Philosophy on not quite an expert

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Luck Favors the Lucky

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In The Art of Doing Science and Engineering, Richard Hamming repeats Louis Pasteur’s remark: “Luck favors the prepared mind”, emphasizing personal responsibility in success. However, if we examine it through the book, the prepared mind itself depends on luck.

Hamming’s prepared mind can think and understand fundamental concepts like n-dimensional spaces. By his observation, few minds can do so. By my observation, lucky minds can do so.

Hamming also describes through various anecdotes the problems and resources he had access to at Bell Labs. Throughout the stories, the rise of digital computers which few predicted frames many of Hamming’s successes. These too resemble luck.

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Eat Sh*t and Die

Sat, 09 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I originally started reading The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard Hamming a few years ago. Though I got distracted by more easily digestible books, so I dropped it a few chapters in. Now untethered, I finally finished the book. If you think you’re getting a proper summary, you’ve got another think coming: I’m here to blather on about a tangentially related topic!

In his chapters about artificial intelligence (AI), Hamming asks: to what extent can machines think? Before that, to what extent can people think?

Respectable smuggling

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

As part of my meta-curation, I read articles recommended by The Browser. This week, The Browser recommended “The Peoples of America” by Rudyard William Lynch, best known for WhatifAltHist.

I initially found the article an interesting exploration of the influence of geography, ancestry, and ethnicity on American culture. However, I noticed something felt off. Lynch nods toward the fall of civilization due to degeneracy:

The Edenic California of the 20th century no longer exists, and has been replaced by a cross between Blade Runner and the degeneracy of ancient atheists’ multicultural Babylon or Rome. California is the story of a society that has everything—wealth, genius, perfect geography, strong political institutions, and military protection—brought down by the one thing it does not have: a functioning culture … . One of my good friends is a native Washingtonian and another an old stock Californian, and both feel that the places they grew up have now been irrevocably destroyed. They belonged to the old cowboy Western culture, while its new inhabitants are trying to build a post-Christian, post-Western, possibly transhumanist society, which we see manifest most clearly with Silicon Valley’s various strange ideologies.

Idealized religious bodies

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

My biologist friend describes the ecosystem of human beliefs like an ecosystem of organisms - those with more fit characteristics will more likely survive and grow.

The National Museum of Asian Art has an exhibit about religious art from South Asia. In it, I noticed the Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist art shared the concept of an enlightened state without form, taking form in the idealized bodies of religious figures. The enlightened state without form and the idealized bodies of religious figures both represent more fit characteristics of a human belief system.

Identity description

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

How an organism describes itself can tell you a lot about that organism. For example, I idealize myself as earnest and rigorous, and I think I should be dating more!

With my previous lease expired and without an upcoming lease, I’m taking the opportunity to spend the week in the DC area. Touring Capitol Hill, I’ve seen how the US describes itself: a union of heterogeneous peoples.¹ We strive to support some of those peoples more. However, we disagree which of those peoples we should support more, and how. In general though, we recognize the historic struggle of Black and Indigenous Americans for their civil rights.

Notes on tasting notes III: ambiguity

Sat, 26 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In “How to Talk About Wine Like a Japanese Tea Master”, Ogasawara challenges:

[A]re you sure that when you say “It tastes like a peach” that every peach tastes the same, or everyone else tastes a peach the same way you do? Peaches are tough enough to pin down, but what about fuzzy figs and gushing oranges, candied cherries or Asian pears…

Instead of referring to categories of notes as I’ve suggested before, Ogasawara finds a high-minded alternative, emphasis on high:

Notes on tasting notes II: precision

Sat, 19 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

My coworker hosted a wine tasting with a group including me. For the first wine, we came up with specific notes like lychee and raspberry. Even though I wet the tip of my nose with the red wine, I couldn’t smell both lychee and raspberry, only lychee or raspberry. The hosting coworker wrote down many notes for their sommelier class.

For the second wine, the hosting coworker remarked, to controversy and my surprise, that once you discern a category of notes, you’re just selecting an instance for effect. For example, you discern stone fruit, so you could just select fresh peaches or baked apricots to evoke varying impressions.

Notes on tasting notes I: usefulness

Sat, 12 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Drinking beverages with complex tastes brings me, and many others, great joy. Like wow, it tastes like this, and that, and a little like that?

