Archive for the ‘Happiness’ Category

On the Fundamental Nature of the Universe

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

A Rational, Logical View of the Universe is Depressing

I pride myself on my rationality.  Whenever I have an idea, I try my best to check it for unsupported axioms, and I try to make sure it is consistent, both with itself and with other ideas that I know make sense.   Years ago, I concluded that God, as described by Catholicism, could not possibly exist. There was too much suffering in the universe for that to make sense, I thought.  I even believed that arguing for the existence of a God was in some way justifying all the suffering. If God is all powerful, I reasoned, he could simply wipe away all suffering and make it impossible for us to be unhappy. Because there is definitely suffering in the world, then anyone who believes in a just God must also believe that the suffering is somehow just, because a just god would not allow injustice.

I thought a lot about suffering and pain and problems in the world. My understanding of science told me that the universe is made up of lifeless particles interacting according to simple mathematical rules, and that humans are biological robots made from those particles, competing with each other, and with other organisms, for the limited resources that the world has to offer.  As I saw it, we were either going to exhaust all available resources and make our world completely uninhabitable, or we were going to destroy each other through warfare. I saw the world as a horrendous place, and instead of viewing my life as a gift to be treasured, I saw it as a curse inflicted upon me, and often wished I could simply disappear.   When you think that the universe is fundamentally an awful place, it’s hard to be happy, even for a little while.

All of this has changed for me, though, largely thanks to my girlfriend, Megan.   We met almost exactly a year ago, and as I got to know her I soon realized she saw the world in a different way. To her, the world is a beautiful place and life is a gift. At first I figured she was just deluding herself like everyone else, but I soon started thinking she might be right. She saw life not as a curse but as a wonderful blessing, a gift, and this view of life made her happy, gave her peace of mind, and helped her not to worry about stupid things that really don’t matter.

I wanted to share Megan’s optimistic view of the universe, but I felt that science made it very clear that the optimism was completely unwarranted.  I recently realized, though, that perhaps my understanding of science was incorrect.

Or Perhaps Not?

Everything in the universe that has momentum has a wavelength. It’s called the de Broglie wavelength, and it’s a result of quantum mechanics.  Simply put, everything in the universe, from the smallest atom, to very the galaxy we live in, is vibrating at a specific frequency. Not only are there spatial vibrations; light is also a wave characterized by frequency.  Every object that has a temperature emits light; the frequency of this light is determined by the object’s temperature.  This light is called ‘black body radiation‘, and everything that has a temperature emits it. On top of the spatial vibration due to the de Broglie wavelength and the electromagnetic vibration due to black body radiation, scientists also think objects with mass emit gravity waves, although these have yet to be detected.

So everything in the universe is sending off all kinds of different waves.  The waves that are emitted by a given object are not random, though, they have specific frequencies.  A question arises: do you know of anything that could be described as collection of waves with carefully selected frequencies? Sure you do – it’s called music. The universe is not some giant computer simulating biological robots competing for scare resources; it’s a musical instrument. The very laws of physics that govern our universe and make it work are designed so that everything is vibrating and giving off  different waves.

The interesting part hasn’t even come yet. If the universe is playing a song, who’s listening? What does it sound like? We are all part of the universe, which means we are all listening to the song.  Every bit of information you have about the outside world comes to you through your nerves. A nerve is a special type of cell that can fire a chemical pulse. If a nerve is stimulated beyond a certain threshold, such as a nerve responding to the temperature sensing a temperature above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, it fires a pulse, and that pulse goes to simulate the other nerves to which the firing nerve is connected.  After a nerve fires, it has to wait a bit before it can fire again. The minimum time a nerve needs to wait before it can fire again determines the frequency at which the nerve fires.  A nerve is like a string on a musical instrument that can be plucked, and when it is plucked, it plays a specific frequency to your brain.

