Life thoughts explained in the most nerdy way possible…

It’s all about probability

In probability theory, the law of large numbers says that as the sample size becomes larger, the sample mean gets closer to the expected value. In other words, the more you try something, the more closely the results follow the supposed probability distribution. You can’t really say anything when you flip a coin once or twice, but if you flip it 100 times, you’re pretty sure it’s going to be around 50/50.

Unlike the laws of physics (classical physics at least) where you can calculate the exact answer, anything to do with people (i.e. pretty much everything in life) can’t be fully predicted — there are simply too many variables that come into play, which you can’t control or even observe. Luckily, life is not one-shot but made of many many events. They may seem random, but as the number increases, the law of large numbers starts to show. So the best you can is to do something that maximizes your probability, try as many times as you can, and wait for the law of large numbers to work its magic.

Take helping others as an example, help 100 people and likely most of them will forget, but there is a large enough probability that one of them will save your life one day. You don’t know who that will be, so help all 100 of them, and your net return will most likely be positive in the end. Same idea applies to anything that you feel reluctant doing because the outcome is uncertain, as long as the potential benefit justifies your effort.

Note that the very concept of probability means there will always be exceptions. There is still a tiny chance that you will get all heads when you flip a coin 100 times. There will always be that one bad guy who gets away with all the horrible things he did and vice versa, just like there will always be that one person who wins the lottery. But it’s pretty safe to bet that exception won’t be you (at least not always be), especially when looking at the long run. Large numbers take time to accumulate. So to make probability work to your advantage, be patient. Like Arthur Clarke once said “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, any sufficiently long-term pragmatism is indistinguishable from idealism.

Life as non-linear optimization

An optimization problem is how you find where the best value of an objective function lies within the range of all its variables. A big part of life is just that — trying to get to a point where whatever you care about most is maximized, be it wealth, fame, accomplishment, emotional connection, inner peace… or maybe just nothingness.

Depending on the form of the function, an optimization problem can be easy or hard. With a linear function, you clearly see how each variable independently affects the result, positively or negatively, from its coefficient alone. So it is more or less obvious how to manipulate those variables to get the best out. But with a non-linear function, everything is tangled together. It is impossible to figure out what to do by just looking at the equation. It’s messy.

What a non-linear objective function looks like.

Life is very, very non-linear. There is no formula to calculate the best solution, and you don’t get the nice bird’s eye view as you see here. The analogy that everyone likes to use is climbing a mountain with many peaks, some higher than others. All that you can do is to start from somewhere, collect information within arm’s reach, take a small step, and iterate. By always choosing a step upwards, you will end up on one of the peaks (a local maximum), but not necessarily the tallest one (the global maximum). That’s exactly what the simple optimization algorithms do. And then you are stuck there because there is nowhere to step up further. For a cleverer algorithm, it could randomly start from somewhere else again and hopefully iterate to a better maximum. You don’t get to do that in real life. To aim for a higher peak, you have to first step down from the one you are already on.

To make the problem even messier, your objective function (or the weights between them if you have more than one) might change several times during your life. And unlike real mountains which are set in stone (literally), your landscape completely changes as your objective function changes.

So what does that tell us?

1. Where you end up doesn’t depend that much on where you start, but heavily on what your objective function is.

2. Don’t follow other people’s steps, because they may have different objective functions than yours. So even though it may look like both of you are at the same coordinates on the map, you could actually be climbing very different mountains. Measure your steps based on your own objective.

3. Don’t be obsessed about always choosing the best step in front of you. Although it gets you faster to the nearest local maximum, it doesn’t increase your probability of reaching the global maximum. A bit of randomness is actually a good thing, especially in the early stages. It prevents you from getting stuck in a local maximum too early.

4. To jump out of a local maximum and hopefully get to the global one, you need to deliberately introduce disturbance, “shake things up a bit”. The problem is, by the very definition of a local maximum, your objective function goes down as you are walking out of it before you can go up again. That doesn’t feel good. Get used to it.