However, making beverages with good complex tastes takes a lot of effort, so costs a lot of money. Before I pay the money,¹ I want to approximate the complex tastes. Tasting notes help that approximation.

Tasting notes matter more for categories of drinks² with complex and varied tastes. And they better approximate those tastes when referring to other consistent, well-known flavors. For example, I’d say this tea tastes like peach; I wouldn’t say this peach tastes like tea.

Fish blossom at the probably-not end of the world

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“What are you thinking about?” I ask my coworker.

“How everything will get more expensive, because of the tariffs.” My coworker smacks me with a big, genuine answer.

“Well, better save up.” We laugh it off, save it for later because we should work now.

When I meet my coworker, a self-professed Eeyore, over the weekend, they worry about the times. It doesn’t feel like the end of the world. Though it doesn’t feel certain the world will go on, or more particularly, go on well.

Please just remove the feature flag

Sat, 22 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Artificial intelligence (✨AI✨) philosophers think about artificial general intelligence (✨AGI✨), when ✨AI✨ becomes ✨super duper✨ capable, and ✨super duper✨ wild changes occur in society. Some credible philosophers think ✨AGI✨ will come in a few short years.

The last time I used ✨AI✨ to remove a fully enabled feature flag, it made 3 attempts:

In the first attempt, it replaced the feature flag enumeration value with a bunch of comment delimiters - I’d rather it delete the value, though fine - “oops, let me try again”
In the second attempt, it replaced the bunch of comment delimiters with a single comment delimiter - again I’d rather it delete the value, though fine - “oops, let me try again”
In the third attempt, it didn’t even show me what it did, it just gave up - “you’ll just have to do it yourself”

So I guess I’m still waiting for ✨AGI✨. Maybe it’ll come after mass self-driving cars.

Mad as a cucumber

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I had a cucumber dish that made me mad.

To avoid the long line at Ichiran, I diverted to Bites of Xian, and ordered the garlic cucumber.

Some bites tasted so sweet, like nasty candy, that it made me mad.

Other bites tasted so weirdly spicy, in my nose and in the back of my head, that it made me mad.

And they served the cucumber in such big, unwieldy chunks that it made me mad.

Woo-woo warriors and bio-hackers

Sat, 25 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I won’t go gentle into that good night, if it’s the last thing I do. We all want to live long and well, though different people pursue that in wildly different ways.

On one side, we have the woo-woo warriors, who reject science and embrace energy crystals. Rather, they practice alternative medicine, including acupuncture, reiki, and magical space corn.

I can sympathize with disillusionment with scientific institutions, which have a history of unfair, un-scientific prejudice. However, I still consider the scientific method itself our best method for finding truths in the physical world.

How many times?

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When I suffered insomnia, I thought of The End. Bipolar and somewhat delirious, I felt excited for The End of my insomnia, and I felt scared for The End of the lives of my beloved. I listened, to Japanese Breakfast’s mourning, and to John Green’s melancholy:

[H]ow many times then, really, do I get to look at a tree? 12,395? There has to be an exact number. Let’s just say it is 12,395. Absolutely, that is a lot, but it is not infinite, and anything less than infinite seems too measly a number and is not satisfactory.

My fragrance

Sat, 28 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

A fragrance-making primer from the Institute for Art and Olfaction (IAO) got me excited to make another iteration of my Hwyl.

This iteration feels much more mine, not just in the sense/scents that I mixed. I drew more from the earnest and scientific spirit of the IAO rather than the pretentious spirit of Aesop.

On materials:

We believe, at the IAO, that nothing is inherently more valuable than anything else in this weird, wonderful, multiplicitous world. In other words, no one way of working is superior to another. However, we tend to encourage people to try everything, to work with both naturals AND synthetics, to make use of accords if they want to, but always be open to changing their minds.

You're climbing up the wrong hill

Sat, 14 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

You can imagine an optimization problem as a landscape, where higher elevation represents a better result, such as higher enjoyment. You often face so many possibilities that you can’t see much of the landscape. So as a simple heuristic, you might just keep heading higher until you reach a peak.

Obviously though, some peaks rise higher than others. Perhaps you’re climbing up the wrong hill, such as with:

Competition plain water - you (too) serious?
Tinned seafood - we have fresh seafood now!
“Healthier” “natural” sweeteners - probably better to get fewer sweets and more vegetables

Like gradient ascent/descent in machine learning practice, you should consider big changes over incremental improvements every once in a while.

