. Avoid simplistic thinking in both understanding the world and yourself.

What people say or do to you reflect more of themselves than you. External circumstances matter less than how you relate to them mentally.

Like riding a bike, you maintain balance by not trying to. Similarly, the experience of presence arises when the idea of being present is forgotten.

What matters most is whether you are aligning with your authentic self. Progress is not linear; it’s filled with turns and detours that defy quantification. Let your inner sense of alignment, not external affirmation, be your ultimate measure of progress.

Near-death experiences from my mind

Thu, 25 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

People often talk about how near-death experiences changed them. I’m thinking about two for myself. They’re probably less dramatic than you think, but they stick to my mind these days.

About nine years ago when I just arrived in the U.S. for graduate school, I felt like a mess. The desire to study hard and secure a job was there, but I just couldn’t get out of bed each day to do my work. I was overwhelmed by the new environment and my fear of ending up as a loser.

One day, a news story caught my attention: a student was shot and killed in Los Angeles, not far from my location.

I was waiting in a bus stop under the blazing sun, without anybody around. A scene started to play in my mind’s eye: a black car appeared from the corner, rushing through the street. A man rolled down the window and pointed his gun at me. I was shot. While falling down the street, I saw the black car disappear before anyone noticed.

When I blinked my eyes and came back to the reality of scorching sunlight, I heard the voice in my head :

“I don’t want to die like this when I’m wasting my time doing nothing.”

”If I were to die like this, it would be as if I had never existed.”

”I should do something before I die.”

That was when I started really tackling my problems at hand.

…

Another story was three weeks ago and ended up a bit differently.

It was a quiet evening. I just finished a cup of smoothie with my roommate when I felt some discomfort in my heart. Restlessness took over. I walked back to my room and tested ECG with my Apple Watch. At first it turned out inconclusive. I tried again, and a yellow warning sign jumped at my eyes: atrial fibrillation.

I’ve never seen this result before — tried a couple more times and it was the same alarming outcome. I got more and more anxious, so I asked my roommate to take me to the emergency room. The ride to the hospital was probably the longest sixteen minutes I’ve experienced. My body kept shaking involuntarily, and I feared my heart might stop on our way to the hospital.

…

Fortunately, nothing too serious happened. It got me thinking a lot about death.

First off, it was very different in thinking about “Memento mori” versus when you feel like you’re actually dying.

Last year my grandma died at the age of ninety-two. About a month before, she fell down and was sent to ICU. We were both surprised and happy that she survived the ICU and were able to see her again.

When we arrived, my grandma stared at us for a while, then started sobbing, “look at how good each of you are, yet I’m dying…”

People started to comfort her, “You’re not dying. You’ll be fine.”

On the way out I commented, “If I were her, I would have more gratitude that I got to see my family again and live for at least one more day.”

Now I realize how wrong I was to judge her mental state. Death is anything but gentle. I wished I could have stayed by her side, holding her hands, and told her “I’m with you and love you,” completely allowing her to feel.

…

So what is this difference between thinking of dying and feeling?

It’s about the illusion of control. While we can plan our time and nudge ourselves into doing something meaningful, facing actual death reveals how little control we truly have.

During that sixteen minutes, I realized that I had no control whatsoever on my heart. It could have stopped beating at any moment. It is as scary as that.

Or, as Ajahn Chah said, “Death is as close as the breath.”

…

As I started getting back to my usual life, I didn’t feel the sense of urgency I had nine years ago. The urge to achieve something or to make a dent in the world no longer exists.

Given how little control we have, can we ever be certain of achieving any outcome at all?

If this sounds nihilistic, it might well be. At times, I feel as though I’m in free fall, yet I’m convinced there is no bottom.

Now, it’s spring. I was awestruck by a tree blooming with white flowers outside the building. Was the tree determined to do all of this? No, it simply flourishes when conditions are right. And it’s no denying how beautiful it is.

I sense that there is nothing I should do or stuff I have to achieve to prove my existence or worthiness. I’m simply who I am.

My whole body relaxes when I let these sensations in. I see endless possibilities before me. The only limitations are the choices I make based on what I truly want. Nothing stops me but myself.

And when I lean into that ease—or one might call boundless emptiness—something flows out. Perhaps the feeling of gratitude and connectedness. Like, I want to connect more deeply with others and with myself, a pursuit that always feels scary yet truly genuine to me.

What I Learned From The Art of Accomplishment Connection Course

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hey friends,

This week I finished The Art of Accomplishment Connection Course. Wow, it was powerful! I’m excited to share some of the revelations I experienced with you here.