But even knowing all of the above, no algorithm can guarantee to reach the global maximum. So at the end of the day (or your life), be happy with what you managed to achieve.

If all these feel a bit too mechanical, where does the human nature come into play? Well, whatever fancy algorithm to use, no other than you can define your objective function. Machines can’t choose their purpose. People can.

The direct path

If you want to do something, do it exactly as you intend. If you want to say something, say the exact words you mean. If you don’t want to do something, don’t do it. Try eliminating intermediate steps as much as possible. And make it now.

The direct path is the shortest path. We all know that from elementary school geometry. There is no rational reason for not taking it. But why are people often shunning from it? Most of the time, they are subconsciously creating a psychological bumper for themselves. The shortest path means the result is revealed to you in the shortest time, a result you may or may not like. By winding around and setting all kinds of preconditions, you indefinitely postpone the moment to be stricken by failure, so it always feels like there is hope. Unfortunately that also means you indefinitely postpone the moment of ever reaching your goal. Remember the law of large numbers? The quicker you can try something, the more times you can try it, and the sooner the law of large numbers comes to your aid.

Now the other side of the coin. Never do something only to escape from something else, be it fear, anger, guilt, or whatever. It doesn’t work. A negative motivation can never sustain you nearly as long as positive motivations do. Sooner or later you will realize the make-do solution you take makes you suffer even more than what you are escaping from.

So, take on the thing that bothers you in the most direct way possible. If you fear something, beat it. If you are angry about something, fix it. If you feel guilty about something, well, don’t. The very fact you would even consider doing something that makes you feel guilty implies you have a strong enough positive motivation for it. So unless it really is against the law, it’s usually the right thing to do.

The unpleasant ally

The ancient Chinese philosophor Mencius once said, if god chooses to assign you some great duty, he is going to make you suffer in all possible ways before he gives you the job.

Mencius was right, but he got the logic backwards. It’s not because you are the chosen one so you have to go through all this. It’s because after going through all this, you are the only one left to be chosen. And of course god doesn’t have to be in the equation. Nothing eliminates your competitors faster than doing something that’s a little harder, assuming you don’t get yourself eliminated that is. Even better, do something nobody else wants to do. By being the only one, you are by definition number one. Hardship can be your best ally, although a rather unpleasant one. On the flip side, often the surest way to get yourself out of the game is to select the “easy mode”, because you are competing with just about everyone else who thinks just like you. Picture any escalator next to stairs — which is hard and which is easy really?

So when Kennedy said “we choose to go to the moon not because it’s easy but because it’s hard”, he was not just being heroic but very realistic. At a time when the they were already behind in the space race, he knew the only chance to take lead again was to try something so difficult that others dare not attempt.

Plus, often time people consider something hard precisely because nobody has tried it. So at least half of the time, you realize it’s not as hard as it looks once you are on it. The other half of the time it might be even harder than it looks, but even the tiniest bit of progress makes you stand out of the crowd, so the bargain is still good compared to doing the easy things.

The best way to play the game

Most sports games are built around a single action. Football: kick the ball into the goal. Basketball: throw the ball into the basket. Volleyball: keep the ball in the air. The list goes on. People first realize it’s fun to kick a ball into a goal, and then gradually develop an entire game around it, complete with rules and scores and above all, medals. Suddenly it’s no longer just about having fun but about winning. You can’t take your eyes off the scoreboard. Enjoyment becomes anxiety. That’s also when all kinds of tactics start to emerge, having nothing to do with the action that originated the game. You dribble out the time when you lead the score; you lure your opponent to a foul; you call for timeouts to wear out their stamina… You are not just “playing” the game. You are playing “the game”.

