After hearing Jiahuang's derivation of Boltzmann distribution from first principles of thermodynamics(btw, Jiahuang is in J1) recently, it struck me that utilitarianism might not be as useful as I had thought after all.

There are two interpretations of utilitarianism. One is that "We should always try to maximise total utility in a society." The other is that "Society can be understood in terms of maximisation of personal utility." I have felt that the first interpretation is pretty problematic, but I saw potential in the second interpretation.

One impetus for the second interpretation is that it readily allows us to apply the powerful tools used in physics and mathematics to understand society in a statistical way. After all, in a reaction chamber, whether an individual molecule would react or not is a very tricky business, but at a large scale and long time frame (reactions take place to moles of particles in femtoseconds), regular patterns are observed at the macro level (such as temperature and concentration). We do not need to understand quantum chemistry to study reaction kinetics at a macro level; so perhaps, you also do not need to fully consider the complexity of individuals to understand macro-level measurements (perhaps things like as inflation, population levels and Human Development Index?). In other words, are there social phenomena and measurements that are emergent from considering human interactions at a statistical level? (I believe this is similar to Durkheim's "social facts".)

Let us consider thermodynamics again. As Ricardo once said, "If you ask an atom what the temperature is, he wouldn't know. But he can tell you how much kinetic energy he has." Note that in a box of gas, temperature in Kelvin is equal to twice the average kinetic energy of molecules divided by the degrees of freedom and Boltzmann's constant. It is therefore not hard to imagine that some measurement that is fundamental to our understanding of society would appear pretty elusive and unintuitive to an individual. Also, you can't just take any statistical measurement of society and expect it to be fundamentally significant. If you worked with the average magnitude of the velocities in a box of gas, or their harmonic mean weighted, or their median, or their geometric mean, good luck trying to derive something meaningful - because you still haven't figured out that mass and degrees of freedom are important. While trial-and error might eventually work, you might want to note that the above amazing relationship between temperature and KE of gas particles was not obtained by trial-and-error; it was derived from Newton's Laws. And we are not even talking about humans, we are talking about gas particles - incompressible, completely elastic, infinitesimally small, with negligible attractions or repulsions, not there weren't that many factors to tweak anyway. But maybe! Just maybe, that elusive fundamentally meaningful property that arises from statistical measurements of society is looking right at us now. Can utility save the day?

Maybe. But problem is, you can't measure utility. That doesn't mean we should give up on it though - the guys in the white lab coats couldn't measure entropy either, but they didn't give up. If you understand entropy, you'd probably think that the discovery of entropy is incredibly awesome. Unfortunately, I don't understand entropy, so I can't share your joy. But entropy is very fundamental to thermodynamics. So fundamental that the thermodynamic viability of anything (yes, anything, even the collection of dust in your keyboard) is understood in terms of entropy. From what I've learnt in the first week of H1 econs, utility cannot be measured directly, but can be detected when exchanges occur. (It's kinda like temperature and heat, don'cha think?) Good, so we've got the zeroth law of Economics down. When are the next three laws coming? Ok, never mind, let's just assume that utility works like the negative of potential energy. That would neatly parallel the first law of thermodynamics.

A huge problem arises here. Potential energy only makes sense in conservative fields [i.e., there is no closed path which a particle can take in the field that would cause it keep gaining energy, or simply put, where energy is always conserved], and it only makes sense if there is also a social equivalent of a force, and a social equivalent of momentum, a social equivalent of kinetic energy, and social equivalent of displacement etc. In other words, you need the social equivalent of Newton's laws. Unfortunately it either doesn't exist or hasn't been discovered.

Also, even if we assume that the social equivalent of Newton's laws exist, utility is clearly not a conservative field - it is supposed to increase with every exchange. It is also not strictly increasing either, because while we are guaranteed that total utility increases at the point of exchange (I guess that's why people like shopping so much?), utility can increase or decrease by a great deal in between exchanges. Since we spend more time working or consuming goods than making transactions, it is reasonable for us to suspect that the utility changes between transactions would be significant enough to off-set the utility gain from transaction.

