Outliers

My friend Jonathan once said of Malcolm Gladwell, "He's a moron/genius." I confess that I bought and read Gladwell's most recent book, Outliers, while in transit. And after finishing the book, it was this moron/genius dichotomy that I found best described my feelings towards the book.

It's a page-turner. I don't know how to explain it, but it reads a bit like an adult, non-fiction Harry Potter. No, I take that back. Ew. Harry Potter is genuinely exciting, what I'm trying to say is that Gladwell certainly succeeds in keeping his readers in his thrall.

The book is about success, and its insights are interesting but certainly not world-shaking. For Gladwell, the figure-ground configuration shifts towards an emphasis on ground, and he writes about how our typical storytelling methods fail to convey the importance of ground. The argument is similar in ways to what I blogged about earlier, and, unlike David Brooks, I do read the book as a call to social action.

So the insight in the first part of the book is about the ubiquity of a favorable ground for the successful figure. The insight in the second part of the book is about cultural legacy. Gladwell draws extensively from a Dutch psychologist, Geert Hofstede, and discusses his cultural psychology in relation to plane crashes. Funny for me, because I read Hofstede while doing summer, Swarthmore-sponsored research. Basically, Gladwell tells us that cultural legacy determines much of our behavior in ways that we typically fail to detect.

This is the problem for me, I suppose. I feel like I have come to the same insights that Gladwell writes about on my own before. Not that my thoughts were particularly original, but I felt ownership over the ideas because I had arrived at them personally. But here Gladwell comes sauntering around the corner, and he packages ideas that were for me hard-earned into these hearty little packages that are just waiting to be consumed by his eager readers.

Unfortunately, I cannot help but feel that the very popularity of Gladwell's books has a cheapening effect on the ideas that he writes about. It is as if the value of knowledge exists in inverse relation to its accessibility. If an idea is made overly accessible, it diminishes in value. Who wants an idea to be whorish in its ways? Is Gladwell a pimp of ideas then, bringing previously exclusive ideas and granting access to a popular audience?

Another thing about the lessons of Outliers. They aren't very sexy. In stories, we often mythologize the successful as figures outstanding simply for who they are. We don't like to think about the circumstances that produced them. Part of what Gladwell does in his book, however, is dymystify successful people. These guys were tremendously lucky and hardworking. I imagine a successor book about love and relationships. What we imagine as a primal force noted for its independence to circumstance, Gladwell will dissect as being no more than the product of forces we'd rather not think about: geography, socioeconomic class, age, culture... Just not very sexy to think about.

Bloated Stomach

I write now with a bloated stomach. I really can't help it. The food here is good, but that only begins to explain why I stuff myself so regularly when I am in Taiwan. Another thing is family. As my grandfather is fond of saying, "Food tastes better with more people." That's a crude translation from a much more elegant Chinese saying, but it does the job.

Ever since I was a kid, having a "healthy appetite" has been touted as a great virtue. On my way to getting a second bowl of rice, I'd have people complement me for being a "big eater." After my vertical growth stalled and took on horizontal dimensions, people could no longer call me a "growing boy," but the ethos of "big-eating" is hard to shake.

I chalk it up to my ancestors, who were Hakka farmers in the highlands of central Taiwan. I am only a couple of generations removed from a genuinely farming generation. As I am told, food could be hard to come by in those days. Thus "Have you eaten yet?" is the common greeting even today, taking the place of "Hello," or "How are you?"

Well, hell yeah, I've eaten today!

In the Taiwanese movie, "Eat Drink Man Woman," almost all of the important scenes are filmed around the dinner table. That is much the way that my family in Taiwan operates; social time is structured around meals. Lunch at 12:30; Dinner at 6:00. En punto. Eating is a family event, not something that you do hunched before a television set or over paperwork sitting on your desk at work. And to not eat your unreasonably large fill would be unappreciative. So, when I come back to Taiwan, I guess I eat to catch up on all of the meals I have missed with my relatives.

---

After disembarking flight BR017, I claimed my baggage, hopped a bus to the High-Speed Rail, took the two-hour train ride to Kaohsiung, then took the KMRT to the central train station, before finally walking ten minutes to arrive at my grandfather's house. Both the High-Speed Rail and the Mass Rapit Transit systems are new additions in the last couple of years. When I first started coming to Taiwan with my parents, one of my uncles would drive the four-and-a-half hours from Kaohsiung to the international airport in Taoyuan to pick us up. Obviously, some things have changed.

Upon arriving at my grandpa's place, I was greeted with an empty living room, where my grandpa spends most of his time. After looking around a bit, I found him in the backyard with a grizzled beard tending to a bonsai tree. Some things haven't changed. Not yet.

The Hub of My Travels

At some point during my fourteen-hour flight earlier today, I started thinking about the number of times I have flown to Taiwan. It's hard to count, but my guess is about twenty times in all. Movie selections were poor (House Bunny being the only title I can remember), so I had my TV screen set to the interactive map option that gives you all the flight info you could ever want.

I started imagining superimposing my life's travels onto the map. I've lived in a bunch of different places--Englewood, CO; Kaohsiung and Taipei, Taiwan; Swarthmore, PA; Quito, Ecuador; San Francisco, CA--and I've obviously visited even more places. If I drew a line to represent every single flight I've ever taken in my life, I think an interesting pattern would emerge. And the most interesting part of the pattern that I never truy realized: the Taoyuan International Airport in Taiwan would certainly look like the central hub in my network of flights. I've only ever lived in Taiwan for six years, and I don't even have citizenship in the country. But I suppose it is, as the hub of my travels, more than any other place my home.

It's a strange thing for me to say. Because after flying in and out of the island for over twenty years, I cannot say that I have grown up with the place. Every time I return is a Proustian encounter: accumulated years of aging and change, as in the wrinkles of Marcel's grandmother, reveal themselves abruptly suddenly and render the familiar thing momentarily unrecognizable.

Spot On

This op-ed is definitely on target with its analysis of dating and hooking up on college campuses today. It's pretty funny to think that there are serious professors studying the "hooking up" phenomenon today and thinking about it in terms of gender issues and larger social trends. I suppose it shows the possibilities of academic relevance, which is pretty cool, I guess.

Articles about today's young generation, written by those of an older generation, are so often tinged with nostalgia. This one is no different. Its author basically boils today's pseudo-dating formula down to three steps:

1) Hang out in a group with members of the opposite sex.
2) Pump alcohol into the system on occasion.
3) Hope shit happens.

Romance doesn't seem to be too much a part of the equation. In my mind, there is definitely something romantic about mustering the courage to ask a girl out on a date, like in all those old movies where some intrepid guy ventures out to the girl's dormitory and has the receptionist phone his darling. But what's the good of romance when hooking up is so easy?

Can older people really judge though? Does their nostalgia not simply represent a conservative unwillingness to change, or have we the younger people simply entered a degraded age?

Hmm... As with most if not all things, we'll save that question for another day.

Naruto Marathon

I am all caught up now, I am emotionally drained, but it was worth it, and one thing is clear to me: I must train harder.

Equal Opportunity Employers

I watched a snippet (snippet! isn't that a great word? it sounds dangerous, doesn't it?) of the public hearings in Washington, DC with the Big Three automakers today. Senators and CEOs: damn, that's a lot of old white guys in one room.

During the last public hearing, there was a lot of uproar about the use of corporate jets by the CEOs: Do you mean to say that you couldn't downgrade to a first-class commercial seat to get here from Detroit? As this uproar indicates, we are pretty clearly dealing with symbols here, as corporate jets, more than their cost, simply just don't jive well with the operative symbology of Main Street. Progress these days certainly seems to be measured in symbolic terms--the election of the first African-American to the Oval Office being Exhibit A. Sure, Obama's victory was a huge breakthrough in the fight for racial equality, but it is more than anything a symbolic victory. Hopefully, the symbolic resonance of Obama's victory does not mask the underlying reality of racism that persists despite the anomalous accomplishment that receives all the fanfare. Real work still needs to be done. A digression.