There is nothing wrong about that, except that every minute spent on those, is a minute you could have spent on getting the ball into the goal. Things like those may help you win a game or two under certain circumstances, but on the statistical level, time and energy spent on the action that defines the game is a much better investment. You can be clever with your opponents or even the referee, but none of that matters if you can’t send the ball into the goal. Use that last minute of the match trying to make one more goal, instead of idling around avoiding contact with your opponent. In terms of raising your probability of winning, try getting another point is an equally logical strategy as try not losing a point. If nothing else, it’s more fun. And when you are having fun, you perform better.

That’s why the best way to play the game is not to play the game. Forget the score. Forget the clock. Forget the tricks. Get the ball into the goal. If you can maximize your probability of succeeding in that one action under all circumstances, you are basically invincible. It won’t matter how the game is scored and timed and organized. You will always win. Plus, honing your skills for one action is much more efficient than learning 100 different tricks, each only works for one special situation.

A lot of things in life feel like games: career, business, academia… and so on. There are rules and contestants and rewards etc. just like in games. The same idea applies. Find out that one action that matters, and focus on it. Everything else is a byproduct. What’s more, unlike games in sports fields, in games of life the rules are often not as set in stone as you think, if they are at all specified. More often than not, what you assume to be rules are simply habits and customs. You don’t have to play the game like how everyone else is playing it, but can get a lot more creative in performing that one action. If you can build a rocket to send the ball into the goal and it doesn’t look like it will hurt anyone, by all means do it. Most of the existing tactics won’t even apply any more in that case. If you are ever in doubt whether you should or can break a rule, here is a simple principle: don’t harm others, and don’t cheat. Doing either one will shoot yourself in the foot in the long run. Other than those, pretty much everything is breakable.

All those may sound a little challenging. After all, we are only human. once in the playfield, it takes a strong heart not to be pressured and tempted by players and audience surrounding us who are more absorbed in the game than the action. If you find it too difficult not to play the game while in it, there is yet another interpretation to this — you don’t always have to join the game in order to play. If all that you want is to be one of the best runners in the world, nobody said you have to be in the Olympics. There are plenty of other ways to demonstrate that. You could become that great solo runner that inspires everyone to run, or you could invent running techniques that every world champion adopts. By doing so, you are adding to the pool instead of taking from it. When you are in the game, every player is a competitor. When you are not in it, every player is a friend. Nobody is going to hate you for taking their championship away. And nobody will take your position away since there is no concrete position to take.

And above all, play it only if you enjoy it. That’s what games are created for.

The balance OF extremes

A simple physics problem: giving you a scale and some weights, how do you balance it?

Put weights on both ends of the scale, and you get a stable balance. Put the weights at the midpoint, you get a balance that is extremely unstable. Any slight disturbance will break it. And that’s assuming you even know where the midpoint is. Finding endpoints is straightforward: go all the way in either direction until you can’t go any further. Finding the midpoint is tricky. Even if you have the full picture of the scale, it takes precise measurement to pinpoint it.

Stable balance




Unstable balance

What looks so obvious in physics is suddenly not obvious when we face real life problems. As adults, we often advise ourselves to make balanced considerations. And when we say that, most often what we really mean is taking the middle ground. Not too this and not too that, or maybe a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Sometimes we do that because of limited resources, but more often we are simply avoiding the extremes in the fear that something may fall over the edge.

The problem is, that strategy hardly works. By doing not enough of this or that, you are achieving neither this nor that. You can’t make everyone happy, but it’s very easy to make everyone equally unhappy. And the difficulty to find the exact midpoint is even worse than in the physics problem, because most of the time you don’t have the full picture. You’d be lucky if you even know where you are, let alone whether you are right in the middle.

So just like in the physical case, attempting both extremes is actually a more effective strategy. Not only does it increase the probability of achieving either or both of your targets, but the two extremes are counterbalancing each other to keep you from toppling over. once you pin the two ends down, what’s left in the middle makes a lot less difference. You can try both extremes at the same time if you can afford, or in sequence if you must focus on one thing at a time.