The most signifiant takeaway wasn’t an intellectual understanding but a tangible feeling of my emotions. I realized I had never embraced such intensity. Meditation helped me recognize the raw sensations, but when emotions arose in daily life, I realized there had been resistance.

How did I encounter resistance without realizing it? For example, when anger arises during a conversation, I would feel so uncomfortable that I wanted to put a lid on it. I would tell myself I shouldn’t be feeling this, or it’s wrong to feel this.

The course created a safe environment for me to deeply experience emotions with others. The most helpful technique was to reset the body, such as by shaking or moving our feet. I guess the reason it helps is that it allows emotions to move through the body more fluidly; otherwise, they tend to get stuck in the body.

A fascinating thing was that I felt connected to my practice partners even though we just met for ten minutes. This was very different from my usual experience. I suppose the mind perceives others as different from us by default. It creates judgment out of fear and wants to protect us. But through vulnerable feelings we shared with each other, I saw the same struggle and happiness in another human being, which created deep sense of connection.

II. #

I mentioned vulnerability. It’s one of the four states of mind called VIEW. Another one is wonder. It’s more of an active state than my usual passive one. If someone is not listening, I would feel offended. With wonder, I ask, “Wow, what is it that just triggered me?” The beautiful thing is that it’s not trying to change how I feel, but sheds a new light. It gets me out of my patterned response.

This is the central theme I learned: the place of resistance and discomfort is also the place I can grow. I always felt bad about judging others, but judgment can be a tool to understand ourselves. I’ll give an example.

One pattern that happens repeatedly is when I’m waiting in a line, I find myself judging people in front of me for taking a lot of time. This might happen in an airport security line where people have a lot of unpack from their bags, or in a checkout line where people have full baskets. Using this judgment as a tool, I notice it actually reflects my fear of being judged by others. For instance, in group conversations, I censor myself because I fear wasting others’ time without any contributions. Deep down, I think I worry that I’m not good enough, smart enough, or kind enough. I fear acting spontaneously will expose my flaws and others will reject me.

I used to get overly intellectual about this. I ask, why do I have such tendency? Why can’t I welcome more love? Why not just trust myself? These are again judgment. They bring out more shame which locks me in the same place. I learned that I could simply ask how I feel: What’s the difference between managing and then blaming myself versus just being the way I want to be? The latter feels less constricted, with more joy and ease.

III. #

Often, I hesitate, like when speaking up in a group, fearing it might lead to disaster. I know it’s not true, but my body refuses to try it out. In a sense, I’m actually inviting what I’m afraid to feel.

In one exercise, we repeatedly asked each other, “What’s awesome about that?” There was nothing awesome about being afraid to speaking up and closing myself off, I thought. But as the exercise unfolded, my answer ended up in a place where I actually wanted to be.

I close myself up -> so I don’t need to interact with others -> I feel more safe -> I can be more of myself -> I don’t need to care about what other people think -> I can do what I want -> …

The outcome was like first-order negative and nth-order positive, but my unaware problem was that I always stopped myself before taking the first step, preventing me from being authentic and getting in touch with a deeper truth.

One might think this is about positivity. I see it more about possibility. Stepping out of usual frame of thinking opens up paths that we previously ignored. We don’t have to take the new path, of course, but seeing it gets us out of binary thinking and gives us freedom of choice.

IV. #

Impartiality, another state of mind, was also very new to me. Meditation practice has helped me drop many agendas for myself (like now I can be more present), but the exercises opened up another layer of agenda I have for myself and others.

A major aspect is about my relationship with my mother. Through the course, I realized there was a feeling that I was never understood, heard, or trusted by her, and this belief has been self-reinforcing since my childhood. The more I believed that, the more I had an agenda to prove myself and wanted her to be different, so the more I wasn’t listening to her; the less empathetic I was, the more she resisted me; and the vicious cycle continued. It made me realize it was not completely her fault (I had a victim mentality), but I played a part too by not actively listening. Now, I’m not concerned about who is to blame anymore, but more about what I can do to have more empathy and not want me or her to be different.

I think the way the VIEW state of mind works is not by doing. I used to explain my mom’s behavior by her experiences and ignorance, which gave me empathy. It works intellectually, but this neurological pathway is never activated when I’m under threat. In the moment of emotional intensity, the rational brain is just offline. The kind of non-doing is to simply open up awareness and be with the other without trying. This needs practice, which I think is really how the course helped me in integration.