Comparative tasting

Sat, 03 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

People generally have better relative judgement than absolute judgement.

For example, I could confidently tell you one island looks farther than the other, though could not confidently tell you the distance between any of the islands and me.

In fine beverages (coffee, tea, wine, etc.), you can use your relative judgement in comparative tasting to highlight tasting notes. For instance, this coffee tastes more fruity than the other; this tea tastes sweeter than the other.

Curating curation

Sat, 08 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

With online consumption, we have more choices than we can effectively individually evaluate. Recommendation algorithms can help. However, they reflect the oft-unknown biases and incentives of their creators, and often suffer homogeneity.

While you could just satisfice, my posts demonstrate that I don’t just simply satisfice. I use curators to navigate the vast space of online consumption.

I use curators so much, in fact, that I’ve curated curators:

specialized curators, like Sleep Like The Dead for mattresses
rigorous general curators, like Wirecutter
community-based curators, like Reddit

I’ve felt more efficient satisficing via curated curators.

Mourning my wall shelf

Sat, 18 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I spent so much time and effort making my wall shelf! Then I let it sit behind my couch for a few weeks. Finally, I put it up … and noticed it was taking my wall down!

The walls of my apartment just can’t support such a hefty wall shelf, and so I will donate it (i.e. its pieces?) to the public makerspace that enabled me make it in the first place.

Hwyl III: reflections

Sat, 11 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I finally made my copycat Hwyl! 3 reflections:

Basics get you to substance

In arts of smell and taste (tea, coffee, wine, cheese, perfume, etc.) you reach for “notes”, suggestions for what to expect.

You can keep the notes basic, and people will understand. For example, while mixing the essential oils, I was smelling for woodsy, citrusy, and floral notes, to balance them. Anyone with a working sense of smell would understand what those mean.

Ferris values choices

Sat, 04 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I like Rust, a lot:

I like Rust’s mascot, Ferris the crab. Ferris puns on Rust, and “Rustacean” (the term for a Rust enthusiast) puns on crustacean.

While scuttling around Ferris, I ran into Ferris’s creator’s website. On it, Ferris’s creator declares:

Company values are useless if they’re just generic good things anyone would want. A meaningful value is something whose opposite could be a different company’s value. True values are choices.

Hwyl II: optics

Sat, 27 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I framed before that a product consists of function and aesthetics. Analogously, I frame a job consists of substance and optics. By “substance”, I mean a job does something useful, and by “optics”, I mean everything we could vary while maintaining the same substance, especially how someone appears to do a “better” job.

Heuristically, you can tell if a job has less substance if it has more optics.¹ Call me a philistine, I believe “high” fashion jobs have little substance because they have so much optics.

Hwyl I: aesthetics

Sat, 20 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When you buy a product, you pay for function and aesthetics. By “function”, I mean the product does something useful, and by “aesthetics”, I mean everything we could vary while maintaining the same function, especially how the product appears.

I understand the distinction between function and aesthetics becomes hazy depending on people’s values. However, I wouldn’t consider it arbitrary. Some of it comes from the world - a world where people must eat, for example, about which I have a lot to say.

Chili butter II: against "authenticity"

Sat, 02 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

People laud food as “authentic”. I do not.

To clarify, I do not condemn “authentic” foods; I just don’t consider “authenticity” a merit in itself.

Of course, we can point out the fraught boundaries of “authenticity”. However, let’s just assume we have a pretty-shared notion of “authenticity”.

Whatever merits lie behind authenticity we can consider over authenticity. For example, we may seek authentic foods to support the people who make them. We may also avoid inauthentic foods to express our distaste for one particular group taking from another. Then the merit lies in supporting those people, and the de-merit lies in that group taking from the other.

Chili butter I: importance

Sat, 24 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Before I write about food yet again, I wanted to emphasize the importance of food.

We have to eat food, so food reflects the realities and eccentricities of our lives.

Folding Ideas provides a great example (4:05):

We can say a lot about food, and some of it matters. What I, not quite an expert, say, of course, does not.

Woodworking III: anti-router

Sat, 03 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

While woodworking my own wall shelf, I also planned to router the back of the body of wood, so it would sit over the wall shelf bracket.

Unfortunately, the wood listed as thicker than the bracket actually measured as thick as the bracket, after I already bought it. I can’t router that! Well, not easily.