Obviously, the very idea of opposite extremes means you can’t expect to have them both at the exact same spot. So focus on one extreme in one place, and the other extreme in another. Like making something so cool that nobody cares if it’s useful, plus something so useful that nobody cares if it’s cool. Something so fundamental that makes your life worth living, plus something so down to earth that keeps you alive. They could also be two extreme attitudes to face different aspects of your problem. Be extremely bold when making a big decision, and extremely careful with small details. Be extremely idealistic when choosing an ideal, and extremely realistic when realizing it. Besides other things, it makes you sleep better — watch any superhero movie and you will know that good guys and bad guys don’t falter. It’s the ones in the middle that are constantly bothering themselves. They are not idealistic enough to fight for the best, and they are not realistic enough to live with the worst.

The same idea applies to people. If you want to build a powerful team, find the best attacker and the best defender and put them together, instead of looking for a bunch of people that are ok-ish in both. It takes a good leader to make them work together, but it’s more than worthwhile.

What may surprise you is that the two extremes sometimes look alike. Take gambling as an example. A true idealist will tell you it’s wrong. A true realist will tell you it’s not worth it. Different logic, same conclusion. So after all you may not look like someone with split personality as much as you would worry.

Interpolation vs. Extrapolation

Given a number of points, interpolation means inferring what’s between them, while extrapolation means inferring what’s beyond them. Interpolation is more or less reliable. Knowing the two ends, points in between are most likely well contained in their scope. Extrapolation is very unreliable. Just because a curve keeps going up till now, doesn’t mean it won’t suddenly drop the next moment, and vice versa. The problem is even worse when you consider real world data — on top of the unpredictability of the trend itself, it has random noise added to it, i.e. fluctuations caused by transient interference and pure luck. So if you only look at the recent a few points and extrapolate from them, what you get is no better than a random guess.

Whenever you are trying to predict the future from the past, you are essentially doing an extrapolation, which is inherently unreliable. Unfortunately, most of us don’t realize that. We are so used to assuming tomorrow will be just like yesterday, that we blindly follow whatever the recent success story is, and we lose confidence in something as soon as it falls below our expectation. If only we had a little information from the day after tomorrow to do an interpolation, we can probably afford to be a lot more steadfast. The obvious problem is, that’s impossible. But there are a few ways to mitigate the risk.

1. Take longer observations. Random noise tends to cancel each other out in the long run, thanks to the law of large numbers again. So instead of fixating on what happened recently, look as far back as you can. By doing so, you have a good chance to filter out the high-frequency noise (things that flutter from day to day) and see the low-frequency signal (things that evolve steadily over years or decades).

high-frequency noise vs. low-frequency signal

2. Learn from history. No matter how far you look back on something, you are still doing an extrapolation. You can’t have data about its full life cycle before the cycle completes. Fortunately, you are probably not the first one in this. Similar things have finished their life cycles many times well before the one you are in. A few of them you might have experienced yourself, and most others are well documented in history. Few things finished in the same way it started. By looking at their cycles start to end, you get a reasonably good idea what may await you down the road. In a sense, you are filling the missing future data by borrowing from history, thus simulating an interpolation and improving the reliability of your prediction. When doing so, it is critical to look at both the ups and the downs, the glories and the defeats. A model trained with positive samples only is pretty useless, because it has no idea what to do when seeing a negative sample, and vice versa. That’s why we should read fewer celebrity biographies.

Be aware where history likely repeats itself and where it doesn’t. Things like science and technology change dramatically, but human nature is pretty much the same throughout millenniums. So if someone tells you some scientific or technological advance will change the game for ever (for better or for worse), give them the benefit of the doubt. There is a fair chance they might be right, although not necessarily in the way they picture. But if someone says some new mind trick or business model will revolutionize everything, you can pretty safely ignore them (but make sure they don’t ruin everything instead).