So the universe is playing a song, and your nerves are translating electromagnetic waves entering your eyes, and sound waves entering your ears, and heat entering your body,  the music of the universe, into a music that your brain understands.  Your brain listens to this music, and it responds by sending signals along various nerves, causing your muscles to contract and your vocal chords to move. How does your brain send signals to your body? it causes nerves to fire signals to your muscles.  As I explained before, a nerve is like a string that can be plucked because it can fire at a specific frequency and is either firing or not.  Your brain is singing a song to your body, causing it to move and manipulate the universe, changing the song the universe sings back to you.  If you go to a house with a dial-up connection to the internet, you can pick up the phone while a computer is connected to the internet via a modem, and you can listen to the computer singing to the internet service provider.  Your brain sings to your body in the same way.

So each of us is engaged in a duet with the entire universe.  Everything you see and feel and touch, every sensation you experience, is a note in the song the universe is playing for you.  Everything you do, every action to take, every muscle you contract and each word you speak is a note in the song that you are playing for the entire universe to hear.  What does this all mean?

You can’t predict anything with this theory;  and because it doesn’t predict anything (that I can think of) we can’t really test it.   Is it true? I’m not sure.  The thing is, it’s completely consistent with a logical, science-based understanding of the world, but it’s also beautiful. When you realize that your life is a song you are playing for the entire universe, how could you not want to make that song as beautiful and inspiring as possible? How could you not want to learn to master your instrument and learn all of its techniques? Just looking at the science, with a strictly rational perspective, you can be incredibly positive about the nature of the universe and about your own life. When you realize that the universe is playing you a song, you can start to listen for it, to understand the chord structure and the melody and to enjoy it in a way that you never would have imagined.

When you hear the song of the universe, you realize that even though life has pain in it, and that bad things can happen to you, focusing on those bad things is completely missing the point.  Living life with a negative focus, complaining about problems in your life and in the world is like being a concert violinist who is playing her most important performance ever, but instead of doing her best to play her instrument with passion, doing her utmost to make the song as romantic and wonderful as possible, to play a song fit to be the song of all existence, she’s fixated on whether the guy two seats over isn’t maybe just a little out of tune.  When you live your life fixated on bad things that might happen and things that hurt in the past and what pain could lay ahead, you’re missing the whole song. You’re not playing it as best as you can, and you’re taking away from the whole.

Because I thought the world was a horrible place, I thought about suicide a lot.  If I killed myself, I knew it would hurt a lot of other people but I also knew that it would prevent me from suffering any more pain.  I realize now how stupid this way of thinking is. Imagine a beautiful concert, the orchestra playing the most wonderful piece ever, and right in the middle of the song, one of the violinists cuts the strings off his violin.  Not only will his part stop abruptly, but the snapping of the strings will make an awful noise which will distract all the other musicians; they may get so upset about what he did that they miss their queues and they forget to play their parts.  Do I really want my last action to be screwing up the song of the universe?

Your death is not the end of your song, because the song you are playing right now is altering the physical structure of the universe, changing the way in which the universe vibrates. The song you play resonates on long after you’ve played your last note. It plays on in the ideas you’ve created, and in the things you’ve built. It plays on in your family and the people who loved you when you were still playing; we hear the songs we play for each other and inspire each other to create beautiful new melodies.  The melodies and phrases that you create are shared and passed on, enriching the song of the universe long after you’ve breathed your last.

Your life is a song that you are playing through your actions, your contribution to the song of all existence.  What reason could you give, what excuse do you have, not to make it the best song you possibly can?

Posted in Happiness, Philosophy, Science | Comments

Life Lessons From Poker

Monday, October 12th, 2009

I first started playing Texas Hold ‘Em poker at Harvey Mudd College, in Claremont, California, while working for the NSF. I have many fond memories of staying up until 3:00 AM playing poker, drinking, and just having fun being a young person with few responsibilities in the world.   When I moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in May 2007, I quickly found a poker game and that’s how I’ve made most of my friends here.  I’m still more or less a beginner;  by my estimate I’ve played maybe 10,000 hands of poker.   I’ve learned a decent amount about the game, and I think a lot of the lessons I’ve learned from playing poker are transferable to life in general. I thought I’d share those lessons for those interested.

