omg blogger I miss you so. It's brings back memories of the periods of time when I had so much free time to come up with stuff.

It is so hard to write stuff well, I realize. Especially regarding things that actually matter, because so much of the time, what could be said has already been said. I think even if my writing seminar didn't teach me how to write well, it has taught me intellectual humility. There are many good ideas out there, and even if an idea sounds silly initially, research can often show otherwise.

My first essay pretty much went along the lines of "why is everyone talking about these irrelevant stuff?" I thought that it didn't take much to show that something is wrong or irrelevant. The problem though, was that I was doing an essay on ethics, and there isn't a set of fundamental principles that everyone can agree on. Is ethics based on rights and duties? Intuition? Minimizing suffering? I was lucky in KI in that I never really had to deal with ethics very much, because I could simply choose another essay. But here, it was three big assignments about ethics, so I had to deal with them somehow.

Coming up with something meaningful, interesting AND original is not simple, because so many other people are writing about meaningful and original stuff. There's so much research that needs to be done beforehand. Even then, it's often the case that I'll find people who disagree with my position, and it's so damned hard to show that he/she is wrong and I am right. There are so many ways to show how one thing is ethically sound and so many ways to show that it is not.

So this writing sem was one long route march out of my comfort zone, and I'm so glad I'm finally done with it. I may not have learn how to write, but I think I've learnt the importance of reading up beforehand. It's probably below what the university expects of me as I complete this course, but I'm glad that I took something away from it.

Random thought:

Military wedding vow:

I [NRIC] [RANK] [NAME], take you  [NRIC] [RANK] [NAME], to be my wedded wife/husband. To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish WITH MY LIFE.

Random thoughts:

Woman jane = new Woman(32, 28, 33);
jane.makeSandwich();

My observation (which may be inaccurate) is that Singaporeans speak Singlish as a faster rate than native English-speakers speak English. I suspect that the tones on the words in Singlish act as an error correcting code that allows mumbled consonants to be deciphered. This error correcting code allows a high rate of low fidelity information to be transmitted and comprehended.

Heard:

"If I go to heaven, what I'll be most worried about is that I see God and he sneezes. Then what do I say? 'Bless yourself?'"

I'm pleasantly surprised to find that there are more people who can pronounce my name right the first time than it had originally thought. (They just can't remember it though.) Before I left for the US, people were telling me that I need an easier name to go by. So, for the first week or so I switched between "Xin Yang" and "Yak", then eventually settled at "Yak". I figured that although I'll prefer to have people call me Xin Yang to Yak, being called Yak is still preferable to people not knowing or remembering my name.

Interestingly, some people insist on calling me by my "actual name". The first time that happened, I wondered if it was necessary for me to "simplify" my name at all. But I guess it's just some people who are better with names. Now when people ask my name, I'll go "My name is Xin Yang, but you can call me Yak." This gives them the option of using the "easier" name, while not implicitly doubting the person's ability to remember or pronounce my actual name.

The first time I introduced myself that way, I was suddenly reminded of the time when the grad student at NUS introduced himself to me as "My name is _____(which I can't remember), but you can me Dood." It reminded me of the first time I cut vegetables and hand to transfer them to a bowl. The first few attempts always led to some vegetables falling out of the bowl. Finally, I figured the best way to do this was to cup my hand over the cut vegetables, slide the knife under it, hover the hand and knife over the bowl, then withdraw the knife at an angle. It was only after doing that a few times that I realised that it was the same way that my mother or the people on cooking shows would transfer the cut vegetables from the chopping board to a bowl using the knife. Somehow, through different experiences, we just arrive at the same answer, because it is probably the best one there is.

Perhaps that's why adults all seem to behave in a certain way that makes them different from teens or children.

临时抱佛脚。

If you weigh something to find the weight, do you heigh something to find the height?


When you read the above sentence, in your inner dialogue, does "heigh" rhyme with "weigh" or does it rhyme with "why"?

Random thoughts:

If the person who is paid by a "payer" is called a "payee", a person who is tutored by a "tutor" is called a "tutee", is the dough baked by a "baker" called a "bakee"? The cigarette smoked by a "smoker" called a "smokee"?

Though I guess there isn't much point to give them names like that, since the terms like "payee" and "tutee" is meant to indicate to people (who already have a lot of other roles) what roles they are currently assuming, whereas a cigarette is usually assuming the role of being smoked and a lump of dough is usually assuming the role of being baked. So "cigarette" and "dough" are probably sort-of equivalent to "smokee" and "bakee".


Some literature has said that quantum entanglement is a resource, but I think it's kinda iffy. Unlike energy, there isn't a one-size-fits-all method to quantify it. I remember Prof Kwek was looking for a lay-man's analogy to measures of quantum entanglement - how there are so many different definitions, how the usefulness of each definition depends on the application the quantum states are associated with, and how different definitions may not agree with with other about whether one state is more entangled than another. Yet, measures of quantum entanglement are also not completely arbitrary, because there are some quantum states that are generally agreed upon to be maximally entangled and some that are completely un-entangled, which most (I dare not say all since I don't know all of them) measures of entanglement would indicate.

His first analogy was happiness, but he felt that it was too un-physical and imprecise. His second analogy was entropy (for example, Renyi entropy isn't just one single definition, but a definition that depends on some parameters, and these parameters depend on the application). I don't understand Renyi entropy at all, so I can't really appreciate whether his analogy was particularly apt. But now that I think about it, all the above characteristics remind me of measures of intelligence. There are various measures of intelligence, each of them useful for different purposes and different scales may not agree on whether one guy is more intelligent than another. But intelligence isn't completely arbitrary either, since there are some abilities that are generally recognised to be crucial indicators of intelligence, so surely a hypothetical person who gets a perfect score on a particular test item that tests this ability (maybe a what-pattern-comes-next test? I don't know) would be given high intelligence scores on most measures of intelligence (except maybe the more differentiated measures like the sub-scales of multiple intelligences).

Yay! So, next time someone asks me "what have you been doing for the past six months" I would have a nice reply. "I've been studying measures of quantum entanglement, which is somewhat iffy like measures of intelligence, but not quite."


What if Bell's inequality is tested in a way that the measurements are made in different inertial frames moving at relativistic speeds? Since simultaneity is relative, from one frame it would appear as though the measurement in say, Alice frame causes the wavefunction collapse and determines the quantum state that can be measured by Bob, while in Bob's frame it could appear otherwise. A simple way to reconcile this could be to state that that Alice would measure and what Bob would measure are both predetermined from the start, but Aha! this would cause the Bell's inequality to be satisfied even at Bell's test angles with maximally entangled states! Maybe there really isn't a problem with this scenario, but I'm kinda lazy to think about it now.