Extra Mindspace?

ERPZ has always been a result of the 'Cognitive Surplus' that Clay Shirky wrote about and spoke about on TED. There is no organization supporting us, we are not driven commercially; we just are keen to do some stuff and share with the rest of the world. I'm not sure if we are serving any social causes; perhaps LOLcats contribute more than us.

In many sense, we are propagating some ideas by Kevin and his friends that they've found useful and think could be shared. We believe in the importance of disciplining one's minds and to empower it appropriately through careful thinking and motivation. This helps us build positive habits that will do us great in long run. We too often do not realise how little we need to spend at a high frequency to achieve a lot in the end. That is actually the idea of cognitive surplus: watching an hour less TV and use it to do something meaningful would allow you to achieve a lot more in your life. It's also about maximizing your potential, to do what you want to do that will benefit someone else as well.

And here we are, motivating many others to do the same, for themselves as much as everyone else. I always encourage people to think of giving as contributing to personal development though it often don't work on calculative people. So write more, I tell myself occasionally, and change the world somehow - with that cognitive surplus.

The Skeptic

Michael Shermer speaks on TED about Beliefs, and how people are wired to want to believe in things. He explains 'The pattern behind self-deception' but it really is more about how the brain makes decision on what it pretends to be 'objective' based on extremely limited information. The decisions would therefore be a result of evolutionary experiences as well as learning.

It is really very true that you choose to believe in false patterns and become superstitious especially when you feel out of control, helpless in a specific matter. That is the reason why gamblers often believe in luck and we Chinese think that you should not touch a book ('shu', a homonym of 'losing' in Chinese) before entering a gambling den. One of the articles in The Economist's special report on Gambling discusses this. It quotes from David Sklansky:

[E]xpert players do not rely on luck. They are at war with luck. They use their skills to minimise luck as much as possible.

Therefore, it is the less skilled who'd think that they are 'victims' of fate or luck. The article's conclusion highlights a point from David that shifts your perspective of luck from winning to losing:

Imagine trying intentionally to lose at a game of pure chance, like roulette or baccarat. It would be impossible. At the beginning of a deal or a roll you have to bet on something. You can no more deliberately play badly than you can deliberately play well. The same is not true for poker, which offers multiple opportunities to make sure you lose.

That is to say that for something which you can deliberately play badly in, you'd have a good control of the outcome, and you need to make use of that control. It applies to life at large; when you choose to blame other things, events, people and circumstances for your situation, you're victimizing yourself and thinking that you've been toyed by chance. It makes you more likely to believe in false patterns and weakens you. That sets the basis for bad thinking and destructive self-deception.

Michael is also the founder of Skeptic Magazine. The magazine appears to be both humourous (at least from my point of view) and full of science tidbits that most people would really enjoy. For those who believes the world is ending in 2012, do check out a little interview they've done for you guys.

The takeaway? Understand your tendency towards beliefs and learn how to use them to your advantage; maintain a healthy skepticism and at times, accept false things so that you'd feel better. Most importantly, empower yourself with your beliefs.

Cloud Computing Ninja?

The recent Schumpeter article about title inflation is really pretty hilarious, not so much because of the humour about the leader of North Korea but because it is really true. It's amusing how people try to inflate job titles and it's to their disadvantage because of how opaque it makes the job become.

Fluffing up titles isn't only happening in the corporate sector; there are plenty of clubs and societies at schools and Co-Curricular Activities (CCAs) that does that. It looks good on your portfolio and more presentable when you try to apply for scholarships, internships, attachments or even try to participate in some seminars. The question is whether the title should be 'important-sounding' or that it should appear to bear loads of responsibilities. In any case, the whole affair is much like the classical signaling games in game theory where signaling grows to epic proportions and undermines the purpose itself. It's all part of evolution; much like how deers who may have grown huge anthers find it hard to escape in dense forests (they get caught between trunks) or peacocks with such big nice feathers it is really heavy for them to open them up.