Then there is the oft-stated argument of human irrationality, which I would not repeat here. There is this counter-argument from my econs teacher: "Some people would buy more than it is rational while some people will buy less than it is rational, so overall their effects would cancel out, and this assumption still works at a statistical level." But Dan Ariely says something like, "No, even statistically speaking, humans are irrational in predictable ways." "In fact, we have some idea of how to make them behave in a certain way without them realising it," Thaler and Sunstein might (probably) add. Given commercial interest in making people irrationally profligate at a statistical scale (by advertising and market research), I have serious doubts that this assumption is in any way justified.

Lastly, is there a sufficiently large number of events at a sufficiently long time scale for us to suppose that perturbations from anomalous probability distributions, unstable equilibriums and random events have negligible effects on society? Even physical systems with well defined characteristics can behave in a chaotic manner - what more humans who are hosts to memes? - memes that are struggling to survive and propagate with our minds and technology as their mediums, which evolve at human time-scales as well. And that is a huge destabilising factor not present anywhere else. This means that there is no convenient analogy to human society that we can just adapt and use.

Oh no. I guess utility isn't that fundamentally meaningful property that arises from statistical measurements of society that we are looking for then. How now brown cow.

The Beautiful Country.
The Chivalrous Country.
The Lawful Country.
The Virtuous Country.
The Peaceful Country.
The Mysterious Continent.
The Central Country.
The Freezing Country. (I know)
Sun-based.
Across the South.

Any more interesting ones?

While I'm still in a good mood, I should send a message to my future self. Which might just turn out to be significant. Or serve as an important element to a plot. Or become a Deus ex Machina in a lousy story. Or whatever.

_________

Hi there. Everything's looking pretty fine here. I'm not sure what you're going through right now, but I tell'ya. Questions about who you are, what you will become, and all the emotions you are going through now? My guess is, I've probably thought about those and felt the same things before too. And even after going through all that, I'm still pretty fine! All those memories before 21, I have'em too, and I remember them better than you do. If you wanna angst about anything that happened before you were 21, I suppose I'm in a pretty good position to tell you that there is absolutely no objectively good reason to do so.

Then again, I'm not going through what you are going through, and there might be new light shed on the context of those memories, so you might be thinking "Yeh right this guy's talking through his hat." That might be true. But there are things that only I can help you with; that I and only I can tell you; that just doesn't sound the same coming from anyone else. Condition: no questions. So I talk, and you listen, okay? You can't argue back. MUAHAHAHA. Gosh I love this and I should probably do this more often.

There is usually no objectively good reason for you to feel sad or to feel happy. You can identify the source of the happiness or sadness, and try to savour the goodness or solve the problem. But if you can't solve the problem, you have to live with it. You could confide in people you trust - that might help you feel better, but there's no guarantee. Yeh that's kinda shitty, I know. But even when the situation looks bleak, it would either eventually turn out for the better or you learn to look at things differently. I might not have gone through the same things as you, but I have faith that you can go through this period of sadness and emerge as a stronger person. Although this kind of stuff is usually said by other people, but I think it might also be appropriate for me to say that it's not your achievements who define who you are. You and I are defined by how we feel, what we recall and what we do when things happen to us. So even if you are in really bad shape now, I will not look down on you.

If you are depressed, you might want to go and see a doctor. Take my word for it that your 21 year old self wouldn't look down on you for it. I'll give you financial support (though that's kinda like a given).

Oh, and all these while I've been assuming that I won't do well in the future! Actually, I think the future looks pretty good! So I'm quite confident that you're actually doing quite well. If that's the case, congrats! If you want to do me a favour though, you could tell me the TOTO combi for this Sunday! Then I wouldn't have to fret over financial aid. Oh wait, you can't talk to me. Damn.

Imagine writing an SAT 1 guidebook for NSFs.

"Wah lao, that cantankerous RSM today sibeh guai lan, anyhow give extra."

"That chiobu at 3 o'clock, her pulchritude damn up sia!"

"My buddy got this vexatious habit of snoring at night, blardy annoying."

"The downpour had inundated those suai kia's half-dug fire trenches with mud, hence they had to semula."