V. #

The fourth session was the most intense for me, which was about empathy. I noticed myself letting my negativity out in full force. I used to be very cautious about showing pessimism to others, but that time I let my skepticism in my head all out:

“These all work great in the course, but won’t work in real life.”
“The world is not like this, where people can show their true authentic self.”
“We’ll fail miserably if we do these.”

And something magical happened when my practice partner held the space of openness: I got myself back soon.

Expressing my negative emotions used to be devastating because I thought my energy would destroy the other person (which in turn would destroy me), but my parter was full of wonder. This showed an outcome that was completely opposite of my belief. It also showed me that when I felt victimized, it’s more about my own inability to create space to hold the emotions and accept things as they are.

I feel there’s so much more to explore and learn from my feelings. Much of which I can’t fully articulate now. I want the process to unfold itself, rather than rush to answers. And I’d love to continue sharing this journey with you.

Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In exploring “habits, projects, and goals,” I realized the need for planning and reflection even in an open-ended pursuit. For my sabbatical, time isn’t infinite; I can’t afford to wander aimlessly without any sense of direction. But what kind of planning is needed? How much? These questions led me to the book Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned by AI researchers Kenneth Stanley and Joel Lehman.

Deceptions #

They argue that in ambitious pursuits, an objective-driven approach is not just useless but harmful.

Embarking on an ambitious endeavor means navigating without a clear map. If we mechanically pursue the objective, we would predict and pick the stepping stones toward that goal. Yet, they rarely resemble the final product. For example, people set out to invent the first computer won’t meticulously study vacuum tube, but the tubes turned out to be critical. Stepping stones or measures of success are often deceptive. If we focus only on them, they can lead us away from the goal.

The logic of discovery #

Rather than focus on the final destination, it helps to collect stepping stones for their own sake. They’re interesting, and they can lead us to more.

Why does chasing interestingness get us closer to ambitious goal? How is it different from a random search?

People want to measure their progress because it provides information. But as mentioned, objectives can be deceptive. Interestingness provides no lack of information. It’s just a different kind. It’s based on the past, on what we’ve seen, rather than the unknown future. The past usually provides richer information.¹

Another way to look at this is that searching for interestingness results in a certain order. The order is not based on good or bad in light of the objective — again, such judgment can be premature — it’s a relative measure because what was novel doesn’t stay novel. The ordering is from simple to complex.

The evolution from simplicity to complexity entails accumulation of knowledge, as finding something new requires learning about the world. I use the word evolution because it works similarly:

As Stephen Jay Gould has pointed out in evolution, once all the simple ways to live are exhausted, the only way to create a new species or niche is to become more complex. In other words, there are only so many ways of being a bacteria. That’s why increasing complexity is almost inevitable if evolution is to continue. But these increases in complexity are not arbitrary. Rather, they reflect the properties of the world in which evolution takes place: Eyes represent the presence of light in the universe. Ears signify mechanical vibration. Legs are reflections of gravity, and lungs of oxygen.

Personally, following my curiosity makes sense because I end up learning about the world and myself. I don’t need the objective to keep my discovery bounded because the world provides its own constraints.²

One caveat is that this approach doesn’t guarantee success when the goal is too ambitious, just like objective-driven approach. (The authors tested it with their novelty search algorithms.) The bright side though, is that we will find something interesting; we just can’t predict what it is.

Be a treasure hunter #

I find the logic of discovery illuminating. It prompts me to be more attuned to my curiosity and follow its lead. It also tells me to focus more on the stepping stones I’ve collected and decide where to go based on where I am, rather than where I should or want to be.³ Successful inventors don’t waste effort on far-off grandiose visions but concentrate on the edge of what’s possible today.

This approach challenges us to let go of the comforting notion of a “right path.”

It’s tempting to think of progress as a set of projects, some of them on the wrong path and some on the right. […] Instead of judging every activity for its potential to succeed, we should judge our projects for their potential to spawn more projects. If we really behave as treasure hunters and stepping stone collectors, then the only important thing about a stepping stone is that it leads to more stepping stones, period. […] The more stepping stones we find, the more opportunities there are to depart to somewhere greater.

Criticisms #

How do we decide what’s interesting then? It seems to say nothing more than follow your gut feelings, which is one criticism of the book.

I find the major weakness is that it can explain away any successful objective-driven pursuits as unambitious. The Manhattan project is an example: was it not ambitious enough? This makes the theory irrefutable. I think in practice, the difficulty lies in judging whether something is just one stepping stone away, or so ambitious that we should dismiss objectives completely.