3. Keep things simple. The simpler a function is (fewer variables, lower orders etc.), the less likely it will take a sudden turn. The bad news is many things look super complex, sometimes intentionally made so by people who wants to make it look professional or intimidating or just to trick you into their trap, and other times simply caused by random noise. The good news is they are often driven and governed by much simpler mechanics behind the scene, e.g. economics is nothing more than the play between supply and demand; everything else is noise. So instead of relying on observations (a.k.a. raw data) only, try to figure out the underlying model, no matter how counterintuitive it might be. Again, history is a rich data source for validating your model here. On a side note, if something looks a lot more complex than it needs to be, take caution. That’s a sign that something fishy may be going on.

4. Be prepared to be surprised. Even after doing all the above, the future is still a guess game. Not only can’t you fully predict it, sometimes you can’t even list all the possibilities. Your curve could jump into a new dimension you’ve never heard of. So always keep a bit of flexibility at hand.

Finally, don’t forget “the best way to predict the future is to invent it” (Alan Kay). When nobody has a clue what is coming, whoever that dares to take a stand has a good chance to fill the void and steer the future to their liking. Be that one if necessary, if only to prevent a future you don’t want to see.

The illusion of relativity

Human-beings are born with a gift to measure differences around us, so much so it is hard-wired in the way our senses work. There are visual neurons in our eyes designated to detect contrast, i.e. the difference of brightness. Our brain automatically calculates differences between the two eyes and the two ears for us to see and hear the world in 3D. Our nose stops picking up a scent once getting used to it, so that you have to increase its intensity to make us smell it again. On top of that, we often sense the relative proportions of physical quantities, instead of the quantities themselves. Brightness is the logarithm of illuminance (the amount of light), loudness is the logarithm of sound energy, pitch is the logarithm of sound frequency, etc. Our sense turns up a notch each time the physical value magnifies by a certain ratio. By doing so, we are able to sense a much greater range of values than what is possible if our senses are linear. This is essential for us to understand the world around us which is otherwise ungraspable. Our mind is so tuned for spotting the comparatives, and comparatives of comparatives, as if they are the most fundamental property of the universe. But there is one slight problem with them.

They are not real.

There are no such physical things as +1 or -1, or percentage, or multiples in the world. They are derived abstractions that only exist in our mind. Physical entities come in absolute numbers only, and ultimately those are what you get and what matter. But the perception of relative comparisons is so engraved in us, that we often mistake them as what dominate our life.

Starting with the simple +/- difference, your colleague making one more dollar than you does not take a dollar away from you, but it feels like it does. Others living a better or worse life does not really make your life more miserable or enjoyable, but the feeling of inferiority or superiority can be very real. Similar effects exist when comparing with oneself. A raise or promotion keeps you happy for about three days, and the moment you get used to it you start yearning for the next one. Yes that can keep us motivated for a species that is inherently lazy, but it can also trick us into pursuing something that has no value in itself — ask any game designer and they are all master manipulators in this. We are so obsessed with perpetual growth on some metric to keep ourselves stimulated, when sometimes what we really should do is to say “that’s enough for now, let’s think about something else”.

This (mis)perception is reinforced by how games work. Most games are designed to be zero-sum, i.e. one player’s gain equals another player’s loss, so that there is a clear winner in the end. Real life situations are rarely zero-sum though. In a game, if you get one point and someone else gets two, that’s equivalent to you losing a point. Keep doing that and you are about to lose the game. In real life, you get one point, that’s all that matters. Keep doing that and you get lots of points. Plus, if everyone knows they can “take advantage of you” by getting more points than you do, they will flock to you just for that. That makes you accumulate points even faster. At the end of the day, everyone gets a little, you get a lot. You win hands down. And notice the idea of win/lose itself is also relative and artificial. Even if tracing back to its origin which is war, the fundamental experience one gets is not win or lose, but live or die — still very absolute.

Proportions and ratios can be just as misleading. We bargain (or hesitate) almost as hard for 1 dollar out of 10 as we do for 100 out of 1000, because they both account for 10%. A rational calculation should tell us to spend only 1/100 of the effort trying to save on the first one, but that’s not what we usually do. We are so occupied by whatever that seems the most important in the current issue, that we forget to assess if the whole issue itself is worth the attention.