"He chao keng so often, even his histrionics wun convince the MO to let him down pes."

"The safety vehicle parked ominously in Delta Wing line at 11pm foreshadowed a turn-out."

"Dun eat canteen already, the cookhouse satay rice today is an epicurian delight!"

Suggestions are welcomed.

SYPT is over. While I'm really happy that all four teams from RI have won the competition, reading the blog of a participant who has lost reminded me that there is always another side of things. I remember that throughout the preparation phase, whenever we hit an obstacle, we would remind ourselves: if even RI, with so much talent, school support and resources, cannot do this well, which other school can? As it turned out, we were right. All those factors greatly contributed to RI's victory. But it did make me think a little bit about how fair it all was.

Don't get me wrong. All four teams from RI deserved to win. The members were really smart, motivated and hardworking. They spent months thinking, number crunching, experimenting and rehearsing to make sure that they could put up a good fight no matter what. Which they did. It was clear that they were vastly superior to all other teams, and for some problems they even approached international standards. Yet, how are we to know that the members from other schools are not equally, if not more smart, motivated and hardworking than the RI team? By distributing resources to maximise the potential of a select group, are we burying other talents?

I understand that as a result of my interference or non-interference, there were only two possible ways things could go. Either that the RI teams maximise their potential and pwn the SYPT convincingly, while in the process improving Singapore's performance at IYPT, or that the RI teams don't become as strong, stand a good chance at winning the SYPT anyway since they are more experienced, and eventually become part of a pretty good team at IYPT. So, it seems that my interference could only have been for the better.

Still, it reminds me of the time when I gave tuition to my cousin's son. Although I was only meant to teach him N level physics chem and math, I liked to teach him extra stuff. I taught him how to make bots in Maplestory using AutoIt, and he got excited at programming. For the next week, he was bugging me to fix his code, but since I was busy then, he figured out what was wrong and managed to make a somewhat functional fishing bot for Runescape. He tried to learn Basic from online tutorials, but didn't know where to get an development kit, and had nobody to teach him. Because RI taught programming to everyone and had really good teachers and resources for it, I assumed that it would be the same for his school, and asked him to approach his school's computer studies teacher for help. It turns out that his school didn't teach that. I asked if he could approach his school's IT department personnel and just ask for help as a form of personal request, but it turns out that the IT department in his school was just an AV department and the people there didn't know programming. He struggled with learning Basic for about another week or so, but could not sustain it.

I thought that was rather wasted because I'm sure that if a Rafflesian had an interest in programming similarly sparked, he wouldn't have needed to go through so much trouble to get proper guidance. Granted, if he was sufficiently passionate about programming, he would have been able to learn it anyway, but it somehow strikes me as unfair that someone should be disadvantaged in learning stuff just because he has scored lower in PSLE four years ago. In fact, I think that because they are not as good in academics, all the more they should be allowed to explore other interests.

I know, saying that other schools get less resources is just another way of saying that RI gets more resources. There are only so many amazing teachers like Mr Mark Wee in Singapore, and it kinda makes sense that more resources are given to people who can learn better and faster. But still, the inequality in opportunities just makes me feel that it is somewhat unfair.

In the case of RGS SYPT teams not getting school support, I think that's just myopia on the school's part. It's pretty sad for the participants, really.

"Be yourself" may not be a good advice, it is nevertheless helpful to say it, but only if you really mean it.

Perhaps, people generally have a somewhat stable "self" that they revert to when they are not under stressful conditions. I know, I can hang around with a bunch of people for an afternoon, but I can't do that day after day. Perhaps, that's what is meant by "character is who you are when nobody's watching"; it is the equilibrium position, the position that requires minimal effort to sustain. And change requires a great deal of external effort, because it is very tempting to revert back to old habits.

So why do people want to change themselves if it requires so much effort to do so? Perhaps it's because they are placed in stressful situations so often that they forget who they normally are or what they would like to do. It is not too unlikely actually, since there are so many other things to think about. Another possibility, which I think sounds more plausible, is that they want to avoid being stressed by adapting to the stress. Some forms of stress are caused by a lack of ability, and these can be relieved by honing these abilities. For instance, studying is a way to relieve academic stress. And for me, honing social abilities was a way to relieve this stress.

