Food for Thought

Jimmy Lin

What is Serendipity?

Ever seem to run into somebody at the right time? For example, maybe you are on the market looking for a new position, and you walk into a networking event and find someone working in your desired industry, who connects you with somebody that can help you land your dream job. Or maybe, you are looking for that dream candidate, and that candidate comes along one day and fills that important position that you were looking to fill for the past few months.

Why does good luck happen to occur when you might least expect it? Or maybe, you know someone that happens to have these lucky occurrences happen and you seem to not have any of this good luck. Are you cursed? Or is it something else?

In today’s post, I seek to discuss the topic of serendipity and provide my insight into what you can do to improve your chances of good luck. Who knows, you just might be a lucky dog waiting to nail the jackpot!

serendipity in a nutshell

Well, what is serendipity? How can we achieve those serendipitous moments? Is it just good luck caused by some supernatural forces?

The short answer, no. Serendipity refers to random events that are beneficial and seem to come out of the blue. 

If that is the case, then isn’t it impossible to increase your amount of serendipitous moments? Actually, no. There are ways in which you can increase your likelihood of having these lucky events happen to you, which I will discuss in the next section.

Increasing Good Luck?

Remember the example above about finding your dream job? While it may seem random, there are concrete steps that you can take to increase your likelihood of getting that job. Recall that in that example, you went into a networking event. That by itself will increase the chances of hitting the jackpot so to speak because you are placing yourself in a position to be open to discovering opportunities. Had you chosen to stay in that day, you would have missed a shot at meeting that person who refers you to your dream job. 

Okay, so in this example, attending the networking event proved pivotal to landing that position. But, are there steps that you can take so that you can increase your chances of nabbing that spot? Yes, doing your research ahead of time will help you be prepared to find out about what the event is about, as well as give you some insight on what to do to prepare for the event. 

Or take the classes that you might take if you are a student. If you are working hard and do some research into which schools you would like to attend, then you are more likely to get the experience that you want. As a college student, one resource that I recommend is RateMyProfessors, which is a website that allows you to search up your professors before you register for a class. If you want to have a professor that is a good match for you, then doing some research in advance will increase the likelihood that you will have a great professor.

As you can see from the examples above, having good things come your way is not entirely random. While there are no guarantees that researching a networking event will land you that position that you have always been dreaming about, or looking into the professor you are going to take Calc 1 with will put you in good company in class, there are steps that you can take to increase the likelihood that positive events come your way.

Changing Your Perspective

One thing that I will also note is the fact that your perspective will impact the way that you feel about your life. Remaining dependent on external things going your way is not the best way to increase your sense of happiness. Good luck also arises from the way that you look at things.

Take a skiing accident. This event can be traumatic, but it does not have to end in tragedy. For many people, while the accident itself is painful, the determination and will to live became stronger. In this case, the person learned to grow from this experience, and thus increased their capacity to enjoy life and live in what psychologists call flow, which is a topic that I will dive into in a future post. By learning to live with a renewed sense of purpose, this person was able to turn a potential tragedy into a growth experience.

While most of us will not have a freak accident like a major skiing accident, there will be times when life seems to be in the doldrums and it seems like nothing goes our way. When this happens, remember to have faith that things will work out, but to also look at things through a different lens. 

conclusion

Landed that sweet gig? Feeling lucky? Don’t worry if you still aren’t feeling like things are coming your way. Serendipity is something which at the end of the day still depends on luck. I hope that this post helped shed some insight into the art of increasing your serendipitous moments. May I wish you all the best of luck!

Jimmy Lin

Does Society Incentivize Inefficiency?

Society incentivizing inefficiency? Did I read that right? Like many of you reading this, before I raised this question, I thought that the answer was a definite no. However, the answer to this question is a bit more complicated than it seems, leading me to conclude that there is a possibility that the answer to this question is yes.

Where you might ask, might the answer to this question be yes? Well, the answer lies in many different aspects of our lives. This includes the way that employers pay their employees, cultural practices around health such as sleep, to how we interact with others.

how we get paid

Alright, so you sit down and do some work, and once you are done with that work, you are paid for your services. As simple as that, right? Well, if you are content with things as they are, then yes. But what if you wanted to earn more money? And what if you were an employer trying to decide how you want to compensate for the services that your employees give? 