People don’t want quarter-inch drill bits. They want quarter-inch holes.

Similarly, I just needed an appropriately-shaped hole in the back of my piece of wood. I figured out with the public makerspace member that instead of routering, we could “anti-router.” They cut some of the extra wood to glue to the side, to hide the wall shelf bracket - much easier!

Woodworking II: eager mistakes

Sat, 27 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

While woodworking my own wall shelf, I needed to drill large holes into the body of wood.

In the public makerspace, someone was helping me drill. On the fifth hole, we broke through the surface of the wood.

Oh no! The other guy looked a bit panicked.

Not me, though (after a second). I took this as an opportunity to learn about repairing wood.

People say you (should) learn from mistakes. Then we should feel eager about making mistakes in lower-stakes environments, like, you know, woodworking your own wall shelf.

Woodworking I: trial over over-theory

Sat, 20 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I started woodworking a wall shelf! I’ve decided to record some lessons here.

I spent a good chunk of time theorizing about woodworking this shelf with my carpenter friend. However, at some point you have to actually try it out!

When I went to the public makerspace, the helpful member guided me to cut a scrap piece of wood (after I signed a waiver of liability of course!). I eyed the slight deviation of the cut from the marked line, and adjusted the line on my large, expensive piece of wood for the shelf. With that, I cut it exactly as intended.

$0.10 Fix Vs. $300 Fix

Sat, 09 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

(titled like a BuzzFeed video)

Just ask the basic questions, and act on the basic answers, and you’ll get surprisingly good results.

My AirPods Max were suffering terrible connectivity. Half of the time, when you put them on, they wouldn’t connect; and when you took them off, they wouldn’t re-connect. I had to keep resetting them.

When I took them to the Apple Store, the Genius told me it would cost $300 to repair them, with no warranty afterward. She straight up suggested to instead buy another one.

Bardo goals

Sat, 11 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I originally wanted to call them “limbo goals”. However, “bardo”, the period between death and rebirth, feels more precise.

I’ve died at Glean, and I’ve yet to rebirth at Ramp. In between, I have time to think about, and hopefully move toward, how I want to live.

In my final week at Glean, I asked many of my coworkers what they would do with a few weeks not needing to work. Travel, see friends, sure. Most interestingly, some emphasized the philosophical importance of doing nothing.

Good apologies

Sat, 26 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Most people don’t communicate well, and by extension most people don’t apologize well.

A bad apology, a selfish apology, downplays the impact and throws out excuses, in an attempt to make the apologizer feel better. However, if you hurt me, you don’t get to dictate how it affected me, and I don’t really care about why it happened.

A good apology, a generous one, understands or explores the impact and moves to mitigate it going forward. It takes more, and it gives more.

Hyperspecialization

Sat, 29 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I get my oolong tea from one purveyor (Song Tea), and my Japanese tea from another (Kettl).

I get my tinned fish from one restaurant (The Anchovy Bar), and my oysters from another (Hog Island Oyster Co.).

My taste, and the modern American economy it seems, rewards getting really, really good at something really, really specific.

However, does this hyperspecialization impede us from the joys and value of mixing specialties?

A sleepy earnestness

Sat, 24 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this year, in the face of a brutal insomnia that reduced me to less than 6 hours of sleep per day, I asked my friend how to sleep.

A few months before, this friend had discovered a tumor in their brain. The tumor had distorted their sleep cycle enough to intrigue a panel of researchers.

I got some sleep and health advice from my friend. More importantly, I gained perspective.

The melancholies of helping an old Chinese man get back to Oakland

Sat, 17 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The distanced melancholy of not knowing your mother tongue, the native language of your mother, your father, and most of your family
The vicarious melancholy of seeing someone live in a region spoken and written primarily alien
The selfish melancholy of “losing” an hour, because you don’t have 100% confidence this person will find help otherwise, and missing your scheduled exercise class
The fearful melancholy of becoming more dependent on others as you age
The vain melancholy of wanting to publicize your act, and thinking a truly good person would not
The yearning melancholy of wanting to know more of the colliding half-stranger, waving bye as you go your unknown ways

A day by your self

Sat, 10 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

To be alone is to be entirely your self. Well, as much as an individual constitutes a self.

(You can bike 6 miles to consume an unusual pastry. And screw it, follow that up with a frivolous coffee flight and museum visit.