In any case, because symbols appear to be the currency of the day, I say that the face of corporate America needs to be changed. Enough with old white guys running the show.

Earlier today, I was listening to an NPR interview with a journalist about organized crime and its relationship with terrorism. According to the journalist, a key distinction between organized crime and terrorist groups is that crime organizations are typically driven by the profit motive whereas terrorist cells are more bent on ideology. As such, crime organizations practice equal opportunity employment almost to a fault, much more than even their law-abiding, legitimate business counterparts. Apparently, the Yakuza in Japan are one of the biggest employers of ethnic Koreans and Chinese in Japan. I don't really know how this is related to the Big Three automakers, but I think it's a nice contrast.

Maybe with all of the federal protection and union protection that the auto industry has received over the past several decades, the simple profit motive has been obscured, and auto workers have been able to hide a little bit too comfortably behind their awesome lobbying power in Washington, DC. Maybe stodgy old white guys need to be pushed aside; maybe the dog-eat-dog logic of capitalistic competition needs to be pumped into the sclerotic arteries of Detroit such that we can put a new face onto that symbol of American Industrialism, the auto industry. After all, we are dealing in symbols here. And Detroit could usher in a new face to represent Equal Opportunity Employment. Let's hire some Japanese people.

Thank You, David Brower!

I went hiking with my sister this weekend at the Point Reyes National Seashore. Unbelievable scenery.

At the end of one trail, we found ourselves on a beach with huge waves crashing in and sending clouds of mist into the air. Right at the edge of the water, there was a guy staring out at the vast expanse of the Pacific. From where I saw him, he was no more than an outline of a figure facing the ocean with a hand raised to shield his eyes from the sun. There was such simplicity in the image, a solitary figure in awe of natural beauty, just a couple of meters removed from the unfathomable strength of the ocean waves. As familiar and archetypal the image was, it struck me as immensely strange as well. He was so clearly outside the regular grid of routine, utility and worry in which we spend most of our time...how does one explain the type of appreciation embodied by a guy mesmerized by the ocean?

David Brower was the conservationist most responsible for protecting the Point Reyes area.

An Expanded Notion of Environmentalism

Typically, when we think of environmentalism, we think of that brand of environmentalism espoused by John Muir and the Sierra Club. We think of the great outdoors, trees, green things and dirty hippies. But if you talk to a psychologist about environmentalism, then a very different conversation evolves. Environmental psychology is about the interplay between one's surroundings and one's behavior. In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell talks about environmental psychology as "The Power of Context," and attributes the precipitous decline of New York City's crime rate to simple environmental changes made particularly within the subway system. According to Gladwell, doing things like scrubbing the graffiti off subway walls and arresting fare-beaters can lead to significant changes in individual behavior.

So, at first glance, it appears that "environmentalism" refers to at least two disparate bodies of thought. In thinking about the work of Majora Carter, however, and her pitch to "Green the Ghetto," tree-hugging environmentalism and the psychological variety as well find common ground. Saving the environment (Mother Earth) can have everything to do with reducing crime, fighting the war on drugs, lifting people out of poverty, etc.

Pretty cool if you ask me.

Cougars

It must be cougar night tonight!

Fate and Politics

From The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, a favorite quote of mine:

In this century history stopped paying attention to the old psychological orientation of reality. I mean, these days, character isn't destiny any more. Economics is destiny. Ideology is destiny. Bombs are destiny. What does a famine, a gas chamber, a grenade care about how you lived your life? Crisis comes, death comes, and your pathetic individual self doesn't have anything to do with it, only to suffer the effects. (447)

I remember having a class discussion in ninth grade about fate. The teacher surveyed the class and asked us to raise our hands if we believed in fate. A couple of hands went up. The rest of us, true children of the Enlightenment, believers in our abilities to forge our own futures, kept still, uncomfortable with the metaphysical nature of the question. Well, go to India, the teacher told us, walk the streets of Mumbai, look into the eyes of teenage mothers sitting alongside dirt-paved roads holding their infant children, look into the eyes of a leprous beggar, and you come back and tell me that there is no such thing as fate. Jeez, harsh message for a bunch of ninth graders. But well-deserved considering the mostly bratty, oblivious, affluent demographic.

When I hear Joe the Plummer talk about "American" values, and the rugged individualism that they embody, I remember that ninth grade class, and I remember that my station in life has more than anything else been determined by the geography of my birth. The movie, The Pursuit of Happyness, starring Will Smith, draws upon classic American ideals about hard work and equal opportunity. It is a beautiful, moving story of individual triumph in the face of adversity. The story is powerful because it certainly is always nice to believe that we are the masters of our own fate, the shapers of our own destiny, the writers of our own story. That, despite everything, if we just work hard enough, we can pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.

There is no real way to live without this fundamental belief in our hearts. And yet, economics is destiny. Unemployment is at something like a twenty-year high right now, and all those newly unemployed folk are not suddenly unemployed because of their own failings. Sheer will and determination will only take them so far. So, if Joe the Plummer wants to call Barack Obama a socialist for wanting to redistribute wealth, well, that makes me a little bit angry. Because equal opportunity does not characterize the US economy, it will never characterize any economy if simply left to its own devices, and while it might be a utopian ideal, it is an ideal worthy of our striving, even if impossible.

The question of fate, for me, is one of the definitive differences between liberals and conservatives. The discussion in my ninth grade classroom has been the root of much of my political thinking. And, damn, I can't wait to leave behind the era of cowboy individualism that Bush champions.

Unexpected Connectivity

During my freshman year in college, I was sitting at a cafe, Kohlberg Coffee Bar, reading To the Lighthouse. An elderly couple approached my table and sat down. They were just passing by, the older woman was an artist and her husband was accompanying her to see her exhibit at the school’s gallery. They saw that I was reading and asked me what I was studying at school.

"English Literature."

"Do you write at all?"

"Well, I’ve tried before. But every time that I’ve tried, I’ve never been able to put together more than a couple of pages. So I’ve written some vignettes, but I don’t think I’ve ever been able to wrap my head around an entire story."

"Unexpected connectivity."

"What?"

"Yeah. Have you ever listened to Beethoven’s fifth symphony? Well, it is the perfect example of unexpected connectivity. Each movement in the symphony stands on its own, seems different from everything else. But by the end, you’re made to recognize the unexpected connectivity in it all. Keep on writing, and you’ll find unexpected connectivity."

There is something so beautiful about the idea that no matter how one wanders through life, how incongruous the different stages of man may appear, some thread weaves through it all, a running stream through which all of life’s experiences may be reflected, that brings life into one coherent whole.

I tried listening to Beethoven's fifth symphony and finished listening to it none the wiser.

When Numbers Acquire the Powers of Language

In Moneyball, Michael Lewis writes about this idea, quoting Bill James, the father of sabermetrics:

When the numbers acquire the significance of language, they acquire the power to do all of the things which language can do: to become fiction and drama and poetry...And it is not just baseball that these numbers, through a fractured mirror, describe. It is character. It is psychology, it is history, it is power, it is grace, glory, consistency, sacrifice, courage, it is success and failure, it is frustration and bad luck, it is ambition, it is overreaching, it is discipline. And it is victory and defeat, which is all that the idiot sub-conscious really understands. (67)

When I first started watching different TED Talks, I mostly was watching things that didn't seem to have anything to do with Technology, Entertainment or Design, the three things that TED stands for. I was watching talks by Al Gore and John Doerr about climate change and the possibilities of greentech innovation. Sure, these talks had something to do with technology, but entertainment? design? But today, I watched a super cool talk by Hans Rosling, who presents statistics in an engaging way to describe the progress made by developing countries in improving health. And it dawned on me.