Here is where we run into some issues. If everyone had equal abilities to do work effectively and worked equal hours, then there shouldn’t be an issue. It would be clear right away if an employer were violating discrimination laws or just simply providing unjust compensation. The debate would end right there. But, that is not the case. Due to a variety of reasons, genetic, environmental, and otherwise, people do not work equally. How should we value their work, then? 

In our society, employers generally compensate employees for their time. That means that the longer you are at your workplace, the more you get paid. You may even get paid for overtime and have extra benefits if you are lucky. Now, how does this promote inefficiency? 

Simple. Working becomes equated with the amount of time that you put in, not the amount of work that you produce or the value of the work that you produce. If you want to earn more money, then you just work less efficiently. Rather than getting that project done in 20 hours, stretch it out to 30 hours. That way, you won’t have to work harder and still get more money. You can still be ‘working’ yet get more money than your colleague who is pumping out the same amount of work in 20 hours. 

Now, before this gets too far, I do want to emphasize that I do not believe that slacking off is the most efficient use of your time. Strictly speaking, however, in a system that incentivizes time over work completed, there is going to be inefficiency. 

Combatting This Issue

Okay, so what is the best way to incentivize work? Once again, the answer to this is simple. Well, at least it can be simple.

This ‘obvious’ solution would entail paying people for the amount of work that they complete. That project that took 20 hours on average? If you can get that one done in 15 hours and get another project done in another 15, then you will be paid twice as much as the colleague who completed one project in 30 hours.

Sweet! There are a few problems, however. For starters, the amount of work that you complete is not indicative of the amount of effort you put in. The extremely gifted person can get the same task completed in 15 hours without breaking a sweat, while the person who is not, but works as hard as they can to get the project completed in 15 hours, will not be compensated more. Hence, there are inequities because if you are content with getting a certain amount of compensation, then if you are gifted, you can ‘slack’ off and still have worked as ‘hard’ as someone who is not. 

The second main issue arises from the work of blue-collar workers, such as waiters and waitresses. Waiters and waitresses cannot simply work extremely hard for one hour and be off for the rest of the day if they so wish. Nor can they produce a lot of work if the restaurant has no patrons. It would be problematic to let these waiters and waitresses not get paid simply because nobody chose to come in one day, for various reasons. In this case, working around the clock on your shift may require us to stick with the system of paying by the hour. The same goes for similar jobs, such as being a cashier.

cultural practices regarding health

Coming home from that long day of work or classes? What do you think you should do? As a student, it can seem daunting at times to think about what to do. Should you do your homework? What should you do?

Here is where the idea of society promoting inefficiency rears its head again. Amongst students, there is a prevalent on-the-grind culture where it is often seen as a badge of honor if you are working long nights. After all, if you didn’t pull an all-nighter, did you really work that hard?

I started to feel that pressure as a high school student and the pressure has likely increased as a college student. A familiar scenario could go like this: There is a big test coming up in a week. How are you going to prepare for it? If you are like most people, maybe 2 nights before the exam, you will be staying up late trying to study and cram for the test. On the day of the test, you come in and tell your friends about how you stayed up until 2 in the morning studying for it. 

Now, get this. Back in high school, I heard stuff like this as early as 9th grade. I looked back at the amount of schoolwork that I had then, and if I were completely honest, I could have completed that work in maybe half the time that it actually took me. There should not be a reason for people to be staying up that late doing homework or studying for a test. Going to sleep and getting more rest will improve your grades at that point more than anything else. 

Why does this happen? I mean, it doesn’t feel like you spent all afternoon watching TV and started working at 10 pm. How does this happen? The short answer is inefficiency during work. When you are doing HW, you should be focused on the task at hand, not responding to every notification that pops up. You should remain vigilant of distractions, both inside and outside, that may happen. However, you should also be gentle with yourself, because distractions will happen.

How to Change This Culture?

This one involves slow and gradual changes in both your life and through the ways you talk about your work to others. Rather than bragging about how you stayed up to 3 in the morning, maybe shift to a competition about how fast you got your homework completed. Or better yet, acknowledge the work that you have done, but don’t go around talking about it all the time. That way, those of us who struggle with schoolwork and do need to take a long time working don’t feel as if they are being shamed for being ‘inefficient.’