(You can quietly seethe at the golf course you have to walk through, and the European’s sculpture of Le Chinois, the Chinese man.

(And you can walk to the beach and take pictures of amazingly ugly rocks. And the backs of strangers clearly having a moment from embarrassing angles.

Smart plug hammer

Sat, 06 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

You can turn any “dumb” electrical device into a “smart” one by plugging it into a smart plug. Then you can automatically schedule turning it on and off.

However, to a person with a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Instead of solving the problem with my noisy refrigerator, I just set the refrigerator to turn off around when I expect to sleep and wake up. And now, stuck with a “smart” half-solution, I end up trying to ignore the noisy refrigerator during the day.

Moving chaos 6: Spacemacs mover

Sat, 18 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This time, I hired a mover to move my stuff. Somehow, I found the one mover who also uses Spacemacs, a particular community configuration of Emacs.

Unprompted, the mover told me about Free Software, Lisp machines, and Richard Stallman. I had only told other people about these topics; it felt almost surreal to have someone tell me, doubly so my mover!

My mover went to UC Berkeley, and had to drop out due to immigration issues. I felt a real kinship, and that mere circumstance kept us in wildly different conditions. So for the first time, I left a 5-star review, and tipped over a hundred dollars.

Moving chaos 5: moving again

Sat, 11 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I liked my new apartment, except the landmine I tripped on.

My bedroom overlooked the street, right off the highway into the roundabout. And every day, independent of when I went to sleep, I would wake up around 5 or 6 AM. I was getting only 5 or 6 hours of sleep most days.

2 weeks in, I had had enough. I tried earplugs, and a white noise machine. Yet I could still hear the street, haunting me, taunting me.

COVID lonely

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I done caught COVID! I tested positive for the first time, three years after the pandemic started.

I spent this week mostly alone. My roommate is still gradually moving in, and for everyone’s well-being I didn’t go to the office, and canceled my plans with friends.

I recently read The Lonely Stories, a collection of essays covering the complexities of loneliness. One of the essays related the writer’s experience at the beginning of the pandemic. While it made me grateful for the relatively disease-free path I’ve had since then, it also reminded me of the intense feelings of loneliness that come with COVID.

Home in the Design District

Sat, 18 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As I walk through the Design District of San Francisco, which houses many interior design showrooms, I see parts of homes. I see shiny model kitchens and bathrooms, even elaborate lamps. However, I don’t see “homes.”

I don’t see “homes,” because I know no one is really using these kitchens, bathrooms, nor lamps right now. They currently serve as display and merchandise.

I realize then that my intuitive idea of “home” involves people living. It includes relationships and behaviors, not just stuff - something to keep in mind as I make my “home” in my new place.

How to read today

Sat, 24 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I just finished reading How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. Originally published in 1940, the book has aged surprisingly well, save for a few antiquated passages.

Since 1940, the Internet has radically changed how we read. Websites and search engines have largely replaced physical media. And against this unprecedentedly large collection of digital media, their advice, that different pieces deserve different amounts/levels of your time and effort, rings even more true.

Sidegrading your audio

Sat, 03 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I watch Steve Guttenberg for the crustiness. The lack of polish suggests an authenticity, an honesty. If audio equipment ever did have a past golden age, Steve embodies it.

As with every Black Friday, I considered buying new audio equipment. In the video above, Steve recommends getting something drastically different. Rather than spending progressively more upgrading the same type of setup, try a different setup. In my case, instead of upgrading my bookshelf speakers, I got an entry-level record player.

Consuming experiences

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

“Buy experiences, not things”, so goes the popular advice. Things, after a short-lived honeymoon period, will quickly come to disappoint you. Experiences, by their short-livedness, will not.

A notable body of research supports this, though as with many (trendy) social science findings, I’d test intuitively and tentatively, waiting to see if the theory reproduces and generalizes.

Under this guidance, I have consumed many new experiences. I have traveled to see friends in different cities, for example. I treasure those times.

Experience, interpretation, experience

Sat, 29 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Philosophies as broad as Buddhism to Stoicism separate experience from interpretation. For example, you may experience someone looking at you, and you may interpret that look to mean attraction, or hatred, or nothing at all. Though we often share interpretation, the separation from experience emphasizes choice: we choose how we interpret our experiences.

In turn, our interpretation creates another experience. Depending on how you interpreted the look from the previous example, you would feel and act differently. This forms a loose cycle between experience and interpretation.