People typically think of design as very simply the study of appearance. At least this is the way that I understood design. But Rosling's talk, and really all of the TED Talks, have opened my eyes to a different understanding of design. Design isn't simply about the way something looks, or about how to make things look cool and interesting. Rather, design is motivated by such principles and ideas as the democratization of information, the accessibility of technology, the interactivity of humans, the relationships between humans and nature and space. Rosling uses data and organizes it, designs it in such a way as to make it accessible. Previously, I understood qualitative analysis as being fundamentally different from quantitative analysis, anecdotal evidence as being fundamentally different from empirical evidence. But Rosling presents empirical data in such a compelling way that numbers acquire the powers of language. Data-based storytelling.

Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" is a movie that stars a slideshow presentation. A slideshow presentation! Surely, that represents a triumph of design, of the ability to make scientific data as compelling and convincing as a story.

The personal computer was surely a technological innovation, but more than anything else, it was an innovation in design. It democratized the applications of technology, enabled people to interact with technology more intuitively. Doesn't this explain the success of Apple's iPod? It isn't just that the iPod looks cool or comes in neat colors, but it changes the way in which people interact with digital soundbites.

Maybe none of this is all that revelatory. But when I think about how little people typically understand of design, how little I understood, I am reminded of the scene from "The Devil Wears Prada," when Meryl Streep's character rips into Anne Hathaway's character who clearly regards fashion as a frivolous waste of energy:

This..."stuff?" Oh...ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here. And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of "stuff."

The Milky Way

I don't know that I've ever seen the Milky Way with my own two eyes. This bothers me. While I am by no means a hardcore outdoorsman, neither am I a stranger to the smells that a fresh rain unleashes from the earth. In fact, I derive much of my spiritual sustenance from moments of "Einsteinian wonder," moments when you are put face to face with the largeness and beauty of the cosmos through nature.

The night sky invites its undeserving gazers to ask age-old questions. It sends a chill down my spine to think that humans have been staring and wondering at essentially the same constellations since, well, the beginning. But I was at Safeway the other day, and I saw the front cover of a National Geographic magazine, a night-time, bird's-eye view picture of a city, a rationalized grid of orange light. The editor's letter was about a small town in Virginia that is known for its view of the night sky, and the controversial decision of the town to install stadium lighting for high school football games. Isn't it strange to think that something as ancient and revered as the night sky has become a tourist attraction? A thing that a town can become known for? Isn't it strange that I have only seen the Milky Way in pictures that I studied in elementary school?

I associate stars with the silent chill of night air, when one cannot help but shiver--from the coldness of the darkness? or maybe from the smallness of one's existence? It troubles me, then, that when I look up at the night sky--on those few clear, chilly nights when light conditions permit--I can only recognize the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper and Orion's Belt. In a way, I suppose, this is nice. The night sky allowed to be a mystery, a spectacle that evades scientific classification in my mind. The stars unnamed and unknown to me. But the fact remains...I don't know that I have seen the Milky Way with my own two eyes.

I have always been fascinated by the different ways in which today's environmental problems are framed. Some describe the environmental crisis as a problem of awareness and consciousness, others point to the limits of technology and capitalistic growth. More recently, people like Al Gore and Thomas Friedman frame the problem as a policy failure and have advocated for a Coasian solution, a price signal placed on carbon emissions. Mark Wallace, in introducing his book, Finding God in the Singing River, describes today's environmental problems as fundamentally "a problem of the heart." It is this last formulation that I can't seem to get out of my head. How do humans relate to nature? Are we to be its benevolent stewards? its domineering masters? its helpless victims?

In Al Gore's famous climate crisis slideshow, the photos that he shows of melting glaciers are truly harrowing. Presented with such pictures, I invariably react with a mixture of thoughts and emotions. We did this? Changes of this magnitude are the result of industry and human activity? Is this really possible? There is such a profound hubris in the imagining. We did this, and now we need to try to fix what we have damaged. Weather, previously the exclusive playground of the gods, now rendered a human plaything. There is something deeply offensive to me about talking about global warming, or about our relationship with nature, in this way.

There are people who yearn for some imagined era when humans existed in harmony with nature, or who romanticize the relationship that exists between humans and nature in developing countries that have not yet been falsely weaned from Mother Earth. The irony being that companies from developing countries are invariably dirtier and more hurtful to the environment than their first world counterparts. Such romanticizations make me cringe. Have you ever been to a developing country? I want to ask. Have you seen the litter and the careless disposal of waste?

I don't know. Perhaps it can only be helpful to exaggerate our abilities to manipulate nature. Much like it can only be helpful to believe in the persistence of personal agency in the face of external constraint. Maybe, despite all odds, something profoundly human will triumph. It is a nice thought at the very least.

But jeez, the Milky Way. Surely something is amiss.

Makes Sense

I recently read a book that tells the story of how the world's first user-friendly personal computer came into existence. In it, the author describes a method of conflict resolution practiced within the group that developed the computer:

PARC's leader, Bob Taylor, had an especially deft way of resolving those conflicts that did surface. He employed a mediation model that eliminated the divisive win-lose element from arguments and substituted the goal of clarification. Taylor would urge people to move from what he called a Class 1 disagreement, in which neither party could describe the other's position, to a Class 2 disagreement, in which each side could articulate the other's stance. (Organizing Genius [Bennis] 122)

The method sounds incredibly simple, even a bit hokey, but it draws exactly upon the difference between a debate and a discussion that I talked about in an earlier post. I really don't understand why such a method of discussion isn't made more intuitive in our education system.

Language Barrier

During my freshman year, Richard Dawkins came to Swarthmore to lecture about his work on evolutionary psychology and his views on the apparent conflicts between science and religion. After his talk, I went up to him and, eager to use vocabulary and ideas I was picking up from my philosophy class, asked him if his ideas didn't represent a positivist and reductionist worldview. "I'm not a philosopher," he replied to my naive and inappropriately confrontational inquiry. Hearing such a curt reply, my facial muscles probably twitched awkwardly, and I probably looked down at the wrinkles in my t-shirt self-consciously before squriming my way out of the crowd that was growing around him.

In retrospect, this brief interaction represented my first encounter with the insularity that characterizes the academic world. If you are an established discipline, then you necessarily boast an esoteric vocabulary and specialized journals to boot. Unfortunately, these things set up walls between disciplines and inhibit communication. They essentially allow Richard Dawkins to rebuff inquiries such as mine by pleading ignorance. In Economics, there is the presitigious Journal of Economic Perspectives, but sometimes I wonder if a Journal of Perspectives on Economics and the Economy might not be more fruitful as an intellectually curious publication. It appears to me that a discipline often receives more fanfare for its methodology than the questions that it professes to answer. This is obviously a very short and perhaps a simplistically naive assessment of academia, but I think it merits consideration.

The problem of communication doesn't just exist in the academic world. I see evidence of a genuine language barrier in issues all around me. Let us take the issue of environmentalism as an example. There are those environmentalists that profess an eco-centric as opposed to an anthropocentric worldview. Such environmentalists condemn all environmentally hurtful activities and generally resist capitalism as an environmentally exploitative, earth-destroying, growth-bent, parasitic, soul-sucking system. Naturally, such environmentalists clash with traditional economists. In the context of Swarthmore, Crum-dwelling granola crunchers don't often fraternize on the halls of Kohlberg 2nd. Meanwhile, the concerns raised by such environmentalists fall deaf on the ears of the more pragmatically-minded economists and businessmen of the world. What happens? The 1999 WTO anti-globalization protests happen.