Implications for other areas #

The authors explore the problems of objective thinking and how we can do better following a treasure-hunting strategy.

Education #

Measures come from an objective-driven mindset. We already know that measurement ceases to work once they’re known — map is not the reality, and people find ways to get away from it or even make things worse.

But still, we were taught to stay away from those who have no concrete goals for the future — we’re supposed to have a plan and a purpose, and pursue it wholeheartedly.

Education falls under the problem as it heavily relies on assessment. The authors envision an alternative where teachers have more freedom to try different ideas rather than rely on uniform measurement. Progress can be measured in a peer-driven way: schools are assessed based on their own situation. They believe that in societal efforts like education, we might make better progress by exposing each other to potential stepping stones to new ideas.⁴

Innovation and consensus #

The authors discuss how granting agencies for scientific research are often based on consensus, and caution that it works against exploring stepping stones. A different approach might be to reward maximal disagreement (e.g. a project that receives “excellent, excellent, poor, poor” could be more interesting than “excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent.”)

Judgmentalism is the natural habitat of the objective-seeker, always worried about where everyone else will end up. But we are all better off in the end if we end up at different places. Otherwise, everyone would be standing on the same stepping stone. That’s why we need to beware of the seduction of consensus. Of course, if we all want to end up in the same place, the right place, then it makes sense to push towards consensus. But that should be the last thing we want. Disagreement and divergence are virtues that deserve to be protected.

One such example is to judge projects based on the importance of their predicted impacts. The authors argue that even if we can reliably estimate impact, such “importance” can be deceptive, as important discoveries are often serendipitous. It’s better to pursue interesting projects that lead to further unanticipated experiments, rather than focusing on their own importance.⁵

Why is objective thinking so alluring? One reason is our fear of risk. But risk-averse objective thinking limits progress.

Consensus, perceived importance, alignment with national interests—these are “objective” parachutes for escaping the great unknown when we should be rocketing further into it.

Natural Selection #

People interpret “survival of the fittest” differently, with one view linked to objective thinking: competition leads to fitter organisms. Under this view, evolution is progressive — we’re objectively superior to bacteria. But the authors argue that if evolution has the goal, it was already accomplished because bacteria survived and reproduced. Rather, selection restricts exploration — a Gentle Earth with no selection pressure would produce more creative organisms.

“Survival and reproduction” is more of a constraint than objective, and evolution is more like a treasure hunter than an optimizer. As the authors argue, the main engine behind evolution’s creativity is searching for many ways to solve the same problem, and competition only plays a secondary role.

Why doesn’t competition cause evolution to converge on an optimal solution? One reason is that competition in evolution isn’t global; each organism doesn’t compete with every other organism in the same way. Global competition seeks the best overall, while local competition encourages the founding of new niches to escape competition.

While the book didn’t entirely shift my perspective, as I didn’t subscribe to the all-powerful objective thinking to begin with, I enjoyed reading it and learning about why an objective-less approach works and how it connects to a wide range of things.

The idea that the past provides more information is related to Taleb’s insight that systems learn by removing parts, not adding. ↩︎
Another parallel to Taleb’s idea: we should use the constraints from the world to our advantage, by having skin in the game. ↩︎
The idea of starting from here and now aligns with Designing Your Life, which suggests as the first step. It also reminds me of mindfulness concepts. ↩︎
The idea of “good reply game” can be thought of as giving others stepping stones. ↩︎
The idea to pursue interesting projects aligns with Karl Popper’s idea that good theories should produce more interesting problems to solve. ↩︎

Notes on The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t endorse these views. I’m writing to learn. Let me know if anything is unclear or misunderstood :)

Hayek argues against the idea that central planning can achieve societal goals more efficiently than a market-based economy. He warns that it can lead to totalitarianism.

Planning #

Socialism not only means its ultimate aims of social justice, greater equality and security, but also the particular methods many believe to be the only ways, like abolishing private enterprise and creating a planned economy.

The disagreement between planners and opponents is not whether to plan or not, but what and how.

One view argues that the market economy no longer works due to technological advance erasing competition. But Hayek questions if it’s due to technology, or in fact policies pursued in most countries.

Hayek says improved production efficiency didn’t eliminate competition. Confirming events are largely due to the influence of prophecy as such. He warns that we should caution about inevitability, as “in social evolution nothing is inevitable but thinking makes it so.”

Democracy #

Some criticize the society lacks a “conscious” direction and its activities are guided by “the whims and fancies of irresponsible individuals.”