If we start now, one by one, we can hope to change society for the better.

conclusion

To answer the question at the beginning, the answer is complicated. People get paid for the work they do, and students are rewarded with higher grades if they put in more effort. 

One thing to note. I do not want to claim that I am not part of the problem in any way. There are instances when I will be inefficient, but I still thought it would be important to discuss this issue. Through time, perseverance, and energy, hopefully, we can live in a world that lives in greater harmony.

Jimmy Lin

Assimilation vs. Accommodation

Assimilation. Accommodation. These are a couple of words that have a wide variety of uses and implications within our society. We see this concept throughout our lives, whether that be about immigration policies, the way that we learn things, evolution, and countless other aspects.

In today’s post, I will take a deep dive into how these concepts impact our day-to-day lives.

knowledge acquisition

Have you ever watched a child as they attempt to identify animals? Point at a dog, and maybe they will think it is a squirrel.

“That’s a squirrel, right? Or is that a chipmunk?”  a child may ask.

“No, that’s a dog. See, it looks like the dog that uncle has,” you might respond.

Why did the child decide that the dog was a squirrel? After all, dogs surely don’t look anything like squirrels, right?

As it turns out, squirrels do in fact look like dogs!

Wait a minute! You are telling me that a dog looks like a squirrel? I mean, don’t squirrels look a lot smaller than dogs? And who would even have a squirrel as a pet? I mean…….

As it turns out, they look similar when you view them through the lens of schemata, namely, when you look at it through the ‘components’ the way that a computer does.

Piaget’s Theories on Knowledge

Jean Piaget was a famous Swiss psychologist in the 20th century, whose work on child development is still important today. Piaget’s work led him to reconsider how the mind works, and a large part of his work was with the education of children.

Going back to the squirrel-dog example, Piaget might explain the child’s belief that the dog is a squirrel by explaining that the child looks at the dog as another four-legged furry animal with a tail, much like a squirrel. Looking at it this way, if a child has never been able to put a name to a dog but has learned what a squirrel is, it is only reasonable that the child views the dog as a squirrel.

When the child here views a dog, the dog fits the schema that the child has on what a squirrel is, namely a four-legged furry animal with a tail. Confronting a new object, the child can either choose to assimilate the dog into the schema as simply another squirrel, or they could accommodate the dog as a new object distinct from a squirrel. This process occurs whenever the child encounters a new piece of stimuli. 

Where else can this process be seen? In computers, of course. In machine learning and neural networks, computers have to learn to distinguish between different objects. One way which computers are trained is through repeated exposure to pictures of what say, a dog is. Through repeated exposure, a computer can pick up that dogs have a few common characteristics. 

The computer runs into a similar problem to the child when it encounters a picture of a dog that deviates from the norm. In that case, like the child, the computer will report that the picture of the dog is not a dog, when in fact, it is. For example, if dogs have been flashed with only a picture of their faces, then the computer might have a hard time recognizing a dog if you show a picture of the dog from the side, or from behind. In that case, the computer is unable to assimilate the dog into its schema, believing falsely that it is not a dog. 

Piaget may not have envisioned the connection between his work and the frontiers of computer science, but it is quite interesting to note the connections that are present. In the future, I believe that computer scientists and child psychologists should come together so that we may develop further advancements in computing, as well as child education.

evolution

Throughout history, species have had to adapt to a wide variety of environments. Whether that be the hot springs of Yellowstone or the temperate climes of Minnesota species have had to make the best of their situation and attempt to survive to reproduce. 

While I will not dive into this topic in great detail, I will make a note that assimilation and accommodation play key roles in determining what members of a species survive, and how that affects their way of living.

In response to changes in an environment, a species can either adapt to it, or it can die off as a result. If the species survives, it then adapts to the change. Over time, the species, through natural selection, will ‘pick’ the members with the traits that best suit the environment. The species can either assimilate with the environment, or it may have accommodated it through other phenotypic changes.

There is some debate over the origins of the changes, with some taking the Darwinian approach, and others taking a Lamarckian view. I think that this debate regarding the impacts of epigenetic changes and genetic changes is an interesting one, one that will have interesting developments.