Thomas Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, forges a path forward. He sums up the problem burdening the environmental movement, which I think has its roots in communication: "Too many environmentalists oppose any growth, a position that locks the poor into poverty. Too many critics of environmentalism characterize any conservation as some flaky anticapitalist ideological dalliance" (194). But, if I could assign TF an epitaph, it would be, "Speaker of many languages." He "pals around" with venture capitalists, environmental activists, politicians, academics, and manages to speak to all these different groups of people. In his book, he gives one example of successful communication between groups that I find particularly inspiring. Friedman describes the success of a conservation project in Indonesia and quotes the project's leader, Dr. Jatna Supriatna:

When you talk with the head of the government, your language is economic; when you talk to the communities, the language is welfare; when you talk to business, you talk about their future profits; when you talk to other NGOs, the language is environment. (311)

The answer seems rather simple. Just communicate across disciplines, across interest groups. But the forces of insularity are strong. Language barriers difficult to surmount. I think that it is a point, while simple, that we tend to overlook and fail to appreciate. In my view, a language barrier serves as the greatest source of frustration for young idealists intent upon effecting substantive change in the world. Friedman pokes fun a bit at the youthful naivette:

ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy, and General Motors know the difference between a Facebook group and a blocking coalition in Congress. They are not in Facebook, but they are in the faces of those lawmakers who stand in their way. (400)

Most of us, i.e. young and eager twenty-somethings, don't speak even a single language that resonates with groups that are in a position to effect change. I think this is the harsh reality that youthful idealism confronts. We may possess the soft tools, the critical thinking and the drive, but we lack the credibility, experience and language skills to communicate effectively. There doesn't seem to be an easy way around the language barrier, and I guess that is why Friedman ultimately counsels diligence, discipline and sacrifice.

24-Hour Fitness

"Do you like to be challenged?"

"Yeah, sure, of course."

"Well, for just $99.99, you can get five one-hour sessions with a personal trainer. What d'you say?"

About two weeks ago, I signed up for a seven-day free trial at 24-Hour Fitness. And so for a week straight, I politely declined offers for protein shakes, personal training sessions and a paid membership. Meanwhile, I enjoyed all the benefits of membership without shelling out a single dime. Really duped the system, I did.

Two days after my free trial expired, Julie, the sales agent who was put in charge of my account, called me up with news of a promotional $29.99 monthly rate. Craving "challenge" and wanting once again to "be part of the club," I decided to sign up. Dollar-a-day health? Fine. I can afford that. What? There is a $49.99 initiation fee? Well...hmm...let me think about this for a second. Oh! It's only $49.99, and it's a one-time fee. Access to locations across the country and across the world. Well, in that case, sure, sign me up!

Okay, I admit it. Julie, the little devil, she got in my head.

Inside the gym are twenty treadmills lined up against a window that overlooks a busy street. Each one of these treadmills is outfitted with a control panel that lets you regulate your pace and incline, as well as monitor your calories burned, distance run and time elapsed. On top of each control panel is a 15-inch LCD screen. They probably call it a personal entertainment center, but I skipped out on the informational tour so I'm not really sure. All you have to do is plug in a set of earphones, and you can browse through any of the three channels that they offer (CNN, ESPN and some other cable channel), and enjoy watching TV with audio while getting a full-body workout. Or, if you're not one for TV, you can bring along your iPod and listen to your very own music library during your workout.

I don't own any earphones, I am a bit ashamed to say. So, as I jog on the treadmill, I watch the number of calories I've burned climb slowly through two-digit totals and finally break into three-digit territory. I'm all business when it comes to taking care of my body, let me tell you. Meanwhile, I also browse through the TV options. Today, there is AC360 on CNN, a college football game on ESPN, and an episode of Family Guy where Peter Griffin has two plungers suctioned on to his man-boobs such that he has a pair of truly killer nipples. Anderson Cooper, muted by my lack of earphones, is rendered comical as he gazes ever so intently into the camera.

Here, I think to my nerdy self, is negative liberty at its very best. Freedom to choose without having to impose or intrude on others. My privacy and my personal space so fiercely protected. Never will I, in this gym, need to compromise my television-viewing or music-listening preferences. Never will I have to suffer through the eccentric musical tastes of another.

Once, during a particularly busy hour at the gym, I had to wait in line to get on a treadmill. I tried to make small talk with the girl that was waiting in front of me, "Is it always this busy at this hour?" I didn't realize, but she was listening to her iPod, so she couldn't hear me but could tell I was trying to ask a question. Removing one side of her earphones, and making it very clear how much of a hassle this was for her, she looked at me questioningly, accusingly. "Nevermind," I said apologetically. Peeved, she looked away, put her earphones back in and resumed her waiting, arms folded.

On to the weights. In the area for free weights, the walls are lined with full-length mirrors to feed the vanity and insecurity of the area's image-conscious frequenters. I am doing bicep curls today, so I position myself in front of the mirror and start counting reps. I exaggerate my exhalations to emphasize my effort. When I discover the faint outline of a vein popping out from my upper right arm, it is all I can do to stop myself from screaming out loud in self-congratulatory elation. Weights equals dates, I remember my college buddy telling me. I quickly look around to see if anybody else noticed my personal triumph. Nope. Nevertheless, I know that through furtive glances or sometimes outright staring, everybody is checking everybody out. There might not be much in the way of conversation to be found at 24-Hour Fitness, but let's make no mistake, this is a community of health-conscious individuals. There is no escape from being looked at here.

When I was teaching in Ecuador, my students were always curious to hear about what it is like to live in America, but I was always at a bit of a loss as to what to say. Once, we were watching the movie About Schmidt together as a supplement to reading The Death of Ivan Ilych. There is a scene in the movie where Jack Nicholson's character walks into a Dairy Queen to buy an Oreo blizzard. "American culture is so weird!" one student blurted out. We laughed disgustedly at the scene together. The interaction between Jack Nicholson and the DQ employee was so commercial, dehumanizing, impersonal, scripted. The brightness of the colors, the oppressiveness of the DQ uniform, the confines within which the interaction took place...it was all so offensive and repugnant to the eyes of my Ecuadorian students.

Today, with a sweaty towel carelessly adorning my neck and shoulders, I mosey my way past customers, attendants and personal trainers, and, as I open the door onto Davis Street, I smile. "Well, kids," I think to myself, "this is what it is like to live in America."

Twisted Twenties (continued)

Pretty quickly, the worrying subsides and the wandering commences. No, the worrying doesn't quite subside. Rather, it gets pushed aside by more immediate concerns, becoming more of an ambient noise. Decisions lose their grandiose sheen as your mind turns towards decisions of a smaller, but infinitely more pragmatic variety.

The first day after my graduation from Swarthmore, I was driving around New York City. First mistake. After circling the block looking for parking on the Upper West Side, I found a spot and Austin Power-ed my way into it. Fed the meter, only to show up five minutes after its expiration with a $60 fine. Second mistake. Oops. Whether or not I could afford to feed my caffeine addiction from Kohlberg Coffee Bar had previously been my biggest financial concern. That and how many hours I could reasonably log for a single tutoring session. Deadlines? Negotiable. Not so any more.

Always, though, always, the anxiety of the big questions--What the hell am I doing with my life?--nags away as you understand that all of the small decisions that you are making amount to an answer to the questions that truly matter. This awareness haunts you, and to deny its presence is to live in denial. Maybe you shove it under your bed, and you forget about it for stretches at a time, surely its absence enables day-to-day euphoria, but on some sleepless nights, it comes back in all its original, primal force.

Nevertheless, you forge ahead as you must.

Sheer inertia carries you through the days...

Some Articles

This period of life, what I have called the twisted twenties, has been written about quite extensively. Here are a couple of articles that I think are worth sharing:

"Tribal Workers" (Barlow)
Thomas Barlow writes about a culture of discontent that seems to be growing among the highly educated young. Particularly about the excess of opportunity that seems to greet such individuals.
"The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors" (Tierney)
John Tierney writes about a study from the field of Behavioral Economics about the utility derived from keeping options open.
"The Odyssey Years" (Brooks)
David Brooks writes about the transition from adolescence to adulthood, a decade of wandering that he calls the odyssey years.

If you have any other reading suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Twisted Twenties

I started this blog for a variety of reasons, but above all, I started this blog because being in your twenties can be rough business. I know that I have struggled, mightily at times, and I sense that my friends have had their fair share of worries and troubles as well. It is out of a sense of community then that I write in this blog.