Hayek argues that the concept of the “common good” lacks a clear meaning — “The welfare and the happiness of millions cannot be measured on a single scale… [they] depend on a great many things that can be provided in an infinite variety of combinations.”

While individuals have different goals, many have the same ends. Common actions should be limited to common ends. Taking actions beyond these common ends suppresses individual freedom. “It is a superstition to believe that there must be a majority view on everything.”

Under democracy, the majority may not always make sane choices. Democracy is a means to safeguard internal peace and individual freedom. It’s not the will of the majority that prevents arbitrary power, but the limitation of power.

The Rule of Law #

Hayek distinguishes between two kinds of rules: 1) rules that set a framework for individuals to freely decide how to use resources; 2) rules that specify how resources should be used for specific purposes. For example, designing a highway code and setting up signposts, versus directing people which road to take.

The first kind of rule can be made in advance without considering specific needs. Economic planning is different — when deciding how many pigs to be raised, it discriminates one group from another.

Totalitarianism #

Supporters of economic control claim it can be separate from politics. Hayek believes state planning makes all economic and social questions political, as power decides distribution.

It’s simplistic to say all governments affect the relative position of different people. Measures can be taken without knowing their individual impact. The extent matters: whether anyone gets anything depends on the government, or if the influence is limited to some people in some way at some time.

Planners often face unexpected outcomes after making decisions. They have to create new, sometimes inconsistent rules on the spot to address these issues.

A common strategy to gain acceptance is to convince people that the new values still align with their existing beliefs. For example, both democracy and socialism share the word “equality.” Democracy seeks it in liberty, while socialism seeks it in restraints and servitude. Socialists and liberals say “freedom,” but Hayek sees it as exploitation as socialists want equal wealth distribution.

Another strategy is to unite people against those they dislike or envy, external forces or those better off, rather than towards positive causes. Individual criticism will be suppressed to maintain loyalty to the system, affecting everyday activities and limiting innovation.

Notes on reductionism

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I once believed knowledge can be built from the group up, thinking that if we grasp the basics, we could easily understand more complex concepts.

This is a mistake of reductionism. Some things only emerge when looking at the higher level and can’t be predicted just by analyzing the parts. For example, to understand the future of the solar system, we need to take the emergence of life into consideration.

Events often have emergent qualities that are not directly traceable to past causes. Another issue with reductionism is its attempt to explain outcomes solely based on their earlier causes. For example, some attribute the dominance of European civilization to only geographical causes.

The problem is that, besides the practical inability to know all details of historical events, or to calculate all interactions of constituents of a system, these lower-level facts aren’t always explanatory. For example, even if we can explain why a certain atom ended up on the screen of my laptop, it can’t tell us why this MacBook was created.

Explaining events by their causes is only backward-looking. Explanation of this kind may very well be right. Geographical advantages did contribute greatly to the dominance of European civilization. Our behavior was the result of neuron excitements, hormones, childhood experiences, fetal environments, genes, culture, and so on. But depending on the problem you’re trying to solve, such a way of explaining can be bad.

It cannot explain the future. Simply saying “the future will be determined by its past” explains little. It can lead to a neglect of agency and change if we’re not careful in applying the explanation to an unconditional, open environment.

Accepting this way of thinking does have some merits. I find it well aligned with the Stoics’ attitude of being fatalist about the past. Accepting past events leaves no room for hatred towards ourselves or others. But this does not justify future behavior, by believing that one can’t help but do something, writing off moral responsibility.

On this Week #

I revisited the updated version of Working Identity and found the following ideas worth reminding, especially if you’re on a similar journey of discovery, connections, and finding life’s work:

1/ We have no “true self”, but many selves; do parallel experiments to test which of those works.

2/ Don’t just focus on the work; Find people who are what we want to be and who can provide support for the transition.

3/ Actively interpret past experiences and retell our stories; over time this leads to clarity.

Question I’m wondering #

Are there any non-traditional learning spaces that emphasize curiosity-driven exploration and discussion, without being tied to overly structured curriculums, dogmatic assessments, or future returns?

I changed my mind about determinism

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Three months ago when I explored the concept of free will, I leaned strongly towards a deterministic view of the world.

My belief began to waver as I dove into complex systems and quantum theory. Although my grasp of these concepts is still in its infancy, I am excited to share my discoveries. I hope you find it as fascinating to read as I did to write.

Chaotic unpredictability #

Determinism sounds logical under Newtonian mechanics — if we know the initial conditions of a system (like the positions and velocities of all particles), we can predict its future behavior, and also retrodict its past.