Uncle Roger

Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, I’ve been watching a lot of Uncle Roger videos. The videos follow the Asian Uncle Roger character watching non-Asian people cook Asian dishes, bemoaning how incorrectly or badly the non-Asian person is cooking the Asian dish.

The videos stand out to me for their relatability. The character reminds me of the ups and downs of growing up with Asian parents, and more relevantly for this post, the flaccid attempts at Asian-ish dishes that peppered my growing up in suburban Michigan.

Yoga at 1.1x speed

Sat, 24 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, as a mindful mommy, I’ve been going on my 30-day Yoga Journey, a free yoga video series on YouTube. Those who remember I used to listen to music at 1.4x speed will suspect I don’t follow along at regular speed. Indeed, I’m sprinting along the path of my journey at 1.1x speed.

Yes, at first it felt almost sacrilegious to me too. I want you to cast aside your initial judgement, though, and re-consider the arguments I presented in my post about music at 1.4x speed. As consumers of media, we have the power of interpretation - to reproduce the media in our own way. That includes on a TV or on a phone, in a quiet apartment or in a noisy bar, and yes, at a slower or at a faster speed than 1.0x.

Just because you don't understand it ...

Sat, 17 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

As I peruse the grocery store shelves, “health” foods bombard me: manuka honey, goji berries, kava, to name a few.

These “health” foods testify to America’s fraught relationship with food. Soda companies have lobbied a balanced diet can include regularly drinking tens of grams of sugar; now they sell sugar-free diet soda. Fad diets, often questionable or contradictory, now line our magazines and our un-skippable ads. Poverty now increases your chances of both hunger and obesity.

Mindful mommy

Sat, 03 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, I decided to buy a few essential oils. Quite simply, I like the smell, and they function well as a flexible perfume.

I started by visiting a local store to figure out what scents I liked. Self-conscious, I noticed all other customers comprised young women.

Back in my place, I compared essential oil brands and diagnosed a serious infection of multi-level marketing (MLM). MLM sellers exploit disproportionately vulnerable (poor, socially restricted) women under the guise of starting your own business. So serious the infection, one brand had a page “Compare to MLMs”, which made me pretty uncomfortable about the business of essential oils.

Instrumental and terminal

Sat, 21 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We can characterize goals as either “instrumental” or “terminal.” We care about instrumental goals in support of others, and about terminal goals in themselves. For example, the instrumental goal of figuring out whether seaweed counts as a plant supports the terminal goal of understanding the natural world.

The distinction between instrumental and terminal depends on perspective, where broader perspectives bias toward instrumental. A hard drive has a terminal goal of storing and loading data. More broadly, a computer has an instrumental goal of storing and loading data to support a terminal goal of performing useful computation. More broadly, a person with a computer has an instrumental goal of performing useful computation to support an instrumental goal of figuring our whether seaweed counts as a plant to support a terminal goal of understanding the natural world.

The Ship of Mountain View

Sat, 12 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Summer 2019, I stayed in a “tech hostel,” a massively shared house with over 20 people, including one guy living out of his car.

This week, I visited for the first time in years. What I remember most: “the same, different.”

I recognized the buildings in which I worked, the restaurants downtown in which I ate. Yet along the bike path, I witnessed alien structures, mystified by the hues of sunset and later the dark of night as I biked from the office to the hostel.

Bottlehead Crack

Sat, 18 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

For Cyber Monday, I ended up purchasing the Bottlehead Crack, a DIY headphones amplifier targeted at high impedance headphones like the Sennheiser HD 6XX I already owned. In this post, I’d like to break down why.

Optimizing seller perspective

I think of price from the seller’s perspective as the sum of

cost of inputs + cost of logistics + value of performance + value of marketing + value of usability

Assuming, I cannot control the cost of inputs nor logistics, if I hold the price constant and want to maximize the value of performance, I would “diminish” the value of marketing and usability.

Comparing audio equipment

Sat, 04 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

This week, while shopping for a new headphones amp, I’ve been looking for “best” headphones amps. This begs the question: how do we best compare audio equipment?

Resolution vs. profile

Okay, so obviously on a high level the “best” audio equipment produces the “best” audio. However, what constitutes “best” audio turns out much more challenging than you might expect.