Senior year in college: one foot in college, one foot already out the door. With that ominous graduation date looming so closely, every decision ahead seems to take on new gravity, at times unbearable weight. More than ever, you are aware that the decisions you make will change the course of your life. You try to avoid thinking in these overly dramatic terms, but it's nearly impossible to resist the urge. You are ready to leave your college years behind, sometimes you are even eager to be charting your own course, but the ugly truth is that uncertainty looms ahead.

On the precipice of today and tomorrow, of certainty and possibility...I am reminded of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and its first passage introducing Howard Roark:

Howard Roark laughed...He stood naked at the edge of a cliff...the world seemed suspended in space, an island floating on nothing, anchored to the feet of the man on the cliff...

He knew that the days ahead would be difficult. There were questions to be faced and a plan of action to be prepared. He knew that he should think about it. He knew also that he would not think, because everything was clear to him already, because the plan had been set long ago, and because he wanted to laugh...

These rocks, he thought, are here for me; waiting for the drill, the dynamite and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the shape my hands will give them. (omissions mine)

To feel so vitally young and empowered, as though the world is at your feet. Surely, it is an intoxicating feeling that comes over you at times as you look ahead to the unmolded years. But most other times, probably, your intoxication is of the OH (alcohol) variety and mixed with a good dose of anxiety. Howard Roark is an egocentric, incompassionate, nature-plundering, and most importantly, fictional character. Nobody is as certain or cocksure as he, or so you think. Then you look around and see your overachieving peers look so certain about their futures, so certain about their respective paths. How can you be so goddamn certain!? your innards scream.

Nevertheless, you forge ahead as you must. But, as you begin applying to graduate schools or to jobs, as you take that GRE or MCAT or LSAT, you realize how little control you actually have, how little power you exercise in deciding your own future. The resume and cover letter that you so meticulously crafted sit in a pile of hundreds of others, just waiting to be tossed aside by some unforgiving hand. Or worse yet, you wonder if that e-mail you sent sits in the "Spam" folder of your potential employer.

And then there is the nagging idea in the back of your mind that you are in your prime and that you are not living your every day to the fullest. These precious years should not be spent in a state of suspended worry, not in a cubicle pushing paper either, but living. The fierce urgency of NOW calls you, Carpe-fucking-Diem, or more eloquently, in Joyce's words: "To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!"

Every fiber of your being calls on you to partake in life's feast, but you've got to watch your weight, you've got to think about the future and your career and what is best, how to optimally allocate your resources.............................

But you are not alone. The Dude abides. And I take comfort in that.

[to be continued...]

Okay to Hope

On November 3, the day before the election, I was on my way to the Stanford bookstore when I came across a political rally. A professor of political science was stumping for Obama, trying to instill in the minds of the under-20s in the audience the historical import of this election, stressing the importance of voting, and unabashedly adopting Obama's campaign slogan, "Yes We Can." At first it all struck me as a little bit, well, off-key.

Here, on this improvised stage, was a middle-aged white guy with a beard, a tweed, professorial jacket, slightly short and slightly plump, dressed impeccably as a scholar, stumping for Obama. Surely, I thought, this guy belongs in his book-filled office, hunched over student papers, thinking quiet, professorial thoughts. But no, here he was, pacing like a maniac with a microphone in hand, appealing passionately to those who would listen, and enticing the audience to chant with him, "Yes We Can." Not yet mesmerized, more in a state of detached amusement, I looked around me, couldn't help but smile at the sight of so many people chanting such a simple, naively optimistic campaign phrase. The size of the crowd grew.

Next up after the professor: a young conservative student dressed in madras pants and a pink button-down. The emotion in his voice so obviously young and raw: "I would rather disagree with a President Obama than agree with a President McCain!" Fist-pumping. Waving of campaign posters. More chanting. So the procession of speakers went. Each with more license to be impassioned, to be hopeful, and each with more fervent support from the growing crowd. And I found the words forming on my own lips, unexpectedly: "Yes We Can."

---

After it was all over, after enough votes had been counted, after history had been decided, I waited to watch Obama's victory speech. What impressed me most was the equanimity he has now become famous for, the absence of self-congratulation or even of celebration, the sobriety with which he reached out his hand to the audience in a gesture of gratitude. "It is okay," Obama's body language and facial expressions seemed to emanate, "It is okay to hope."

I remember following the 2000 and 2004 elections. I remember the incredulity with which the people around me greeted news of President Bush's respective victories. The post-game analysis was that gun-toting, homophobic middle America had stolen the election again. People talked about how liberals had forfeited all language of morality and could not stand their ground against evangelicals on issues like abortion, homosexuality and second amendment rights. "Moral issues" catapulted Bush to the White House in 2000 and 2004, leaving liberals feeling somewhat helpless.

Now, harboring hope, sanctioned by Obama's meteoric rise, I cannot help but feel that something has changed. That Obama's victory ushers in a new chapter, that liberals can now speak confidently of their own moral issues: equality of opportunity, the right to health care, personal and civic responsibility, sacrifice. Obama's victory speech, and the demeanor with which he delivered it, captured perfectly the tenor of this changed debate and articulated the sober optimism with which we can now all embrace tomorrow: "The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep," but you know what? and you can even go ahead and say it out loud, "Yes We Can."

Reading

For want of proprietary thinking, I record a quote from Jonathan Franzen's How to be Alone essays to reflect the tragicomic mood that Franzen has put me in:

In Philadelphia I began to make unhelpful calculations, multiplying the number of books I'd read in the previous year by the number of years I might reasonably be expected to live, and perceiving in the three-digit product not so much an intimation of mortality (though the news on that front wasn't cheering) as a measure of the incompatibility of the slow work of reading and the hyperkinesis of modern life. All of a sudden it seemed as if the friends of mine who used to read no longer even apologized for having stopped. A young acquaintance who had been an English major, when I asked her what she was reading, replied: "You mean linear reading? Like when you read a book from start to finish?" (63)

Shamwow!

After going around and nerd-calling Stanford students, it is finally decided. I am going to buy myself a Shamwow!

Cool Resource

I recently stumbled upon a very cool resource for thinking about innovation and social entrepreneurship, Stanford University's Entrepreneurship Corner. A little bit like TED.com, it features video talks from prominent "thought leaders." I like it as an interface between academia and business leaders.

The Liberal Arts Lie

There is a growing trend to view higher education as a value-adding commodity. You go to school and you expect to come out employable, with marketable skills. Surely, education is an investment in human capital, but an overly commodified view has its drawbacks. If you view education as a value-adding transaction, then you tend towards vocational training, which adds value in concrete, measurable ways.

Liberal arts institutions fight this trend, a worthy fight in my humble opinion. Rather than cranking out employees, liberal arts colleges try to nurture thoughtful citizens, armed not with skills but with critical thinking. And this is the liberal arts pitch: at our institution, you will learn how to think, you will learn how to learn, and that is the most transferable skill possible. You will receive a broad-based, holistic education that will enable you to pursue any profession you desire. At our institution, we take a broader view of "value."

This is all nice and dandy. I enjoy learning and thinking, and my Swarthmore education cultivated my curiosity and, cliche as it might sound, a lifelong love of learning. Things get a bit messy, though, when you transition from an institution that fights against the value-added view of education to the job market. In the vagaries of the marketplace, it is unreasonably difficult to translate thoughtfulness into social contribution. I see so many of my classmates--who are smart, thoughtful, motivated and filled with good intentions--struggle to find employment where they are happy and feel as though they are contributing real value to society, or at least on their way to doing so.

I am unemployed right now, and I am sleeping on the couch of a high school friend who studied Business for his undergraduate degree. He is an investment banker taking in a handsome salary, and he just finished reading a book, titled Damn, It Feels Good to be a Banker. The author of this obnoxious book ends the preface with this sentence: "Dad, thanks for not letting me study liberal arts."