This principle does not hold true in chaotic systems. Here’s an illustration from the book Determined.

Start off with a grid, like the one below, where the first row is your starting condition.

Determined by Robert Sapolsky (p. 135)

A simple rule to determine the row below: A box in the next row is filled if and only if one of the three of boxes above it is filled in. (For the first and last boxes, just look at the above two.) For example,

Now a challenge: Imagine what the pattern will turn out for each of the four.

Well, yes, we can’t predict by staring at them. Same for computers — the pattern has to be worked out step by step, not calculated with some formula. Interestingly, pattern #1 and #3 will evolve into identical forms after several generations.

I wrote a little code to generate this

This reveals a key insight: knowing the rule and the mature state of a system gives us no predictive power as to what the starting state was — multiple different starting states could lead to the same outcome.

Counterfactuals #

Why was that interesting? Because that challenges causation.

For example, if each row represents one year of my life, at row 31 now I look back and tell how the past has shaped me (pattern #1). But a completely different “past” (pattern #3) could also have resulted in the same state. The actual stories could be completely different from the ones I told myself.

Another example: in computer simulations, a flap of a butterfly wing results in a hurricane. What if real hurricanes were not caused by butterflies? To say an event A causes an event B, B needs to happen after A and if A had not happened, B would not have happened (from the works of David Lewis). Because we can’t access alternative realities where A had not happened, it’s hard to establish solid cause-and-effects for historical events.

We can’t be certain about the causes because we can’t observe counterfactual events, but our complex system theories, like chaos theory, are still governed by the deterministic laws of classical physics. This implies that the effects are still determined by underlying causes, even if not apparent or could be mistaken. So to say the world might be indeterministic, we need help from quantum theory and a lot of conjectures.

Quantum indeterminism #

Science has only showed quantum effects in the microscopic world. We may conjecture what it would mean for the macroscopic world to obey quantum theory.

The following passage from The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch offers an alternative explanation for the butterfly effects, invoking multiverse theory:

Consider a group of identical universes at an instant at which, in all of them, a particular butterfly’s wings have flapped. Consider a second group of universes which at the same instant are identical to the first group, except that in them the butterfly’s wings are down. Wait for a few hours. Quantum mechanics predicts that, unless there are exceptional circumstances, […], the two groups of universes, nearly identical at first, are still nearly identical. But each group, within itself, has become greatly differentiated. It includes universes with hurricanes, universes without hurricanes, and even a very tiny number of universes in which the butterfly has spontaneously changed its species through an accidental rearrangement of all its atoms, […] Even so, the two groups still resemble each other very closely. In the universes in which the butterfly raised its wings and hurricanes occurred, those hurricanes were indeed unpredictable; but the butterfly was not causally responsible, for there were near-identical hurricanes in universes where everything else was the same but the wings were lowered. (p. 202)

Instead of attributing weather unpredictability to initial conditions’ sensitivity in chaotic systems, Deutsch proposes an explanation rooted in the multiplicity of parallel universes: “Quantum systems do not have that sensitivity, but are unpredictable because they behave differently in different universes, and so appear random in most universes.”

Therefore #

The challenge in forming reliable causal chains from a single historical observation, combined with potential quantum effects on larger-scale events, has prompted me to reconsider the certainty of determinism.

I’m not yet convinced in indeterminism either. I’m just fascinated by how knowing a bit more questions my beliefs about determinism, causation, and reality. I has also led me to reconsider, for instance, our ways of interpreting the past and the narratives we construct about our lives, which has huge effects on our present and the future.

On this Week #

Implications of absence of free will #

I still don’t believe we have free will though. A nice summary from Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky of what that means:

Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

Karl Popper criticizing essentialism #

In everyday language we often say what-is: someone is smart or stupid. That is the danger of unexamined essentialism, as it obstructs change and progress.

Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach

Lastly #

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. — George Bernard Shaw

As I mentioned, I just started learning about complex systems. If I made any mistakes, or anything interesting you’d like to share, please let me know! Feel free to connect on X or leave anonymous feedback here.

Beyond the surface of realities

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Realizing I was living in a bubble prompted me to leave my job, among other reasons. All the people around me worked at big techs. I felt disconnected from the broader reality.

I believed traveling would connect me to this bigger world. Unable to travel then, I embarked on a “virtual travel” project, where I planned to experience the world from my home through books and the Internet. I soon realized that I needed more than the intellectual experiences from screens and paper; I wanted direct, hands-on experiences.