 

conclusion

Assimilation and accommodation are interesting ideas that warrant some consideration. Throughout our day-to-day lives, we can remain cognizant of whether an idea is assimilated or accommodated into our minds. By understanding the differences between the two, I believe that we can become better-informed citizens, who will strive to understand the inner workings of the world, ready to take on new challenges.

Jimmy Lin

How We Learn: Generalizing Special Cases

How many of you remember the first time that you took your car to the empty parking lot and practiced shifting gears? One by one, you progressed from going at 5 mph to 15 mph. Then you practiced your parking by slowly turning the wheel hand over hand as you squeezed in the car between the lines. And then, you slowly eased into the nearby street and practiced accelerating and decelerating by the stop sign. And that’s it! After that, you are ready to drive in the real world with a bunch of other cars on the road. 

Of course, as it turns out, driving is not actually that simple, but the process of starting in a simple situation and gradually being exposed to more complex situations is one that we are quite familiar with.

In this post, I seek to demonstrate examples of where this process shows up in our day to day lives. 

mathematics

Let’s start with the basics, shall we? 1,2,3,4,5, etc. Most of us started learning math by learning how to count with natural numbers. There is one pencil over there. There are two people in this room. There are three dogs here, etc. 

Of course, fast forward a year or two, and all of a sudden, zero!? Negative numbers?! What does that even mean? How can we point to something and be like there is zero of that thing? And negative objects? Don’t even get me started there. 

As we progress through math, we start to understand integers, fractions, and all real numbers in general. Yet, when we first start with learning operations such as addition and subtraction, we are first exposed to only a special subset of real numbers. In this case, natural numbers. As we progress and get more comfortable with natural numbers, only then does it make sense to learn how to add negative numbers and fractions. 

Of course, by the time that we get to algebra and calculus, it is more convenient for us to use our general knowledge of numbers to do operations than it is for us to remember the distinct differences between natural numbers and fractions. Or as our math teachers will tell us, it is better to understand the process than it is for us to remember a bunch of different rules for different situations.

music

Whole notes. Half notes. Quarter notes. Treble clef. Bass clef. For many of us, when we first learned how to read music, we learned it in distinct cases like this. We learned how to play the right-hand part on the piano by finding where middle C is. After starting out learning to hold a whole note out for 4 beats, we press the key down and count. And we repeat for half notes, counting to 2. And quarter notes. 

By the time that we learn these notes, it is likely ingrained into our memory. But wait, what are dotted half notes? And how can we have notes that have more than 4 beats? This is when understanding the process starts to come into play. 

As we progress through our understanding of music, we start to pick out patterns and understand the underlying mechanisms that determine the rhythm of a piece. When we understand why a whole note has the value that it does, then we are no longer constrained by our ability to remember the values or our ability to retrieve them from our memory every time we encounter a differently valued note. 

So the next time that you catch yourself struggling to determine where to place the left-hand in relation to the right-hand in Chopin’s Fantaisie Impromptu, just remember to break it down into its components. Look at the measure and see how the values fit into each measure. That way, you won’t have to remember what every little note value is worth again.

language

Remember when you learned how to form the past tense in English? You know, -ed? As it turns out, the same process of generalizing special cases applies again here. 

When we first learn how to form the past tense of words, we begin by looking at a few specific cases that align with the rule. We begin by memorizing how to spell words such as talked and walked. After a while, we start to pick up the patterns inherent in the language. Next thing you know, generalizing the past tense becomes second nature.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. By and large though, it is far easier for us to remember how the rule works of changing a word into the past tense, than it is for us to remember every single word’s spelling.

conclusion

Remember the driving example that I had at the beginning of the post? Well, as many of you know, learning to drive involves learning how to navigate driving on icy roads, as well as other surfaces.

One interesting pattern to note is that, when it comes to learnability, it is easier for us to begin with a few special cases. As we progress, when we begin to complicate things, we start to recognize patterns and rules that guide us. In that sense, for applicability, it is easier for us to use our general knowledge to figure out what to do in specific situations.

Of course, I could cover a bunch of other subjects where you could note these same patterns, but if you only took one thing from this article, it should be this: Learning is a continual process, one where the situations keep on getting more complex. If you want to learn best, try to understand the underlying processes and use them to simplify concepts.