I am not complaining. There are things in my life that I value much more highly than a bank statement. And I think the liberal arts pitch is ultimately true. I am merely commenting on the difficulty of the transition from a liberal arts education to a nonacademic pursuit. And I think that it is something of a shame.

Behavioral Economics

Taleb gets a shout-out here from NYTimes columnist David Brooks.

I wonder about the legitimacy of behavioral economics in Economics departments across the United States though. So far as I know, undergraduate programs pay it lip service at best. I suppose injecting psychology into the study of economics would detract from the discipline's increasingly mathematical orientation and scientific pretension.

I once expressed to a professor of mine an interest to pursue graduate studies in Economic History. He informed me that economic historians carry just about zero clout and hold just about zero sway over economic policy or the way that economics is taught/studied. Sad reality. The idea of studying models or econometric methodology strikes me as so damned ahistorical, though.

And of course: we should not assume. Because if you assume, then you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me." Take that Econ!

A One-in-a-Million Plea

Dear John Doerr,

Obviously this e-mail is a long shot. But, as you said in your TED Talk, quoting Thomas Friedman, "If you don't go, you don't know." I am an avid reader of Friedman's books and columns, and his writings have helped convince me of the need for the United States to adopt a Code Green response to today's environmental and economic crises. I want to contribute to the cause.

I am writing to you in particular because I was moved by the passion and emotion with which you spoke during your TED Talk. From everything that I have read about you, you seem to share Friedman's vision of America as a place distinguished by its innovative vigor and entrepreneurial spirit. In fact, I would argue that you have largely been the author of this vision during your career at KPCB. But more importantly, you seem to believe in America as a place where a guy like you just might respond to an e-mail from a guy like me.

Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I graduated from Swarthmore College in 2007 with majors in Economics and English Literature, and after teaching high school English for a year in Ecuador, I now live in San Francisco. I decided to move here because, in Michael Lewis' words, "[The United States] is the capital of innovation," and, "Silicon Valley is to the United States what the United States is to the rest of the world." I moved here with the intention of getting involved in greentech innovation, hoping to offer my skills and work ethic towards the cause which I passionately believe in.

Unfortunately, my decision to move to the bay area has coincided with one of the worst periods for the economy in recent memory. In the six weeks that I have been here, I have submitted application materials to over fifty companies and have repeatedly been told, "Sorry, but we are not hiring right now," or some variation of the same sentiment. I have a degree from a presitigious liberal arts college with a strong record of academic achievement, and I am convinced that I have something to offer to greentech innovation, perhaps not in the vein of technical expertise, but at least in the combination of critical thinking, passion and hard work.

Being young, I am eager to learn and to contribute. But I have not yet been able to find the structure required for me to develop what potential I do possess. When I learned of the Greentech Innovation Network and your leadership role in it, I said to myself, "I want to be involved in that." Obama and McCain both speak of the dignity that comes with earning an honest living. As a young American, I seek the dignity that comes with working towards what one believes in. I worry for our country and for the world when young people with profiles similar to mine struggle so mightily to find meaningful employment. So I am writing to ask you how I might get involved in what you are doing with respect to greentech. Perhaps I can assist in research and analysis, conduct literature reviews, or support administratively. I want to be involved in some capacity such that I can be a part of the bottom-up innovation required to reach some solution to the problems that we face. Any guidance that you could offer would be much appreciated.

I humbly ask that you take the time to read my e-mail and I hope to hear back from you sometime. In any case, I admire the work that you have done on your daughter's behalf.

Sincerely,
Brian Chen

Where am I?

Earlier this year in July, I was sitting at the international airport in Quito waiting to board my flight to Buenos Aires. Having just cleared security, and with only a backpack and a duffel bag, my first thought after settling into my seat was, "What the hell am I doing going to Argentina?"

No itinerary. No plans. No friends to visit. Not even reservations for a hostel.

Perhaps there was some vague romantic notion of what it means to be a traveler, on the road...

---

Since coming to San Francisco, I've been shuttling between San Francisco and Stanford pretty regularly. A lot of times, I drive along I-280 late at night on my own, and my car is the only one in sight. Outside the driver's window, I can see the lower third of the night sky. On clear nights, the stars and the moon give the hills that surround the freeway a faint outline. On cloudy nights, it's the orange city glow that emanates from San Francisco. Ahead of me, I see only what my headlights illuminate, lines of reflectors extending miles and miles ahead.

At some moments on these drives, I see in my mind's eye a Google satellite map of the road where I am driving. And the map keeps on zooming out and zooming out until it truly is a satellite view, one oblong circle of light moving slowly through surrounding darkness. Myself separated from my parents by the Pacific Ocean and from my two older sisters by hundreds of miles.

In these moments, I think, "How the hell did I get here?"

---

A job interview, at least of the behavioral variety, often turns out to be a lot like storytelling. The interviewer asks you questions about your resume, various decisions that you've made, why you are interested in his/her particular company. And in response to these questions, you are expected to believe one hundred percent in the narrative fallacy. You package yourself, you tell a story about where you have been and why you are where you are at that particular moment. Causality in the stories that you tell about yourself is made out to be simple, fairly straightforward, rational and thought-out. The purpose is to convey passion for where you are going and that you know what you want.

But during the "What the hell?" moments that I am describing, all your defenses collapse. All the energy required to believe in your self-narrative dissipates, reasons evaporate into the air.

---

Rational Choice Theory? Fuck that. Causality can only be assigned retrospectively. Randomness (what we do not know and cannot explain) overwhelms.

TED

TED.com is one of the coolest sites and one of the coolest ideas I've seen. Something to get excited about.

Also: I am currently reading The New New Thing by Michael Lewis. It profiles Jim Clark and the Silicon Valley boom of the late 90's. And my mind is energized by all the talk of innovation.

Ms. McDowell

I read The Last Lecture today, the book that is based on the last lecture given by the Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch, who passed away just a couple of months ago from pancreatic cancer.

It is a sentimental book, full of feel-good optimism and, many would say, full of cliches. But I don't think anyone can doubt its sincerity or that it touches a chord in....well, all of us. At some point in our lives, we feel the need to distance ourselves from cliches, from the overly sentimental and what we might call the cheesy. But here are a few words on cliches:

"After all, even on cliched phrases, you could hoist true emotion." (The Inheritance of Loss [Desai] 232)

"So I have gone all the way around Robin Hood's barn to arrive at the old platitudes, which I guess is the process of growing up." (The Caine Mutiny [Wouk] 505)

These quotes, obviously stripped of their context, might not resonate for you the way they do for me. But I like these quotes. What does it matter if something is cliche or cheesy if it is sincere and true?

---

Ms. McDowell, my tenth grade English teacher, has been one of the biggest influences in my life. Like Randy Pausch, however, she got cancer at a young age and passed away some years ago. As a teacher, she imparted to her students a passion for literature, beauty and critical thinking...things that I can't seem to shake from the way that I view life.

After reading The Last Lecture, I tried to remember just a couple of the aphorisms/pieces of advice that she shared with us. For me, these McDowellisms contain infinite wisdom and are guideposts that I have come back to continually in my life. Here are a couple off the top of my head. If you are reading this post, and by any chance had Ms. McDowell, perhaps you can help me grow my collection. Or perhaps you have a collection from a teacher of your own.

1. If she ever sensed that her students were particularly stressed, she would say, "Don't worry. You will live just as long and just as happily."

2. The idealism of a few can change the world.

3. You have to be consciously aware to be a fully-functioning human being.

4. Learn a recipe from your mom, so that you can cook your favorite dish when you are away from home.

5. Write postcards to the people that you care about.

6. Boredom is the shriek of unused capacities.

Discussion, Not Debate

If I had to distill my $40k-a-year college education into one lesson, it would be this: the difference between a discussion and a debate. And I will be proud if in my life I approach every problem and every question from the perspective of a discussion and not a debate.