When I was finally able to do so, I traveled the world for four months. I made few plans and let things happen to me. It was my first solo travel to completely unfamiliar places.

Halfway through, despite the fun, I began to question: After many random conversations with others, I didn’t feel I understood the world as deeply as I expected. Yes, my guide in Istanbul explained how inflation affected their lives, but my limited macro-economic knowledge left me unsure of what further questions to ask. I was amazed by the intricate beauty of the bas-reliefs in Angkor Wat, yet I couldn’t put the art, history, and religion into perspectives.

Despite my physical travels around the globe, I still felt encased in a bubble. How, then, can I understand the world better?

Reinterpreting reality #

Before the trip I thought one needs to do direct, hands-on work to gain real understanding. Later I recognized humans can understand the universe by being stationary on Earth, suggesting it’s not necessarily so.

I had perhaps naively believed that reality was tangible, something I could see or touch, derived from my immediate senses. But in The Fabric of Reality, David Deutsch introduced a different definition: “If something can kick back, it exists.”

‘Kicking back’ here does not necessarily mean that the alleged object is responding to being kicked — to being physically affected as Dr Johnson’s rock was. It is enough that when we ‘kick’ something, the object affects us in ways that require independent explanation. For example, Galileo had no means of affecting planets, but he could affect the light that came from them. His equivalent of kicking the rock was refracting that light through the lenses of his telescopes and eyes. That light responded by ‘kicking’ his retina back. The way it kicked back allowed him to conclude not only that the light was real, but that the heliocentric planetary motions required to explain the patterns in which the light arrived were also real.

I realize it’s not that the “virtual traveling” is detached from reality and thus inferior to actual traveling. It’s that they’re different.

Two modes of learning #

Direct, hands-on experience is visceral and emotionally engaging. It provides rich contexts and nuances that may leave a stronger imprint on our memory. But it is confined by our physical presence and time constraints.

In contrast, indirect, observational learning overcomes personal experience limits, key for understanding theoretical concepts, frameworks, and models. The risk here is a detachment from practical realities.

I think the “kick-back” definition of reality helps bridge the dichotomy: one should aim to get feedback. Keeping the door open is a way to stay in touch with reality even when you’re doing indirect learning.

Two kinds of information #

If the above is about how to learn, there’s another dimension of what.

Anecdotes, drawn from real experiences, are specific and relatable but may lack generalizability. While theories can apply across various contexts and disciplines, they can be challenging to comprehend and risk over-simplification.

Both are part of reality. Anecdotes provide tangible insights. Theories, as Karl Popper’s “third world” of objective knowledge, offer deeper, often unseen understandings of our world.

Four quadrants of understanding #

We can visualize the interplay between the modes of learning and the content in a four-quadrant diagram:

Indirect way of learning from theories: study them through textbooks and lectures
Direct way of learning from theories: conduct experiments to test them
Direct way of learning from examples: try recipes, do practice questions
Indirect way of learning from examples: read biographies, case studies, and stories

There seem to be different theories that explore these relationships: experiential learning theory, constructivist learning theory, situated cognition theory, and so on.

We don’t need to delve into academia. Two takeaways:

Embrace a dynamic learning approach: Consider combining direct and indirect learning with anecdotal and theoretical knowledge to gain richer understanding.
Adapt the strategy based on your specific goals and needs: For general knowledge, indirect learning like books, articles, or lectures often suffice. But if you’re delving into your field of expertise or a subject where detailed practical knowledge is crucial, engaging in all four quadrants becomes necessary.

For more practical application, ’s summary of Tyler Cowen’s approach to leading an intellectually fulfilling life is great.

How do you navigate the balance between direct experiences and theoretical understanding in your own journey of learning?

The Courage to Conjecture

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The way I go about with ideas is often to “find” one. If I want to do something, I start by looking for what others have done and see if I can do something similar. If an idea didn’t work, I toss it out and find another one.

This process assumes that knowledge comes from observation. By seeing what works, I’ll be more likely to succeed.

But that is flawed. It leads to a cycle: tireless trying new approaches with little process. If one approach doesn’t work, I can’t tell why because I can’t articulate why it would work in the first place.

Instead, I’ve come to learn that ideas come from conjectures. Looking for examples can be one of the ways to come up with ideas, but that’s not necessary. I can just guess based on what I already know — it doesn’t matter if I know little — and then use empirical tests, through trying myself or experiences from others, to improve my guesses.

Great ideas come from bold conjectures. Let’s take a look at early Greek philosophers even though they seem to know nothing compared to us.