  • In the long run, ‘lucky’ players make their own luck

    This lesson is by far the most important lesson I’ve learned, both in Poker and Life in general.   Over the course of a single night a player may get incredibly lucky or incredibly unlucky. In the long run, though, players who consistently make intelligent moves create their own luck by increasing the probability that they will be in situations to make money.  The key to understanding this lesson is to repeat the phrase ‘in the long run’ over and over. Players can go on months-long ‘bad’ streaks, but good players will eventually make more money than bad players.  Life works the same way.  In my experience, I’ve had streaks of terrible luck at some times, and I’ve had runs of awesome luck at other times.  I believe the reason I’ve done well  in life (at least thus far) is largely the fact that I try to shrug off the bad things that happen to me as mere bad luck, and I try to capitalize on the good things that happen.

    Consider this Example:  At the end of College, I planned on getting a Ph.D. in Computer Science.  At a time when I was living on on about a thousand dollars of income each month, I spent over a thousand dollars applying to some of the best schools in the country: Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Illinois, and Georgia Tech. I chose two safety schools: UC San Diego, and Univeristy of North Carolina. I was rejected outright from every program except UCSD (who put me on a wait list and then rejected me) and UNC.   It  definitely hurt to be rejected from so many places, but I realized that coming from a practically unheard of liberal arts college in Cincinnati, and lacking any real research experience, it would be a crapshoot for any school to admit me.  You could definitely say that I was ‘unlucky’ because I only got into my safety school.  I could have taken the job offer I had in Cincinnati, but I knew my career opportunities would be better if I went to grad school, even if it wasn’t MIT.  I took what I saw as one of the worst possible outcomes of the grad school application process and turned it into an opportunity to improve my career.  Blue Capital Group, my current employer, just happened to be located in Chapel Hill, and they just happened to email my algorithms professor looking for new recruits at a time when I was looking for a job.  I took what I saw as a chance for some good luck, and capitalized on it. I now work at a  job I absolutely love, at a time when many people are struggling to find any job at all.  I could go on and on, because my life has been full of both good luck and bad, and the main lesson I’ve learned can be summed up as follows:

    • Recognize and accept that sometimes you’ll have good luck, and sometimes you’ll have bad luck.
      Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’ve had way more good luck than bad because you have access to the internet, the ability to read,  and knowledge of someone as awesome as myself :-p
    • When you’re unlucky, try to way to turn your bad luck into an opportunity. If that fails, shrug it off as bad luck.
    • When you’re lucky, realize that you’ve been granted an opportunity and do everything you can to take advantage of it.
  • Know when to hold and when to fold

    That pair of red aces you were dealt just doesn’t look so good when there are four spades showing on the board, even if one of them is the Ace. Sometimes you have something really good going in life, but you have to let it go because it’s starting to fail. If you hold on to things that were good and have gone bad, you’ll be doing yourself a huge disservice.

    This lesson is especially true in romantic relationships – the longer you hold on to a doomed relationship, the more pain you’re going to cause the both of you, and the harder the breakup will be. Once you realize a relationship isn’t going to work, you need to inform your partner and leave that relationship – it’s the best thing for both parties involved.  On the flip side, when you have the nuts (poker lingo for the best possible hand), you have to do whatever you can to increase the pot size, without scaring other players out by revealing what you’ve got.  When you meet someone that you connect with on every level, someone you love to spend time with, someone who understands you better than you understand yourself, you have to realize what you’ve got and hang on to it.

  • Have confidence in yourself, but not too much

    Having too little confidence in your hand will hurt you because you’ll get pushed around by bigger stacks. Having too much confidence will hurt you becuase you’ll call bets you shouldn’t. There’s a fine line you have to walk with confidence, and the ability to determine when you’re being confident enough is an important skill to hone.

    If you think you’re the smartest man whoever lived (as I once did), that confidence will help you out at times because it’ll allow you to tackle problems that might scare away mere mortals.  It can cost you, though, if you overextend yourself or try something that is beyond your level.  My confidence was shattered when I reached grad school and realized there were people who could think circles around me; people who have thought up and then forgotten things I’ll never begin to understand.  I went from having too much confidence in myself to having too little. I thought I couldn’t accomplish anything and that I’d never amount to much more than an unhappy burnt-out developer.  As I suffered through grad school and started to figure out what was going on, my confidence grew a little bit. I got the nerve to apply for an internship at Microsoft, and being hired for that internship gave me a huge boost in confidence. I started doing better in everything I did.

  • It’s all about discipline

    I know I’m bad at poker, at least compared to my friends. My main problem is that when I’m not getting cards, I don’t find the game very fun, so I do things that I know I shouldn’t.  I know not to play trash hands like Ace-Seven off suit, but I get bored and put money into the pot when I shouldn’t because I’d rather have fun than make money. I don’t have a problem doing this in low limit games, because the amount of money involved in doing so is usually very minimal, i.e. 30 cents.  In higher stakes games, this sort of behavior can cost you a lot of money. I stay away from high stakes games because I know that I don’t have enough discipline to play real solid poker. All the theory in the world won’t help you if you don’t follow sound logic and fold when there’s four to a straight on the board, you’ve got two pair, and your opponent has pushed you all in.

    Life in general works on the same principle. You can read all the diet books you want, and you can understand body chemistry all day long, but if you don’t go to the gym and lift regularly, you’re never going to be able to reach your fitness goals.  You can dream of being a millionaire all day long, but if you don’t work hard, save your money, invest wisely and avoid splurging on things you don’t need, you’ll never make it.  Going to the gym, working hard and saving money all require discipline.

I’ll end this already too-long post with a caveat: Not every lesson learned at the poker table applies to real life. Probably the most important exception is the fact that  poker is a Zero-Sum game. That means every player who succeeds does so to another player’s detriment. Real life is most certainly not zero sum – there are plenty of ways that two people can interact with each other such that both people benefit. This sort of mutually beneficial interaction is the cornerstone of civilization and, I would argue, the basis for all just governments.  But that’s a post for another day.

Posted in Games, Happiness, Observations, Philosophy | Comments

Investing in Happiness

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

I think a lot about investing.  I learned in high school that investing while you’re young is one of the best moves you can make from a financial perspective.  The earlier you start investing, the more time your money has to grow.  For a while I thought it made sense to live as frugally as possible, and to save as much as possible, in order to maximize my financial payoff in life.   I had a realization, though, that changed this attitude.

Think about a really good memory. Maybe it’s a memory of your family gathered for thanksgiving dinner, or maybe its of a fun date you went on. Maybe it’s a memory of the time you found five dollars on the sidewalk. Who knows.  Doesn’t thinking about good memories make you feel good inside? I would say that in my experience, remembering a good time that I had is almost as enjoyable as having the good time itself.

This year, I threw a birthday party for myself, and invited a bunch of friends from out of town. I rented a house on a lake for a weekend, and even sprung for a Jet Ski for the day on saturday.  Five of my 8 siblings were able to make it out, as were a substantial number of my friends, from grad school, college, and high school.  I saw some people I literally thought I’d never see again, and we had a great time.  I will probably remember that weekend on the lake for the rest of my life.  When I think of it, I can’t help but smile and feel good inside. It’s not just a fleeting happiness, like the feeling you get from eating a good filet mignon, It’s a feeling of contentment and metaphysical satisfaction with life.

That weekend cost me money; around $1,000 after all was said and done.  A slightly younger me would have argued that spending $1,000 on a birthday party for yourself is a waste of money and irresponsible. An older (and I’d argue wiser) me would respond that the weekend was not just a way of having fun in the present, but an investment in the future because of the value of the memories it creates.

Let’s suppose that I remember my birthday party 4 times a year for the rest of my life.  They say you can’t put a price on memories, but they say a lot of things that aren’t true, so I’m going to put a price on the memory and say that the good feelings I get from remembering that weekend are comparable to the good feelings I’d get if I found $20 on the sidewalk. That means my $1000 investment pays me $80 a year for the rest of my life.  If I live another 50 years (which seems like a reasonable bet), the memory will pay me $4,000 over the course of my lifetime. Not bad. Is it possible to do better?  If I had put that $1,000 into the stock market, it would not be unreasonable to assume that my return would average close to 8% annually.  That works out to … $80 a year.  It’s true that if I invested that $80 back into the market, my annual return would increase beyond $80, but I’d be giving up the momentary satisfaction of having that $80 now.

I’m not arguing against savings – I think it’s important to prepare for large future expenses like retirement and your childrens’ education – but I think there are diminishing returns to having large amounts of money, and that spending even non-trivial amounts of money now in order to create great memories that will last your entire life is also a great idea.

Posted in Finance, Happiness, Math, Philosophy | Comments

A Mathematical Case For Optimism

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Given the choice, does it make more sense to be  pessimistic or optimistic?  I was thinking about this one night, and, as usual, I decided to explore the question mathematically, using the tools of game theory. Credit goes to Megan for helping me figure this one out.  The basic problem I had was this: Everyone says you should be optimistic, but my objection to this claim has always been “what if the universe is really a terrible place where mostly bad things happen – why should you be optimistic then?” Megan insisted that it made sense to be optimistic, and I thought I could prove her wrong mathematically. I did some thinking, though, and concluded that it actually does make sense to be optimistic, regardless of the nature of the universe.

Let’s use a simple model of reality: events happen, and they’re either good or bad, to varying degrees.

In this model, one of three things is true:

  1. Reality is fundamentally a good place:  the sum of the good experiences is greater than the sum of the bad experiences
  2. Reality is fundamentally a neutral place: the sum of the bad experiences is roughly equal to the sum of the good experiences
  3. Reality is fundamentally a bad place:  the sum of the bad experiences is greater than the sum of the good experiences

    You might object to my model of reality and claim that it’s too simple to be useful.  Just for you, I’ll add another possibility:

  4. Reality is too complex to be characterized by simple good/ bad models.

As you experience life, you’ll try to build a model of the universe, and part of this model is how or bad the universe is.  Ideally your model is perfect, but invariably you’re going to get things wrong.  If you’re going to model how good or bad the universe is, is it better to err on the side of  good or bad? We’ll say that optimism means believing the universe is better than it really is, while pessimism means believing the universe is worse than it really is. I claim that, regardless of the true nature of the universe, an optimistic strategy is the best strategy to pursue.

To prove my claim, I have constructed a ‘truth table’ which describes the outcomes of optimistic and pessimistic strategies in the four cases listed above. In each case, the Optimistic strategy pays off more than the pessimistic strategy.

Nature of the Universe vs. Life Strategy
Nature of Universe Optimism Result
 Pessimism Result
 Winner
Good Life is good, and you enjoy it to its fullest. Life is good, but you don’t enjoy it to its fullest because you’re worrying about things that are unlikely to happen. Optimism.
Neutral Life is OK, but you put a positive spin on things and as a result enjoy them more. You spend less time worrying about bad things that might happen, and more time anticipating and enjoying the good things. When bad things happen, you get over them quicker because you’re convinced more good things are in store for you. Life is OK, but you put a negative spin on things, and as a result, you enjoy them less. You spend more time worrying about bad things that might happen,  and less time anticipating and enjoying the good things. When bad things happen, you take longer to get over them because you’re convinced they’re going to keep happening to you. Optimism.
Bad Life is tough, but you’re oblivious to the fact. Bad things happen often, but you don’t linger on them. On the rare occasion good things happen, you enjoy them to their fullest. Life is tough, but you think it’s worse than it really is. When bad things happen, you reflect upon how miserable life is. When good things happen, you tell yourself that they won’t last. Optimism.
Undefined Bad things and good things both happen. When the good things happen, you enjoy them. When the bad things happen, you don’t dwell on them because you know they’re temporary. When nothing good or bad is happening, you stay positive and think good things are ahead in your future. Bad things and good things both happen. When the good things happen, you enjoy them. When bad things happen, you dwell on them because you think you have more of the same to suffer through. When nothing good or bad is happening, you’re in a negative mood because you’re overestimating the probability of bad things happening in your future Optimism.

If you find yourself worrying about the future or fretting about the past, just remember – Optimism is always an intelligence choice that will make you happier in the long run.

Posted in Happiness, Math, Philosophy | Comments