---

I just finished reading The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a book that I highly recommend. Taleb describes himself as an academic libertarian, a term that he defines as "someone who considers that knowledge is subjected to strict rules but not institutional authority, as the interest of organized knowledge is self-perpetuation, not necessarily truth" (307). I am very much taken by this idea of academic libertarianism. It seems very apparent to me that the categories created to describe different academic departments are arbitrarily drawn. And while I am sure that there are benefits to having lines drawn between different disciplines, I am also sure that the lines are often taken too seriously and thereby inhibit cross-pollination between disciplines. Taleb criticizes the insularity of Economics departments in particular.

Let me cite at length Taleb's discussion of the confirmation bias, which is a related idea and which I find to be super interesting:

The first experiment I know of concerning [the confirmation bias] was done by the psychologist P.C. Wason. He presented subjects with the three-number sequence 2, 4, 6, and asked them to try to guess the rule generating it. Their method of guessing was to produce other three-number sequences, to which the experimenter would respond "yes" or "no" depending on whether the new sequences were consistent with the rule. Once confident with answers, the subjects would formulate the rule...The correct rule was "numbers in ascending order," nothing more. Very few subjects discovered it because in order to do so they had to offer a series in descending order (that the experimenter would say "no" to). Wason noticed that the subjects had a rule in mind, but gave him examples aimed at confirming it instead of trying to supply series that were inconsistent with their hypothesis. Subjects tenaciously kept trying to confirm the rules that they had made up. (58)

I find this idea about confirmation bias interesting because it addresses the single most important question about people and knowledge, namely, how people become certain about their knowledge.

If we try to avoid the confirmation bias, then it makes sense to try at every point to disprove our hypotheses rather than seek to prove them. This has everything to do with the company that we keep, the conversations that we choose to hold and what we choose to read. If I hold liberal opinions on politics, I should make an effort to associate with conservatives so that I can challenge my ideas and see if they might be disproved in a way. (Obviously, opinions can't be disproved, but they can be undermined.) I should try to understand the thoughts of those who hold beliefs opposite to my own.

Unfortunately, I can't say that I have been particularly successful in avoiding the confirmation bias in this respect.

---

I grew up in a household that was not particularly politically aware/active, at least not in the realm of US domestic politics. So when I arrived at Swarthmore, I had a vague idea of what it meant to be liberal or conservative, but by no means a deep understanding. But I happened upon a campus that was overwhelmingly liberal and populated by passionate liberals. So from every direction, I was the recipient of liberal ideology, a situation from which it is most difficult to think independently.

Now that I think back on it, the political environment of Swarthmore lent itself to the confirmation bias. Swarthmore students did not seek to disprove their liberal ideas; instead, they surrounded themselves with others who would only confirm their ideas. Presidential debates and State of the Union speeches were the most telling scenes of the confirmation bias. On a Swarthmore TV screen, it was impossible for President Bush to say anything of merit. Over the "boos" and the mockery, I imagine it would have been nearly impossible to hear the words of Sarah Palin or John McCain during the most recent debates.

---

So this is my main point: if we too readily call ourselves "liberal" or "conservative," we take the first step towards engaging in a debate rather than a discussion. In a discussion, you are not trying to convince, you are trying to understand. A discussion in many ways is similar to a debate, but it is importantly seasoned with humility and the earnest desire to understand the other perspective. A debate usually implies an unbending allegiance to one's own beliefs, and the desire to persuade another lends itself to the confirmation bias (you will pull only from evidence that support your argument). A hallmark of intellectual integrity ought to be the willingness to be disproved, and the willingness to change one's opinions.

Ironically, the one lesson that I probably cherish the most from the classrooms of Swarthmore was very seldomly practiced outside the classroom (at least in large public gatherings; behind closed doors, things were a bit better).

The Problem with Humility

I studied English Literature in college, and part of the reason I studied English Literature is because every time that I read a novel, a short story or a poem, I feel humbled. Total mastery of a text is impossible. There are always different things that a reader can bring to a text, always different things to be seen, always different insights to be made.

But reading with humility flattens the array of possible interpretations by in a way granting legitimacy to all readings.

---

A lot of my parents' friends in the United States, being Taiwanese or Taiwanese-American and being staunch supporters of Taiwanese independence, vote Republican. Why? Because Republicans and neoconservatives usually hold a harder line against the Communists on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. They back up their "globalization" or "democratization" project with force, and that bodes favorably for the fledgling democracy in Taiwan.

This makes me ask, On what basis should voters make their decisions? Let us say, for simplicity's sake, that Republican foreign policy is better for the future of Taiwan, but let us say that I like the more liberal domestic policies of the Democrats. Do I base my decision as a voter on the single issue of foreign policy towards Taiwan? Do I vote with my personal interest in mind or with national interest in mind?

If I vote according to personal interest, then I can hope that the aggregation of all self-interested votes will result in the best mixture of policies for the nation, much in the same vein as Adam Smith's idea of the Invisible Hand. Plus, if a voting bloc can be organized around the single issue that I care most about, then that single issue will gain political momentum.

On the other hand, if I vote according to national interest, I run the risk that my personal interest will be sacrificed for what I deem to be the greater good, and that the single issue I care most about will lose political steam. So it isn't immediately clear to me: Do I vote for what is immediately best for me? Or what I think is best for the country?

---

If you practice humility in your life, it becomes much more difficult to hold strong opinions. After all, in how many subjects are you an authority? Along the same lines of logic, practicing humility often paralyzes, handicapping action. Let us say that you want to help in the fight against global warming, and that you think about buying a hybrid as your personal contribution. But then you read an article that the additional carbon emissions from the production of the hybrid far offsets the benefits from switching cars. What do you do? How do you determine the net benefit or cost of your ultimate decision?

I've always struggled with the idea of decision-making under the conditions of uncertainty. Surely, there is a way to reconcile humility and decision-making; otherwise, there really is no way forward.

Sir Charles Barkley

A couple of nights ago, Sir Charles Barkley made an appearance on The Larry King Live Show. Barkley, who supports Obama in this election, describes himself as an independent. According to him, the United States is tragically divided--not along partisan lines, not along racial lines, but along socioeconomic lines. For Barkley, it is the rich against the poor, the haves against the have-nots. The poor are losing and have been losing for at least the last eight years, and that is why Sir Charles Barkley supports the Obama-Biden ticket.

But when asked about the economy and the respective merits of the economic policy proposals put forth by McCain and Obama, Sir Charles Barkley declined to comment and instead deferred to the opinion of his fellow guest on the show, Ben Stein, an economist.

Joe the Plummer, in an interview he gave for a news channel, recently called Obama's tax policies socialist. Why should Americans be penalized for financial success? Why would we want to "spread the wealth"? In reality, Obama is merely calling for returning to the Clinton-era tax rate of 39% for households earning more than a quarter million. Was the US a socialist country under the Clinton administration?

What Barkley and Joe show is that the Economics IQ of the general American population is somewhat lacking. Economics is a tough subject, and, in matters of the economy, most of us defer to "the experts." When political commentators tout the economy as the deciding factor in this election, general public ignorance about the mechanisms of the economy troubles me. How is one expected to vote as an informed voter?

As evidenced by last night's discussion of Joe the Plummer, both candidates claim to champion the needs of the middle class. How many voters in this country can give coherent arguments about why their candidate is right and the other candidate wrong?

In an age where people defer to "the experts" on most issues, how is one to remain independently-minded?

In a slideshow presentation that Richard Dawkins once gave at Swarthmore College, he put up a slide of two kids standing side by side. Underneath one kid was the caption, "Keynesian," and under the other kid, the caption, "Monetarist." Dawkins was poking fun at the idea that kids could subscribe to religious belief systems at such a young age.

What shocks me in this election is how readily people, especially my peers, are to proclaim themselves "liberal" or "conservative." Obviously, we can't all be experts on all issues, but it seems a more rigorous examination of one's beliefs is called for.

The Q That Counts

How probabilistically employed am I?