Moreover, we often care so much about how efficient something is (the input-output ratio), that we forget how effective it is (what output we really get). A car that’s three times more cost-efficient is useless if it can’t last you to your destination. Not all examples are this obvious though. Two people risking their lives to save someone in danger doesn’t sound like a smart investment as an individual case, but only when each of us knows someone will come for us, can we as a whole have the gut to step forward into the unknown.

Yet another observation is how we are so worried about the success rate when we are about to do something, even in cases where failures don’t really cost us much. More often than not, nobody cares about or even gets to see your failures. It’s the absolute number of successes that matters. Other things assumed to be equal, a 30% success rate where you can try 10 times is a better opportunity than a 70% success rate but you get only one shot. And that’s not even counting the fact that you get better as you try more, and that most people will choose the seemingly safer bet, leaving you less competition.

Now that you realize the illusion of relativity, try not be fooled by it. Comparison is very useful as a tool, but don’t let the means become the end.

If exams are more like real life

Then…

- There is no required subject. You can take as many subjects as you want, or nothing at all. But you only get a fixed amount of time in total.

- You can make up your own subject and even the problem set. But you don’t get to mark your own exam.

- You can bring whatever you have into the exam room, as can everyone else. It may or may not help though.

- Everyone gets a different set of problems to solve, even if they are taking the same exam. Copying answers is useless.

- Just because it says “subject A” on the paper, doesn’t mean the problems are only about subject A.

- Your exam score not only depends on your answers but also on about a million other factors, many are unknown and some are random.

- You can bargain your score with the examiner. You may or may not get what you want, but it’s worth a try.

- You don’t really know one another’s scores. There may be a score posted, but it may not be what they’re actually getting.

- There is no such thing as a perfect score. At the end of the day, you decide what your scores mean, not anyone else.

The optimistic determinism

This is probably the only section that will get a little philosophical or metaphysical. Modern physics like the theory of relativity basically says that time and space are all mashed into one big block, and every moment has equal status. There is no such thing as an objective “now”, which means future and past are also only relative terms. Take a step further, that implies every moment of the universe is “already” there, as is every event that ever happened or will happen. There is no “if”. The future is not only decided, it is done. Our conscious mind takes us on a journey that’s fully written.

So doesn’t that contradict with just about everything said in the other sections? If everything is already there, what’s the point of trying to do anything at all? Well, for the same reason why the heroes in movies are trying to do anything — we all know the movie is already made and there will only be one outcome, but that doesn’t stop us from looking forward to what happens, because we haven’t seen the movie yet. Since there is no possible way for us to know the future, it doesn’t make a practical difference whether it’s already there. So we might as well stay excited to watch it unveil itself as if it’s not determined yet. After all, whether you will try to do something is also part of the script, so just do whatever as you mean to (or are meant to really). Everything still follows a logical chain which your actions are part of. Business as usual.

On the other hand, accepting that there is only one fixed timeline has one clear advantage. It eliminates the reason for regret. There is no point ruminating on “if only I did (or didn’t do) that” since there has never been another possibility. Just cherish what you did have and/or are still having.

Determinism (or really “already-there-ism”) is both unintuitive and unpleasant at first glance, but taken the right way, it can also become the most optimistic friend you have.

Paper currency

Paper currency (a.k.a. banknotes) is perhaps one of the cleverest inventions by the human society. What’s so fascinating about it is that it has no value whatsoever in itself, but at the same time as valuable as people agree on. And its value is only realized when you use it to exchange for something else that has actual value.

Realizing it or not, there are other things that follow the same logic as paper currency. The most prominent one is title. Anyone can make up any title for themselves or someone else, but unless it is recognized by a sizable crowd it’s pretty useless. A change in title doesn’t change anything in you. You don’t suddenly become a different person the moment you get a promotion. It only changes what other people perceive and expect of you.

