Alexandru Litoiu

Going North

Sun, 22 Dec 2019 07:00:00 +0000

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Holden Caulfield

Wed, 24 Jul 2019 07:00:00 +0000

Another e-mail I wrote, relating somewhat to Preference Falsification, focused on Holden Caulfield from the book, The Catcher in the Rye.

Hi ___,

[…]

I had a strong reaction to your analysis that Holden is basically afraid of the future and has been pretending he simply hates adults in order to have an excuse to remain disengaged from life. So, I reread The Catcher in the Rye for the third time now, on paper with, I would say, a high attention to detail. Overall, I tried to think about whether he was actually the phony, as you claimed, or whether it was the adults. I was also interested in whether his phoniness caused him to distort his view of the adult world since you claimed his view was distorted.

I particularly paid attention to Holden’s character flaws. I made a list of 34 times he was either phony or hypocritical. I noticed 18 times when he accused others of being phony in a significant way. Of these accusations, three of them seem to be reasonably confirmed by a solid description of actual behavior or my own knowledge and opinions of the real world. I’ve attached the document of all the occurrences (not necessary to read) but overall Holden was extremely hypocritical, himself.

In my mind, the meaning of the book lies in why Holden is stuck, what is keeping him stuck, and what is getting him unstuck. For this, I think I’ve made my point in previous e-mails about the importance of listening and telling the truth. However, in reading the book again, I noticed some more subtle points on this subject.

In the first place, I feel that Holden desperately needed to connect with himself and whatever confusing meaning lay within him. Especially, to connect with his memories of Allie and various childish experiences and ideas. He may indeed be extremely traumatized. Not only due to Allie’s death, but also because of his witnessing James Castle’s defenestration. The defenestration alone could have severe implications on a person’s psychology, as I could personally attest to when that occurred in my apartment building in New Haven and more recently, when my friend witnessed a murder. However, Holden rarely finds himself in a situation where people want to hear about these things. When he writes the essay about Allie’s glove for Stradlater, Stradlater doesn’t appreciate it.

My view is that as long as Holden doesn’t deal with what’s important to him, such as the trauma, he will remain unable to deal with what is required of him by his environment. I believe that this is why he is so repulsed by adults. Because they don’t seem to either understand or have the capacity to accommodate these needs. Mr. Spencer wants to tell Holden about how he failed to learn anything about history and give him examples like their study of ancient Egypt. Mr. Antolini himself asks a few questions, but overall jumps too far ahead past Holden’s present needs. He is excessively worried about Holden’s absence from school bringing about his demise, not understanding that Holden has an overriding need that trumps “adult responsibilities”: Holden is traumatized - he needs to process that trauma.

How can he process that trauma? In part, by engaging in discursive and free-flowing conversation that occurs when Holden speaks to someone that is really listening and interested in his well-being. This is the state he is in when speaking with Phoebe. She is the only character that he explicitly claims is listening to him. He is able to admit what he actually wants to her (to be the catcher in the rye), a level of vulnerability and honesty that is uncommon for him in the outside world.

To your point of “who is the real phony?” and your example of his gratuitous lying to Ernest Morrow’s mother, I asked myself whether that situation could have been transformed into a healing one. Potentially, by speaking candidly about everything. It was complicated, however, by his complicated relationship with Ernest Morrow. Holden seems to have very few places of refuge where he feels safe enough to actually be truthful.

Holden himself is an extremely poor listener. Including to Phoebe, when she would tell him her stories. Holden completely disregarded what Phoebe told him about her plays and was instead preoccupied with when their parents would come home. When Carl Luce recommended psychoanalysis, Holden was left only with the impression that Carl had a large vocabulary and didn’t retain Carl’s suggestion.