Guess this question puts things into perspective.

Ergodicity

I have only recently been introduced to the idea of probabilistic thinking, and I like what I see. Probabilistic thinking refers to a way of seeing the world through the lens of statistics and probability theory. My introduction to this has come from Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness and Michael Lewis' Moneyball. I suppose the ideas of probabilistic thinking are not new to me. I studied statistics and econometrics while in college, but Taleb and Lewis have made the implications and importance of probabilistic thinking much more clear to me.

What appeals to me about probabilistic thinking is that it devalues actual outcomes in favor of expected outcomes. Actual outcomes are very often deceptive and probabilistic thinking alerts us to this fact and cautions us against drawing conclusions from individual events. It seems like a simple and very obvious insight, but I wonder how many people actually practice probabilistic thinking because it is so inherently abstract.

We are trained to treat results as being important. It doesn't matter if a team has a 0.6 probability of winning a game. What matters is if the team manages to notch a tally in the win column. We are trained to judge things by results rather than by processes. A lot of people and a lot of companies will tell you that they are "results-oriented." But when was the last time that you heard someone tell you that he/she is "process-oriented?" Part of the problem is that processes are much harder to observe.

In a recent job interview, I was asked the question, "What has been one of the biggest decisions you have made in your life? How did you arrive at your decision?" My instinct (and I think the instinct of most people) is to go through an inventory of decisions I've had to make in my life and think about which has been most important, and then to think about the process through which I arrived at the decision.

But you see how that is sequenced? Precedence is given to the decision...you think about the decision first, and then you think about the process. The instinct is to think about our lives as a series of big and small, but all discrete, decisions.

And this, finally, is where my discussion comes to the idea of ergodicity. As I understand from Taleb, ergodicity is the idea that a very long sample path will show its long-term properties. I am sure that there is a more technically and mathematically rigorous definition, but I like the elegance of the idea. Despite short-term volatility, things eventually settle according to their long-term properties. A very Aristotelian idea, I suppose. Like telos.

But if we take ergodicity seriously, then how important are individual decisions at all? How big of a decision was it for me to move to San Francisco as opposed to Philadelphia or New York City? The generator of this decision as well as of past and future decisions remains the same. Eventually, my life will settle into its long-term properties. So the difficult but important thing is to examine those long-term properties.

What started me on this train of thought was a passage from Philip Zimbardo's book, The Time Paradox:

Compared to people from other cultures, Americans today seem more obsessed with personal happiness and have been criticized for having become a feel-good rather than a do-good culture. We are obsessed with looking good, with having a great tan, tight buns, and blemish-free skin. Yet what is important in life is more than skin-deep. It is a spiritual inner happiness that does not diminish over time. (256-257)

Thought about in this way, and viewed through probabilistic thinking, personal happiness over a short time horizon is not all that important. The important question to ask, strangely enough, ought to be: How probabilistically happy are you?

Expected outcome over actual outcome. A long, long time horizon over a short time horizon.

Words of Wisdom (Empty Words)

McCain is a sage. Take a look at his words on Social Security and Medicare:

"Look -- look, it's not that hard to fix Social Security, Tom. It's just tough decisions. Social Security is not that tough. We know what the problems are, my friends, and we know what the fixes are. We've got to sit down together across the table. It's been done before.

I saw it done with our -- our wonderful Ronald Reagan, a conservative from California, and the liberal Democrat Tip O'Neill from Massachusetts. That's what we need more of, and that's what I've done in Washington.

Sen. Obama has never taken on his party leaders on a single major issue. I've taken them on. I'm not too popular sometimes with my own party, much less his.

So Medicare, it's going to be a little tougher. It's going to be a little tougher because we're talking about very complex and difficult issues.

My friends, what we have to do with Medicare is have a commission, have the smartest people in America come together, come up with recommendations, and then, like the base-closing commission idea we had, then we should have Congress vote up or down.

Let's not let them fool with it anymore. There's too much special interests and too many lobbyists working there. So let's have -- and let's have the American people say, "Fix it for us.""

Substance? When McCain says that he knows what the fixes are for Social Security, surely a hundred million pairs of ears prick up in anticipation only to be disappointed. What does that last sentence even mean? "Fix it for us." Sounds like a huge deflection of responsibility from all parties involved.

More of the Same

I don't claim to be an authority on anything, and I certainly don't claim to be an astute political observer. But, like most other twenty-somethings, when election time rolls around, I try to keep up with political developments, I try to educate myself on the issues, and I try to make a decision as an independent, critical thinker.

Here are my initial thoughts about tonight's debate:

1) More of the same: Even for someone like myself, for someone who is not a political junkie, these two presidential candidates sound like broken records. Both candidates made the same attacks on each other, the same arguments about the same issues in the same words. I bet that if you took the transcript from the first presidential debate and simply jumbled the words around, you'd end up with something very similar to what we heard in the second debate. Value added: zero.

2) "Speak softly and carry a big stick": So McCain cites Teddy Roosevelt as a role model and uses this quote to say that Obama is dangerous because he is all talk and no walk. Then, in response to a question about Russia, McCain says something like: "I looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes and I saw three letters: K-G-B." Jeez. Tell me: is it diplomatically okay for someone vying to be the President of the United States of America to say something like that? That doesn't sound very diplomatic or tactful to me. A lot like: "I looked George W. Bush in the face and I saw one thing: well, okay, that's a lie, I couldn't discern a single thought."

3) I don't want to hear about voting records or even about the details of policy proposals anymore. It's too much "he said, she said" business, and it requires too much effort to figure out who to believe on what. Obama says that he wants to cut taxes for the middle class, McCain says that Obama will raise taxes for the middle class. Obama says that McCain wants to give all sorts of tax breaks to oil companies, but McCain says that Obama voted in favor of legislation filled with pork for oil companies. Back and forth, back and forth, who could possibly know what to believe?

Instead, I would rather hear about values and what principles will guide decision-making. That's why I think the question about whether health care is a right, a privilege or a responsibility was such a good question. If you look at the candidates' answers to that question, then you can begin to understand what the fundamental differences are between the two platforms.

4) The economy. Both candidates claim their respective policy proposals will create jobs and move the economy forward. How does one know who to believe or whose policy would be effective?

And, on the economy, I am confused. Both candidates talk about reigning in government deficit. McCain goes so far as to recommend a spending freeze on certain governmental programs. But it is precisely when an economy is in recession that a government should be deficit spending. Isn't that standard Keynesian economics? The US got out of the Great Depression riding the tide of FDR's New Deal, which was deficit spending. The important thing to consider is the composition of the deficit spending, whether or not the spending is productive and will yield returns in the future. Money spent on nation-building in Iraq should be diverted to nation-building projects at home. The usual suspects: infrastructure, education, green technology. But the point is to change the composition of government spending and not necessarily to cut back. Right? Or is my understanding of economics horribly askew?

5) Strategy vs. Tactics. What is the goddamn difference? McCain, who claims superior knowledge on this, seems to use the words "strategic" and "tactical" rather loosely. I understand the difference between strategy and tactics to be very similar to the difference between ends and means. Strategy belongs in the realm of politics whereas tactics belong in the military. Understood in this way, the surge in Iraq was a military tactic designed to fulfill the strategic objective of establishing a sustainable democracy in Iraq.

So the strategic difference between Obama and McCain is drastic. Obama wants the strategic objective of the War on Terror to be the elimination of bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. Meanwhile, McCain's strategic objective focuses on installing a friendly democracy in the Middle East. If the candidates could talk about strategy more coherently, I think the American public would benefit.

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Well, I think the debate tonight was a big disappointment. As a viewer, I want to see the two candidates engage each other in a serious way. I don't want to hear the same campaign trail slogans being rehashed over and over again. In these debates, the questions asked seem irrelevant. Instead, each candidate seems to have answers before questions are asked.

The questions are made to fit the answers (already preprepared) rather than the other way around.