An easy (and in my not-quite-an-expert opinion, bad) definition of “best” audio relates to resolution. You could say the “best” audio equipment setup utilizes the most and loses the least music “information” in producing audio. However, as I covered in a previous post:

Why do you play (music)?

Sat, 30 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I asked my friend, while they were playing their recently bought guitar.

For romantic others

My friend thought it romantic to serenade a partner with a ballad on the guitar. Many a sappy love song come originally or well arranged for an acoustic guitar.

For platonic others

I jokingly asked if they wanted to annoy others at parties by playing guitar. Though in an intimate setting, two or three people, I like the idea of singing along together with a guitar. At the same time, I feel shy enough about singing that I don’t know if I could muster the will.

Why do you play (games)?

Sat, 23 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

During the Inside Times, I spent a lot of time in my small hometown. To pass the time, to cope, I played a lot of Warframe, roughly 1000 hours over the past year, in fact. That averages out to around 3 hours per day. Wow.

Warframe doesn’t have much difficulty. I would characterize the gameplay as just satisfying enough, and certainly plentiful enough, to capture your attention in loop for a long while (roughly 1000 hours, apparently). When I wanted to flow through boredom and trouble without really straining, I would load up Warframe.

Great leaders

Sat, 16 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Do you believe in great leaders? I don’t mean that rhetorically.

Often we describe great events with respect to great individuals: the reign of queens like Victoria, the breakthroughs of inventors like Einstein.

The alternative, that great events evolve from great systems, can scare me. Systems seem further from my control; systems introduce luck and misfortune and randomness.

Imagine a great leader and a flock of idiots. That convinces me that great individuals do not suffice to produce great results. Yet also imagine great groups competing through mutually exclusive causes. The interaction, the collaboration, matters.

Danger! Water gun!

Sat, 24 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

You know water guns. I don’t need to explain water guns. If you don’t, re-read the name, a gun that shoots water.

Safety

Children like shooting things. Shockingly, parents don’t like their children getting shot. Therefore, parents buy their children water guns to play with. We normally distinguish a water gun by its safety.

Danger

A few days ago, I read an article about a protester shooting a water gun at the Olympic torch. I found this incredibly interesting. Because in that moment, the water gun presented arguably more danger than a traditional gun. It really highlights how power and danger can arise contextually.

Why Aristotle?

Sat, 17 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Recently I read this article about friendship in the Atlantic. In it, Arthur Brooks writes:

According to [Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics], friendships exist along a kind of ladder. At the bottom rung—where emotional bonds are weakest and the happiness benefits are lowest—are friendships based on utility to each other in work or social life. … At the highest level are friendships of virtue, or what Aristotle called “perfect friendship.” These friendships are pursued for their own sake, and not instrumental to anything else.

The relative non-importance of color

Sat, 13 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Quick! Describe this! When asked to describe something, our minds jump quickly to visual information. A basic visual description will include color and brightness. For instance, I would say the image contains “a bright yellow, green, and blue bird with dark patches.” Formally, brightness we call “luminance” or “luma.” Independent of luminance, color we call “chrominance” or “chroma.”

JPEG compression

As it turns out, humans have finer spatial sensitivity to luminance than to chrominance. As a practical example, let’s take the JPEG compression process.

Medium nudges expression

Sat, 06 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A continuation of this post

Introduction

In the previous post linked above, I introduced the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and proposed that the hypothesis applied to both natural and technical languages. This time, I want to expand that idea, that rules and structure influence thinking, to the medium itself.

“The medium is the message”

In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, media theorist Marshall McLuhan proposes that the nature of the medium carries greater importance than the content of its messages. For example, the medium of electric light, independent of content, carries the importance of enabling clear and easily shapable visual expression in the dark.

(Technical) language nudges thought

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Continued in this post

Introduction

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that the structure of a language influences the cognition of its speaker. Now, before we proceed, I caution that “there is probably no single linguistic idea that is more prone to exaggeration and mis-application than the ‘Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.’” Let’s see an example.

Whodunit?

In English, you would tend to say “They broke the vase,” whereas in Spanish you would more tend to say “El jarrón se rompió” (example), which literally translates to “the vase broke itself” (paywall).

PuPu

Sat, 02 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Today, I’d like to introduce you to PuPu. Not poo poo, PuPu with the letter u represents the contagious nature of arbitrariness.

For example, let’s say I wanted to estimate how many metal cans you eat per week. I claim

You eat exactly 1 metal can per hour (completely arbitrary).
Each day has 24 hours (true).
Each week has 7 days (true).