I admit that for a large part of my life I have tried to avoid stressful situations by avoiding stressful situations, but I guess army really forced me to change because I was with people all the time and I realised how relationships are important. I went out with people more often. I initiated conversations with new people. Stuff that are slightly out of my comfort zone. But being forced into stressful situations is not enough to change. I needed to know how to change.

I started small. I remembered the awkward situation when I offered someone tissue when he was still eating. That guy said it was ok, but I still felt bad. So the next time, I remembered when to offer tissue, which logically was after one have finished his/her food, right? That didn't come naturally to me. And I did so until it became natural. This small gesture took me a bit of practice. Then, one another occasion when I was eating with someone, he kept his tissue right away after he finished his food, then he offered me his tissue, looking a little sheepish. I thanked him, but at that point I realised that during that awkward situation, that guy probably really meant it when he said "it's ok."

So perhaps people are actually quite forgiving, but sometimes I can't help but feel that someone else looks a little awkward doing something. And I would ask myself if I seemed like that. I guess there are certain body postures or gestures that convey a certain message about yourself, and some of them just leave a bad impression. And I found myself looking at glass panes more often. Self-consciousness ensues. But generally, I've found that keeping your back straight and not looking down gives a better posture. (And I gotta admit, all that military drills helped a little.) But actually, I realise that while slouching is bad posture and may not leave a good first impression, after a while when you know a person's work ethic, you don't notice the slouching any more.

Then there are little little things. My mother sometimes told me, "When someone is talking to you, look at him in the eye." I guess it made me look distracted. I practised. So now, by default, I would look at a person in the right eye whenever I talk to someone. (It's always the right eye because I practised with that and now I'm used to it.) But now you don't really know if I'm listening to what you are saying, I don't see myself becoming more attentive to what people are saying anyway, so that kinda defeats the purpose of the exercise.

I have no idea if this works, but I'm taking more notice of my own and others' body posture. Plunging myself into various awkward scenarios gave me plenty of practice. I notice how I feel, I notice what I look like, and I try to adjust to something that looks more natural. Ok, it was hard the first time, so at some other occasion I tried to notice how I feel in a natural setting, and I'd replicate that. So after a while, I kinda related my posture to my feelings, and I extrapolate it to other people. I'm not sure if it works, but I guess it gives me a kinda indication of whether someone is feeling awkward in my presence, or whether I have made a mistake or something. Generally, it seems that people don't notice my mistakes as often as I used to think they do. Maybe it's not a mistake after all.

There are other small little things like how to behave in a mall, which required some practice too, but the general thing I found out is that, people don't really notice or care about your mistakes very much, and nobody is really sure of what the right thing to do is.

I suppose most people probably went through this self-conscious phase like 7 years before I did, but I probably entered it with a somewhat different perspective. It kinda helps to have read some books, and I guess KI was a good primer to them. This journey of being self-conscious and realising that actually I need not be so worried after all is probably trivial and commonplace, but I think it has been rather significant to me. This experience has told me that being myself doesn't necessarily entail feeling awkward all the time. It has given me the reason to have faith that I'm okay.

"Be yourself." probably means "I think that you are fine the way you are". It is comforting to hear it from people who matter to you, because it is a strong expression of approval - that I have either changed enough, or that I never really needed to be so concerned after all. But say it only if you really mean it, because being yourself is not easy when the self is under so much pressure to change.

Random:

I shall try substituting choice words from the titles of the books on my book shelf with "your mom", and see how things go.

Your Mom lectures Physics

The Man who mistook His Wife for Your Mom

An Anthropologist on Your Mom

Notes from an Even Smaller Mom

Your Mom and Freedom

The Joy of Your Mom

The New Adventures of Army Moms

Freaknomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Your Mom

Harry Potter and the Order of Your Mom

Snow Falling on Your Mom

Brave New Mom

Money for Your Mom

On the Shoulders of Your Mom

Alice in Your Mom

The Tipping Point: How Your Mom makes a big difference