When the titles that are exaggerated appear to be ineffective signaling device or would backfire, there would be movements to simplify them and scale down the intensity of use. Perhaps then someday, we'll know of our CEOs as 'boss'.

Mind Tricks?

People thinks I'm very rational when it comes to making decisions (especially personal ones), but it is really more about thinking economics than rationality. Economics was founded based on the assumption that all individuals are rational and acting on self-interest. Too often, however, we know little about what is really in our interest and worse of all, we have no idea how to put it into the equation. It'll then help to look at the market and what it is doing to decide.

It appears ironic that individuals may peer at the market to learn how to be rational when they are part of the market itself. Nevertheless, the fact remains that while individuals are capable of making good direct comparisons, complex patterns of choice emerge only through the market, which aggregates decision-making of an independent crowd (an important concept I briefly touched previously). The concept of opportunity cost proves invaluable at decision-making - when you can't decide what you want, think about what you are willing to forgo.

I was thinking about how capable kids around me often have parents who are not particularly educated and perhaps not with any outstanding careers. Of course there are exceptions but many smart capable people do have just plainly ordinary backgrounds much like mine. It dawned on me that the question is really how 'ordinary people' make such great parents. Parents who have a great career simply have to sacrifice much more in order to expend effort at raising their kids.

The high opportunity cost simply means that it might actually make sense for them to 'outsource' the work to someone who has less stake in their kids. In many sense, the same principles applies to a kid - for one who expects to be able to live life comfortably and have little expectations of themselves, slacking away poses a lower opportunity cost than one who knows that the alternative to working towards success is deprivation. Of course, I'm assuming that the kid has the level of maturity to consider this and understand the concept of opportunity cost, intellectually if not intuitively.

Eventually, what remains required besides economics thinking would be discipline; and discipline could also be explained by an intuitive grasp of economics and incentives. With the right way of positioning ideas in one's mind, one would be able to accentuate long term incentives while downplaying the benefits of instant gratification. That's what everyone in the west has to learn today.

Deal!

The recent Lexington on The Economist gave a pitch on the merits of openness, to migration and trade; and then analysed how far US has come. His analysis on America emphasize the inclination towards isolation and warned how dangerous it could be while urging support for greater openness. Singapore's openness to migration appeared particularly alarming to locals in the recent years and prompted our government to take steps to distinguish the privileges between Permanent Residents and Citizens as well as take more social action to aid the needy citizens. Personally, I think the over-embrace of foreigners here is often disturbing for those who cling to Singapore as home; ironically, that's actually the people whose support the government really needs.

Nevertheless, the arguments for openness were great, I particularly like the anecdote used in the first paragraph.

A LONG time ago, the rising seas turned Tasmania into an island. A few thousand inhabitants were cut off from contact with the Australian mainland. Their technology regressed. They forgot how to make bone tools, catch fish and sew skins into clothes. It was not that they grew less intelligent. Their problem was that they no longer had many people to trade with. It took a lot of effort to learn how to carve needles out of bone. So long as there were plenty of people with whom to swap needles for food, it made sense to acquire such skills. But in a tiny, isolated society, there may have been room only for one or two needle-makers. If they both fell off cliffs, the technology died with them. When the first Europeans reached Tasmania, they found natives whose only shields against the winter chill were seal-fat smeared on their skin and wallaby pelts over their shoulders.

Are you addicted to plastic?

In a follow-up to my write-up on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, there is a movie screening of a documentary Addicted to Plastic by Young NTUC on Wednesday 19 May 2010, from 1930 - 2130 at NTUC Centre Room 701.

I received this invitation in my email as a subscriber to the Young NTUC mailing list. Young NTUC is the youth arm of Singapore's National Trade Union Congress (NTUC). I'd love to go for the movie but I'd be in camp that night, and I think this movie will be quite beneficial and eye-opening in helping to understand the context of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I hope I can find some way to catch it, like perhaps if I have a night out from camp.

Details here, booking of tickets can be done through the same link.

Clean energy for you?