Moreover, Holden does not listen to himself and so repeatedly fails to align his behavior with his internal voice. The best example of this is when he met up with Sally, “the queen of the phonies” for a date, only to be surprised that she gravitated towards other phonies. Sally is an incredibly socialized person and it is no surprise that she refuses a wild and chaotic plan like the one he proposed to her to run off into the forest. While I personally didn’t dislike his plan because it could have been a nice way to get his thoughts in order in peace, she certainly wasn’t the person to do it with. The fact that he spent so much time with her, when his first impression was already set, led him to snap at her.

I believe the last paragraph of the book is the most significant one. “About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about. […] I even miss that goddam Maurice. It’s funny. Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.” To me, the point here is that honest speech leads him to get over his hatred. He causally links “telling” with “missing” people by saying “If you do [tell], you start missing.”

Best,

Alex

Preference Falsification

Sat, 22 Jun 2019 07:00:00 +0000

This is an e-mail that I sent to my relatives last night. It’s written in broken Romanian but I’m posting it for posterity since I believe it’s an important concept. I would greatly appreciate spelling and grammar corrections sent to my personal e-mail.

Am vazut azi un discurs de un psycologist care se numeste Jonathan Haidt. S-a referit la un fenomen care se chiama Preference Falsification.

De multe ori lumea, in mod particular Romani, imi au spus ca nu au nici o ideie la ce ma refer cand eu vorbesc de minciuni intre Romani. Am incercat sa rafinez ideia un pic prin zicand ca ma refer la spunand adevarul despre experienta interna subiectiva - apropos emoti. Fiind autentic apropos la cum ne simptim.

Mai specific este ideia de “Preference Falsification.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification

Care cum stiti este ce sa intamplat in comunism. Toata lumea se facea ca lucrurile ereau bune cand nu ereau. Puneau zambetul pe buze si nu vorbeau despre probleme. E foarte clar de ce ar face lumea aia in situatia aia, in care erea un guvern tiranic.

Dar problema cu facand asta este ca se ascund problemele. Si nu se resolva. Daca chiar nu poti sa le zici ca guvernul te va pedepsi, se intelege. Dar sa speram ca santem intr-o societate mai libera acum in care se pot spune problemele.

Si de fapt eu zic ca este responsabilitatea morala la fiecare individ sa le zica.

Eu cred ca generatia un pic mai batrana nu poate vedea cat de prevalent e obiceiul in fiecare individ care a crescut acolo sa isi falsifice preferentile.

Asi zice si mai si ca de fapt multi oameni care au crescut acolo nici nu inteleg ce inseamna o preferinta personala. Eu nu stiam pana acum cati va ani. Vine prin sensatiile din corp. Aproximativ, cand ne gandim la o alternativa “A” si corpul ne e tens, inseamna ca nu ne place. Cand ne gandim la o alternativa “B”, si ne simptim relaxati si bine prin corp, inseamna ca ne place.

Eu cred personal ca comunismul ne-a detasat asa de tare de la corpurile noastre ca lumea nici nu mai stie ce crede.

E acelasi motiv pentru care au predat doar materiale obiective ca informatica si mate. A antrenat o intreaga generatie sa stea doar in domeniu al ganduri - care pot fi puse acolo de alti. Si a detasat atentia de la corpurile personale ale fiecare.

Pare sa fie si o carte pe subiectul asta care nu am citit-o inca, care se chiama Private Truth, Public Lies.

Public Speaking Techniques Outside of the Mainstream

Thu, 26 Mar 2015 12:00:00 +0000

Becoming more comfortable with the emotional aspects of public speaking is a well-covered topic. Many popular techniques are available online. I write here about a number of techniques that may help with nerves that are not covered in the mainstream literature, but that I have found in unrelated fields.

Loving Others

An important reason why public speaking can be very stressful is a skewed world view regarding the degree to which the world is competitive. Viewing every interaction with people under the lens of competition can make you believe that others view you as a competitor as well. This makes it very stressful to stand in front of a large number of people whom you believe are all judging you.

In Elaine Aron’s book, The Undervalued Self, she outlines the difference between “ranking” and “linking.” Many people, especially men, “rank” (compete), too much and don’t spend enough time “linking” (loving one another). Thinking of the world too much in terms of competition can cause one to be very wound up.