Same thing goes for certificates and degrees etc. At least in principle, by the time you get a degree, you’ve already learned what you are supposed to learn. The degree doesn’t add a slight bit to your knowledge, even though a tangible certificate can make you feel more assured that “I’ve got a brain”.

So why do you still need them? Just like paper currency, because you can use them to exchange for something else that has actual value, like a well-paid job or a competitive opportunity. The catch though, is what constitutes “actual” value. A shiny title may quickly earn you some respect, but does respect based on title instead of the person really count? Or is it just another form of paper currency?

So as useful as they are, don’t forget what they truly are. Titles don’t define you. You do.

The curse of smart people

If you are reading these articles, that probably implies you have an above-average IQ, i.e. you are one of the “smart ones” in people’s eyes. After all, these are written for people who value logic over instinct, reasoning over dogma. These tend to be signs of a higher intelligence (in the narrow sense at least).

However, there are habits that smart people tend to share, which stop them from putting their intelligence to the best use, so much so the intelligence sometimes feels like a curse that follows them.

They overthink. Everyone likes to do what they are good at, so smart people naturally also like to do what they are best at — they think. And then they think more. They overthink about the future and they overthink about the past. Not everything in the future can be planned and calculated. Sometimes you just have to go ahead and do something. Anything. Not everything in the past can be rationalized and reasoned about. Sometimes you just have to accept you were not that lucky this time, nothing else.

They are used to getting rewarded/recognized for whatever they do. Dumb kids don’t have that luxury — from a young age they learn that not all efforts will end up with something in return. But smart kids most likely don’t get to face that until they are out of the school where everything has a clear marking scheme. And when they don’t get what they expect, they feel mistreated, whereas the fact is just nobody is “treating” them any more.

They care too much about the “right” answer — because they are good at finding it if there is one. Not all questions have the “right” answer though. They may have right answers, or they may only have answers that work, without being right or wrong. Some questions don’t even have an answer at all, and some questions don’t need an answer.

They undervalue merits other than intelligence. Smart people like smart people, but they tend to ignore everything else. That’s how smart people often become smart asses and look down upon anyone less smart, even though that someone may possess something that’s super useful to them. And even for those who are civilized enough that they don’t, they tend to forget they themselves need things other than intelligence.

So, take the red pill, learn to do things the dumb way and use your intelligence as a bonus; or take the blue pill, stay in the bubble of smartness. Which one will you choose?

Breaking the deadlock

In computer programming, a deadlock is defined as a situation where two actions are each depending on the other’s completion to happen. As a result, neither action ever happens. Like when two programs are trying to edit the same file, and they both wait for the other to finish first before editing. At least in theory, it is straightforward to break a deadlock — by removing the dependency on either side, although it’s often easier said than done.

Deadlocks happen all the time in life too. Most people like to give something only after they get something. But if everyone behaves like that, nobody ever gives anything and so nobody ever gets anything either. That is a perfect example of a deadlock. It benefits no one.

Luckily, just like in programming, it only takes one side to break a deadlock. All you have to do is to start giving without waiting until you get something first. Obviously, there is the risk of not getting anything back — precisely the reason why people are reluctant to try breaking the deadlock — but risking getting nothing back is still better than getting nothing for certain. Again, use some patience, and probability will eventually take your side.

Another example of a deadlock is when someone is stuck in a negative cycle. You are struggling to make your ends meet, so you have no time/energy to try something new. And because you can’t try something new, you’ll always be struggling to make your ends meet. It does take more than good intention to break this kind of deadlock. If you are that someone, you have to squeeze out that extra bit of time/energy to try something new while making ends meet, in the hope to turn it into a positive cycle. Admittedly not everyone is born with that strong a will. But considering the alternative which is being stuck for ever, you are really not left with much choice than giving it a go. On the other hand, if you know someone who happens to be that someone, consider investing a little in them if you can afford. Lend them a bit of spare money maybe, or better yet, give them a small opportunity. You might be surprised how a little help like that could turn their whole life around, which may happen to be the most rewarding experience you have.