Thus far in America, it is mainly the Democrats, with the support of environmentalists, who are championing clean energy (renewable energy such as wind and solar energy) as the way forward for America's energy future. Given the current problems in terms of environmental degradation and national security, heading towards clean energy seems like a viable solution to deal with both problems, but getting the Republicans to support such measures is difficult because many either do not believe in climate change or are skeptical of the impact of climate change. Jim DiPeso, as The Green Conservative (resident Republican environmentalist) on The Daily Green, argues that America needs to take the lead in clean energy and cannot wait for China to act, because China is already working on renewable energy, leaving America behind.

His appeal to the conservative Republicans? That America, as self-purported global leader, cannot wait for China to take the lead in pursuing renewable energy: in his words, why should America "forsake global leadership on a critical issue and defer to the world's largest communist country"?

And the larger point is, it is not just about losing the race towards developing clean energy technology: it is also about forsaking the money that could potentially pour in as well as jobs. Which dovetails nicely with what President Obama has been saying about clean energy: that it can bring in the jobs, even if you are skeptical about whether climate change is really happening or not.

The thing now is, will the Republicans embrace bipartisanship once again to piece together a clean energy bill? Unfortunately, given the immigration reform brouhaha in America right now, the only Republican senator pledging support for such a bill might withdraw his support... and perhaps lead to the collapse of the bill.

Gone for a while

For some time I seem to be missing from ERPZ, though probably as much as Martin or Scherzo, or Yuan Jun for that matter. Work has been really busy and life in general after the 15 academic years of the past introduces new challenges. But it remains important to be optimistic about the future and things to come, while appreciating all that you're currently blessed with.

As one mature, you learn that things should be shared rather than fought over, and you have to wonder if you're really hurting others or yourself when you get into fights. One should appreciate the fact that collaboration and combining strengths can produce far more returns in long run than doing too much fighting though competition may sometimes bring greater benefits to everyone in aggregate. Cost and benefits of things have long been hard to balance and somewhat confusing to us. Maybe that is why, we need to be conscious.

Sometimes, it's important that we ponder about life, through current affairs.

Not the cars...

Lately I was made to do a research on Fashion in Singapore and I made loads of interesting discoveries about the fashion industry in Singapore that most girls plainly keen on shopping might not even know. It is interesting to note that our government agencies are very keen on developing the Singpore Fashion sector actually and has put in substantial efforts in helping to raise the profiles of some Singapore-based designers and highlight the achievements of some foreign-based Singaporean designers.

Some of my findings included the fact that RAOUL is a Singapore label, by F J Benjamin; alldressedup is a label also home-grown and by The Link. Many didn't seem to realise that these are Singapore brands until perhaps they heard our finance minister praising them last year. One of the important designers for alldressedup is Sven Tan, a up-and-coming Singaporean designer. Then I found out about Jo Soh and her label 'hansel', with very interesting designs. I also think it is important that I remind everyone that Charles & Keith is from Singapore. I must highlight these brands because they are rather high profile and have caught attention of people of high fashion world like those in Europe and also United States.

I discovered some other brands which appear to be established in some other nearby markets like Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand. They are names like bYSI, which I didn't know was Singapore-based, and IORA, which I used to think was a little auntie-ish. It looks pretty good nowadays. In my research I learnt more about the Singapore Fashion Festival, an event whose existence wasn't knowledge to me until I embarked on this research and I got to know that IE Singapore, STB and SPRING Singapore and TaFf is behind the upcoming Asian Fashion Exchange. This particular thing covers the Audi Fashion Festival, Blueprint Trade Show and some fashion design competition.

In fact, my research led me to some other side stuff about design as well; because I was looking up on Andrew Gn, who is a Singaporean designer based in Paris, I found out about this President Design Award. Andrew Gn won the designer of the year for one of the past years. All these research was to prepare for a presentation and while eventually not all the information and knowledge was used, I guess I benefitted immensely from knowing all these details because they made me somewhat conversant about the industry in Singapore even though I might not exactly be appreciative of specific designs or the quality of those labels.