To explain earthquakes, Thales of Miletus said the earth floats above water. To which Anaximander questioned, what, then, supports the water? By criticizing this logical problem, Anaximander suggested a counter-observational theory: the earth is floating freely in space, and it can keep its place because of equal distance from other things. He further said the shape of the earth is a drum-like cylinder; some walk on one side of its flat surface, while others walk on the other.

These look like complete myths, but bold conjectures are more valuable than mundane ones, even though they were proven wrong.

Notice how inspiring they are to our modern theories. The idea of the earth floating above water resembles Wegener’s theory of continental drift. And the earth is indeed in a sense “floating freely” in space. Anaximander wrongly believed it was a drum rather than a globe, which may be blamed on his observations (because, starting from his theory, a globe would be better in keeping equal distance from other things).

I realize I’m often reluctant to come up with my own ideas, let alone bold ones. I wonder where such tendency comes from.

Cultural influence and upbringing seems to be a big one. There’s a fear of sticking out and feeling humiliated. A Chinese saying goes, “The shot hits the bird that pokes its head out.” In collectivist culture, a child who does not behave well would get finger-pointed from family and strangers; A student who does not follow what the teacher prescribes would be punished in front of the whole class.

Not just from social pressure, because even in my private notes and journals I find myself unconfident in coming up with my own thinking, which seems to be strongly influenced by schools in China that emphasize standardized testing.

I was trained and incentivized to arrive at “the correct answer.” When test score is everything, it would be inefficient (and irrational, unfortunately) to think for myself.

I’m still figuring this out. But the thing I want to remind myself is don’t be afraid to guess.

I’m no longer playing the high-stake once-in-a-lifetime game Gaokao (a.k.a Chinese college entrance exam) where failure is almost fatal (in conventional thinking). I’m playing the long-term game called Life which favors progress through iterations.

Errors are expected; our ignorance stems not from our stupidity but that truth is hard to come by. It’s through error correction that one makes progress, and only by expressing my ideas, written or spoken, can they be improved for the better.

The examples of Greek Philosophers, and the whole piece actually, were inspired by Karl Popper’s essays from Conjectures and Refutations.

On this Week #

Strong Opinions weakly held #

This popular phrase, also called “strong opinions loosely held,” seems to align well with Popper’s epistemology. It was attributed to Paul Saffo who wrote a short but clear essay in 2008:

Allow your intuition to guide you to a conclusion, no matter how imperfect — this is the “strong opinion” part. Then —and this is the “weakly held” part— prove yourself wrong. Engage in creative doubt. Look for information that doesn’t fit, or indicators that pointing in an entirely different direction. Eventually your intuition will kick in and a new hypothesis will emerge out of the rubble, ready to be ruthlessly torn apart once again…

… More generally, “strong opinions weakly held” is often a useful default perspective to adopt in the face of any issue fraught with high levels of uncertainty… Try it at a cocktail party the next time a controversial topic comes up; it is an elegant way to discover new insights — and duck that tedious bore who loudly knows nothing but won’t change their mind!

Rice and Collectivism #

What makes East Asian culture a collectivist one? Robert Sapolsky writes,

The standard explanation for East Asian collectivism is ecology dictating the means of production—ten millennia of rice farming, which demands massive amounts of collective labor to turn mountains into terraced rice paddies, collective planting and harvesting of each person’s crops in sequence, collective construction and maintenance of massive and ancient irrigation systems.

A fascinating exception that proves the rule concerns parts of northern China where the ecosystem precludes rice growing, producing millennia of the much more individualistic process of wheat farming. Farmers from this region, and even their university student grandchildren, are as individualistic as Westerners. As one finding that is beyond cool, Chinese from rice regions accommodate and avoid obstacles (in this case, walking around two chairs experimentally placed to block the way in Starbucks); people from wheat regions remove obstacles (i.e., moving the chairs apart). — Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

Steven Pinker on relativism #

And ultimately even relativists who deny the possibility of objective truth and insist that all claims are merely the narratives of a culture lack the courage of their convictions. The cultural anthropologists or literary scholars who avow that the truths of science are merely the narratives of one culture will still have their child’s infection treated with antibiotics prescribed by a physician rather than a healing song performed by a shaman. And though relativism is often adorned with a moral halo, the moral convictions of relativists depend on a commitment to objective truth. Was slavery a myth? Was the Holocaust just one of many possible narratives? Is climate change a social construction? Or are the suffering and danger that define these events really real—claims that we know are true because of logic and evidence and objective scholarship? Now relativists stop being so relative. — Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters