Psychological Inertia

Inertia is the word used to describe how an object continues to move through its momentum even though the force acting on it has already stopped. As an example, you stop pedaling the bicycle and inertia is what allows it to continue rolling forward.

The scars of people run deep.

People who were bullied in their childhood hold this sense of pain as they grow up. They might become the most interesting guy in the workplace, but inside they still hold this inner trauma within them. Because of that, they hold people away - They are afraid of their self-worth being stepped upon again. No matter how loved they are, they are afraid to let people get close again.

We again see people who were forced to meet standards while young, and then continuously hold that sense of wanting to prove themselves to others repeatedly. They literally live for the validation of other people.

People who suffer heartbreak clinch onto themselves, unwilling to become vulnerable and open their heart again to someone else. They become 'incomplete', grasping for more - wanting more, but yet unwilling to release their own fears.

There are all kinds of people in the world and so the scars come in many forms.

But that's what it means to be human.

To me, our minds have collections of habits. Some that repeatedly surface, again and again. Physical habits, emotional habits, mental habits.... They are structures with a stuck pattern, with a form of inertia, a form of memory.

Some forms of habits are useful - like for brushing your teeth or walking. For checking the road for cars before crossing.

But of course - the troublesome habits are those that you have accumulated within yourself - as emotional or mental habits.

You can't just stop one day and decide, I will no longer do that. Changing a negative habit is replacing it with a positive habit to stay away from it. To see the root of the negative habit and remove its validation completely.

In fact, it's part of what we would call an "identity".

When we build habits with other people, we form a "common identity" - but it's also part of your role in this world.

If it's this deeply ingrained, the only way is to acknowledge this negative habit and actively try to replace it with a more positive change.

Self-permission

We often forget that we, too, are a part of nature. When one doesn't understand that, we are unconsciously riding the waves and conditions that nature lays out for us.

When a flower smells aromatic, a delicacy tastes sumptuous, situations result in favorable circumstances or basically when we get into a particularly pleasurable situation - We then permit ourselves to feel pleasure.

On the other hand, when a flower smells pungent, a food-item tastes horrid, situations result in unfavorable circumstances or when we get into a particularly painful situation - We then permit ourselves to feel pain.

Our travel through life flickers between these two poles of pleasure and pain. We delight, chase and savor pleasure while it lasts. We evade, shirk and despair pain while it lasts. But ultimately, like a pendulum, life is a path where pain and pleasure trades each other off. One cannot exist without the other. There is only pain with pleasure as background; Likewise, there is only pleasure with pain as background.

Let's talk about the typical romance story: A girl meets a guy. Guy and girl start permitting pleasure as a result of favorable experiences. They are using each other as permission slips for feeling pleasure, and calling it love.

When we are pleasurable emotionally, we call it love and compassion. When we are pleasurable physically, we call it health. When we are pleasurable mentally, we call it happiness. In other words, love is not some force that drops out of the sky, but something you permit yourself to feel.

Too much drama happens in the name of "love".

If you think about it logically, they are really just games of fantasy. One side has a certain perspective, so does the other. Each are fighting for more pleasure instead of pain. But both sides do not realize that the problem starts with themselves.

For example, girl thinks guy gave her love before. Hence, when girl closes herself up from this pleasurable sensation, girl thinks that guy has stopped showing her love. Girl wants to see actions from guy so that she can allow herself to feel love.

If you think about it here, it is irrational. How can you expect someone to do something, so that you can feel pleasurable?

True love is not something you can give to another person. Love is simply pleasure. When one bares one's heart completely, allowing all expectations to fall away - Then right there, one is able to feel pleasure.

Love is self-permitted. It cannot be given, just permitted. It is simply a matter of whether one truly loves oneself, because in order to truly love, one has to love oneself first.

Back from the Phillippines

I always had in my mind, the Philippines, as a pretty slummed down area - third world country that would totally look like some of those old-day kampong villages. Well, I was partially right. There were some areas which looked really, really bad - when the rain came, the sides of the roads would be flooded. The water would be like a quarter of a tyre high and it made walking in the mud a little pain in the ass.

But the developed areas kinda surprised me. Frankly speaking, their economy is far more bustling than Perth. Jeez, they have so many eateries and shops I would say Perth is like a snail to the Philippines, a cheetah.

It's really, really funny though. You'd see the streets looking pretty run-down and all... But when you enter their homes, it can be bigger than your Singaporean HDB flat. When you look at how some of the locals dress up, they have far more fashion sense. They don't look run-down at all man. Then you look at the shops - it's completely comprehensive with so many recognizable brands.

It just "looks" run-down. The people and the homes aren't that run-down... Well, mostly.

Some were pretty bad. I could see leaking roofs when the rain came. Some of the houses were located so damn deep inside foresty areas that I was quite surprised when I realized there was an entire village full of bungalow-looking houses inside.

The scenery isn't bad. It's quite a change from the developed countries where you see industrialization everywhere. I kind of like it there. You'd see rundown stuff... then loads of trees... then mountains... then... gosh it's like they have everything over here. The really nice places can have really blue seas and all. Beautiful.

Another thing that warmed my heart was their culture in the Philippines.

Their culture is really weird for a Singaporean, definitely. They literally treat every single person around them as if they knew them for years. They'd suddenly talk to the person next to them as if they knew them for like 10000 years. They'd just touch another person's arm just to ask her a question. They'd just laugh when they want to, cry when they want to...

Man, that freedom makes me kinda envious.

Contrast that to the "modern" society where people suppress whatever they're feeling and try not to step on each other toes. Secluded from each other. So near to each other yet so bloody far. Eyes stuck on mobile phones and tablets. You're with a friend and he or she is in cyberspace instead.

I don't know, it's not like the Filipinos don't have money to get mobile phones. Some of them do. It's just that they don't get absorbed into technology as much as we do.

Another reason was this...

My dad got a godson, for some reason. I just realized I had a god-bro lol, kinda cool. But yeah, the way they welcomed us in the airport was insane.

Over twenty people just there to welcome us. They showered us with warmth, hugged us despite us not knowing them, and they were just so damn genuine I was questioning my own existence lol. I was questioning what the hell I was living in - a dreadful cold society where each kept to themselves.

These people just held nothing back... They literally spent a few months of their salaries showering us with some gifts. My dad was refusing them, telling them that he felt so bad and he wanted to pay himself, but they just said that they wanted to.

It reminds me of the older culture we had in Singapore, according to my dad. He said that people in the kampong were always together and treated each other as neighbors. They would go as a group, work as a group and everybody was part of this amazing warmth.

Kind of makes me wonder... Is industrialization really helping us?

Industrialization made the Westerners a completely individualistic society. The collectivism of Asian societies are rapidly degrading. I don't know if it's a good thing.

It makes me sad, really, it does. Even at my generation, people no longer seem to have such deep respect for other people any more. They don't seem to be as trusting, as selfless, as warm any more. Not even myself. It sucks, really.

Goal check A

Programming is rather interesting - it's kind of like mathematics only with a clear difference: It has proper syntax and is readable to a computer's processor, a compiler and a human.

Never realized how complicated programming could be until I recently finished a project after tons of pouring through textbooks, lecture notes and videos. Though I can happily say that I'm at the level of a year 2 comp-science student now! I'm kind of glad I can now become more of a lazy bastard and study as efficiently as possible because I don't have to waste time on monotonous tasks or repetitive things.  :)

Milestones achieved: Learnt C, C++, Java programming, literal science behind computers and servers, databases, SQL, etc. :D

Time taken: 10 days.

Reward: A day in USS woohoo

Extension: Code apps for convenience; Code apps/games to sell.

Next goal: Learn marketing to level 2 curriculum within 2 weeks.

Summer Project

Just going to give myself a challenge right now. I've managed to get lectures from several units in my university and I'm super stoked because I really want to learn some of these units. So my current curriculum would be:

1. CITS1001
2. CITS2002
3. MKTG1203
4. MKTG1204
5. MKTG2305
6. PATH2220
7. PHYS1001
8. ANHB3324

I'm pretty sure I can master these subjects way before the end of the month. I mean, no assignments or tests - that'll be so damn easy. All I need is to test myself at the end by devising a similar project based on the metrics given by the lectures.

So many things I want to do, gosh. Not to forget my dorm room project... Maybe I should add in an architecture unit, I always wanted to learn.

Integrated Information Theory: Answer to Consciousness?

Lately since 2012, there has been a theory in development called the Integrated Information Theory which has huge repercussions: That everything in nature has a certain form of consciousness (consistent with several religious philosophies - See Panpsychism). In a way, we might be able to measure the "sentience" of beings - from Artificial intelligence to insects to even the human brain.

This theory was the brainchild of neuroscientist Giulio Tononi and what is really interesting about this theory is that it actually has an extremely close relationship with actual studies - in other words, the theory is proving itself to be verifiable and repeatable.

The theory is pretty complex if I were to spell out all the mathematics, but here's a sum of what I gather from the theory after reading the papers and doing some self-research:

(A) If a system CAN be reduced, consciousness does not exist at that level. 

For example, if you had a brain - but removed the cerebellum, the visual cortex, etc - somehow, patients have shown that you STILL have consciousness. In other words, the whole brain does not equate to consciousness.

(B) Consciousness is measured by an index, Phi ϕ .

This theory states that the more "unified" the system is, the LESS reducible it is. Hence, this correlates with consciousness. The higher Phi is, the "larger" the most-reducible unit of that system. Hence, the system is more capable of a "higher" consciousness.

You don't have to know what this equation means, but basically it is as I've summed up above: The more information being generated at the level of a defined system, the LESS reducible it is. And the more information relative to OTHER systems, a higher phi will show that more information is generated at the least-reducible level.

(C) IIT is based off 5 axioms as of version 3.0.

1. Consciousness exists: The experience exists intrinsically and is not affected by external observation, etc.

2. Consciousness is compositional: It has directions, you can differentiate the different elements within an experience.

3. Experience is differentiated: Whenever we experience something, we generate a "contrast" from our history.

4. Experience is unified: Despite having both a left and right eye, we perceive everything as a SINGLE experience - a unified "one".

5. Consciousness is exclusive: You can take away the sense organs and the brain is still able to generate images from within itself.

(D) IIT is consistent with evolutionary theory.

The current theory is that the more "unified" a system is, the more information can be generated within that level and transferred among its parts. Hence, this "communication" allows for a higher biological fitness (which just means the chance of survival to the point of producing an offspring).

***

Pretty interesting theory from what I've gathered. The only question is how far can we move from a consciousness index? We're still skimming the surface - but what we have now is that the "mind" is like a multi-dimensional mathematical structure that doesn't exist directly within the physical plane. Very hopeful for this theory's development, it sounds very promising.

Building habits that stick

You know the times where I say that I'm a huge self-improvement junkie? I'm certainly not joking. I've read, watched, listened to hundreds of stuff - attended seminars, questioned experts, etc - so you can rest assured that I know what I'm talking about.

The very first principle anybody who tries self-improvement should be this: Consistency. It's obvious and common-sense. If you want something to stick with you, you do it repeatedly until the effort to perform it becomes nullified and effortless. 

Basically, you proceed from...

1. Unconscious incompetency to...
2. Conscious incompetency to...
3. Conscious competency to...
4. Unconscious competency

By the time you reach unconscious competency, if it's a physical activity, your brain would have minimized all the excessive movements you take to perform something and made it optimal and so effortless it's like reciting your ABCs.

Let me prove my point... You know your ABCs, don't you? Now recite your ABCs in reverse - can you do it? Well, not now, since your brain has already optimized the rhyme and song within your head as a forward-moving algorithm.

But let me add to the case of Consistency a few more facts:

1. It takes close to 60 days to form a habit - and you still need to maintain that habit until it becomes subconscious and routined.
2. The higher the variability of reward, the harder it is to unlearn your habit.
3. Form a habit like a statue - slowly build upon it and condition more stimuli to previously neutral stimuli. This is known as the Japanese principle: Kaizen. So for example, day 1, you sweep one tile of the floor. Day 2, you sweep the floor 1 more tile than the previous day, etc.

This is also what a lot of trending articles call Deliberate Practice, a term coined by a psychology professor at Florida State University. Experts break down a task they wish to master and slowly master components of it, often paired with immediate feedback. Once mastered, they test higher and higher grounds until the challenge simmers away.

So what I normally do when I want to learn a skill is to immediately break down what I need to master into components. From these components, I convert them into actionable goals. From these actionable goals, I break them down into actionable milestones within these goals. Then I formulate steps I can take to master them.

To me, it's like a game. For example... Currently, I meditate, do postural exercises, practice martial arts, learn cooking, practice programming, do voice training, workout, etc all in one day. I do vary them around, but it's all plotted into my timetable.

I think a really great mindset to have is this: To grow, you need today to be better than yesterday. If it's worse or the same as yesterday, you're stagnating. Deviating a small degree now can turn it into a huge degree change from the direction that you're heading towards.

Whether you want to be a better parent, a better student, a better employee/boss, a better person as a whole, a better business man or whatever... I think it has to start from this growth mentality.

Just a thought...