Therefore, I would estimate you eat exactly 1 * 24 * 7 = 168 metal cans per week.

Color, from objective to subjective

Sat, 28 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Objective

Let’s start with an objective definition of color:

Colors represent a visible range of frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum, wherein visible refers to electromagnetic radiation which can get caught by the eye and interpreted by the brain.

Subjective

Upon examination, this definition doesn’t exhibit objectivity at all! In particular, let’s interrogate “can get caught by the eye and interpreted by the brain.” Other species, from birds to bees, can “see” ultraviolet light, which lies outside the human-visible range. Even within our own species, colorblind and otherwise visually impaired people don’t perceive the same range of the electromagnetic spectrum; blind people don’t perceive any of that range.

My room

Sat, 21 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Today I woke up to cloudy weather. Properly isolated and rather aimless, I cleaned my room.

A transition, an interrogation

In the beginning, I slept in my parents’ room. Once I grew old enough, I moved into my own room. And once my grandparents moved out, I moved into my sister’s old room.

As a result of shifting spaces, this room belonged (belongs?) to more than me. As I rummaged through the cracks, I found DVDs in a language that often escapes me (Mandarin, my grandparents’?), notes in another’s handwriting (my sister’s?), and CDs in genres outside my taste (my parents’?). I wouldn’t call these things “mine,” yet I felt sad throwing them away, as if simply their company meant something to me.

Outside the sphere of influence

Sat, 07 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

Some might recognize this as the Serenity Prayer. Often reworded from churches to Alcoholics Anonymous, I have reproduced the version I have heard the most.

Sphere of influence

Imagine a wide space of things that matter to you. In this space live 3 types of things:

Post-modernism and irony

Sat, 10 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Inspiration

Post-modernism

Post-modernism rejects universal truth and grand narrative. Instead, post-modernism poses meaning as only contextual. For example, a post-modernist might claim there doesn’t exist a god or gods who gives every person meaning, and there doesn’t exist any set of morals or values that apply to all groups of people.

lol something matters

Sat, 26 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I: A Marketing 300 lecture

In the winter of 2019, I took MKT 300 as required by my business degree. The research interests of the professor, Dr. Carolyn Yoon, lived in the intersection of neuroscience and marketing.¹

Within her interests, how does presentation affect people’s ability to internalize the message of an informational campaign (e.g. PSA debunking myths)? In one lecture, Professor Yoon provided an example that really piqued my interest: a CDC poster of facts and myths regarding the flu vaccine. Professor Yoon explained that after a while, the “false” or “not” component of the message sometimes faded away, potentially backfiring on the attempt to clear falsehoods.

Dynamic identity

Sat, 25 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

A ship leaves on a long journey, spanning years and continents. Over the course of this journey, every part of the ship, including the crew, is replaced. When the ship finally returns to the first port it left, is it the same ship?

The philosophically savvy will recognize this question as the ship of Theseus, first proposed as a thought experiment thousands of years ago. You can substitute the ship for basically any object, even yourself, and ask: is it still the same?

Don't cut too deep with Occam's razor

Sat, 18 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Just a quick diversion to something I find interesting.

Occam’s razor

Occam’s razor states the simplest explanation is most probable. Let’s see an example.

Lemonade

It’s a hot, hazy summer day. To give yourself something to do, you decide to make some lemonade. You gather the sugar, the pan, the pitcher…wait! Where are the lemons? They’re not on the counter where you usually put them. Out of the many possibilities, let’s consider 3:

Beauty and style

Sat, 04 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

A quick post on a useful distinction.

Beauty

Beauty is socially defined. What is beautiful is almost always exclusive, like being young or rich. Imagine a runway model.

Style

Style is individually defined. You can be stylish at any age, at any level of wealth, no matter the circumstances of your birth. Imagine a drag queen.

Conclusion

I am still trying to find my style.

Diegesis is not an excuse

Sat, 13 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Look at the big word in the title!

What is diegesis?

First, the elephant in the room: what does it mean?

For the non-critics in the audience, diegesis refers to details within the universe of the story. This is in contrast to details within our universe.

For example, suppose you are reading Things Fall Apart. The character Okonkwo’s exile is diegetic; it happens within the story. On the other hand, the novel’s first publication year of 1958 is non-diegetic; it happens outside the story.