In a more general sense, almost everything in real life can become a deadlock. We are so used to being told “you’ll get this if you do this” by parents and teachers when we were young, that we are reluctant to do anything without being promised a concrete result/reward. The reality is, by definition, result always happens after cause, and reward after result. For most things, nobody really knows what will happen until they see it happen, let alone what they can offer in return. So the only way to break the deadlock is to go ahead and do it without full knowledge of the outcome. And bet on that if you did manage to achieve something valuable in the end, someone will “pay” for it.

Fairness vs. Trade

Too often we are concerned about (and more often than not, upset about) whether we are treated fairly. The thing is, not only is the world never fair, it's not even possible for everyone to agree on what defines fairness. Does it mean everyone gets the same no matter what? Or you get more if you are better/stronger? Or the poorer gets more so everyone has more or less the same in the end? Each can be seen as a good example of fairness under one context, or a blatant violation of fairness under another, and you can debate for ever which is which. So if being treated fairly is what you care about most, you are pretty much guaranteed to feel disappointed for the majority of your life.

However, what most people don't realize, is that often what looks like a fairness issue really has little to do with fairness. For something to be considered fair or not, there are at least three (usually more) parties involved: the arbitrator who judges everyone and grants goodies accordingly, and at least two parties to be judged between, waiting to be granted. We are so used to this mentality because that's how things worked back in school - everyone waits to be given a score by the teacher, expecting they would do it fairly - that we automatically apply it to almost anything we encounter for the rest of our life. 

But what is actually happening for the rest of your life, is you are making a trade with whoever providing what you want in exchange for what you provide them. When you go to your job, you are trading your service to your employer for your salary (and everything that comes with it like title or perks). That in essence has nothing to do with anyone other than you and who signs your paycheck. So what most people don't realize is that often what is disguised as a multi-party fairness issue is really a collection of two-party trade issues. The employer has no right or interest in judging one person against another, instead they are making an individual deal with every employee, which just happens to fall under the same system. This is fundamentally different from exams in school - but many don't realize that and take the school mindset beyond school. 

The good news? Unlike in "fairness" where the people to be judged usually have little decision power, a trade (a.k.a. a deal) by defintion involves agreement from both sides, and both sides only. Everyone values things differently, but as long as a trade is made, that means both sides find it acceptable to exchange what they give for what they get, at least at that very moment. So don't look at what you get as "award" but as "payment". You don't automatically "deserve" something because of some quality of you, instead you get something because someone is willing to provide it in exchange to what you provide. You don't have much say in whether you'll get an award for what you do because it's all up to the ones who give the award, but you always have at least half the say in whether you'll get a payment because you can always walk away from the deal. 

So instead of obsessing about fairness, focus on whether you have a deal that is acceptable and maybe improvable. Instead of sitting there and waiting to be treated fairly, go ahead and negotiate a better deal for yourself. And if you decide the deal is no longer worth it, you can always turn your back and find a more suitable deal with someone else (hopefully you get to do them in reverse order). 

The illusion from comparison comes in here as well: don't get mad just because someone seems to have a better deal than you, since you don't really know exactly what deal they're getting. You may see their shiny title and nice office chair (probably not their paycheck, and you'd be surprised how often paychecks don't match titles - that's a whole different topic though), but you don't really know what they are giving up in exchange for those, whether written in the contract or not. When all laid out, a deal that works for them may indeed sound like a terrible bargain to you. You never know - they might even secretly envy the deal you got - just as cluelessly though.

And here comes the twist at the end - not everything is a trade. There may be a few people in the world that treat you differently simply because they truly care about you. There is pretty much nothing you can do to make someone care or not care about you - in fact there is not much they can do about it either. It just happens. So if you know someone like that, cherish it while you can and while they do.