How one views the world on a daily basis affects how one views the world during specific tasks. I try to spend far more hours outside of the speech viewing the world as “linking” and far fewer as “ranking.” This, in turn, becomes how I view the audience during the speech. If one “links” enough with those around them on a daily basis, the audience appears more like a group of friends. Why would one be nervous in front of friends?

Releasing Oxytocin

How you think passively is significant, but it is also possible to use powerful cognitive techniques to calm yourself in the moment of the speech. Our brains are hardwired to release oxytocin, a relaxation hormone, when we think of the face of a loved one in an intimate or loving moment. So, to relax before an important speech, I think of my girlfriend smiling lovingly at me. A subtle but important note on this technique is that you must be imagining the face, not the person at large. Our brains release oxytocin specifically when seeing or imaginging the face of a tender loved one.

Gaining Perspective

Developing a broad perspective of history by reading widely can decrease the apparent significance of a speech. While reading history, it becomes evident that many historically great people encountered bumps and bruises along the way. Abraham Lincoln was uneducated, lost many loved ones, failed repeatedly in politics, and had a difficult marriage. But, these things fall away in the face of his final accomplishment.

Reading has allowed me to step far outside of myself and look through time and space. It helped me see how small my troubles were. I learned that if I stumbled in a speech, nobody would remember it in the really long run. But, if I said something valuable to others, there would be a chance that it would be remembered. Reading widely is an effective tool to gain perspective and to appreciate the insignificance of most speeches.

Practice is the Norm

Practicing obsessively can significantly increase confidence before a speech, and is not to be looked down upon. I used to believe that doing so would somehow be against the spirit of public speaking. But, most good orators practice repeatedly. For example, in an interview, Jerry Seinfeld said that he practiced his first speech for David Letterman’s show 100 times. When he finally performed the routine, he did not sound bored of the routine or robotic. He was energetic and natural. Practicing obsessively only serves to increase confidence and decrease the cognitive load while performing live. There are no real drawbacks to doing it.

Creative Stretching

In Greek Lives, Plutarch discusses how Demosthenes, the ancient Greek orator, had a natural speech impediment. In order to rid himself of it, Demosthenes would run up mountains to be out of breath, stuff his mouth with rocks, and deliver the speech with rocks in his mouth. This forced him to annunciate far more than he would ever have to without rocks in his mouth. He subjected himself to a stressor far higher than what he would be subjected to during a speech and this led to his superlative oration.

I modified this training for my own purposes. Many people fear the fear that they may experience as they get up on stage. I have found that it is very effective to convince yourself before the speech that you can feel pronounced fear and still effectively deliver the speech. To this end, in preparation for my last speech, I subjected myself to a higher stressor than I would experience on stage. As I generally feel uncomfortable with heights, I stood up in a high, scary place while rehearsing the talk. Witnessing myself deliver the speech perfectly while feeling afraid convinced me that I would be able to do likewise when up on stage. This quelched the biggest fear that I had in anticipation of the performance.

The Practical Value of the Humanities

Most of these techniques are, in my opinion, outside of the mainstream. They have all come to me unexpectedly by studying the humanities: the performing arts, literature, psychology, and history. I have found that studying the humanities is a tremendous source of creativite insight in all areas of life.

Notes

Thank you to Melinda Jacobs and Jade Proulx for reading drafts of this text and providing feedback.

Lunch with Marc Raibert

Sat, 06 Dec 2014 12:00:00 +0000

This year’s Nyquist Lecture in Electrical Engineering was given by Marc Raibert, ex-professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at CMU and MIT, and the founder of Boston Dynamics. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to join Dr. Raibert for lunch prior to his talk. I was particularly excited about this because Boston Dynamics is a singularly technologically advanced business. Their robots are the most advanced in the world, and their demos are jaw-dropping. If you haven’t seen their demos yet, you owe it to yourself to check them out at this link! How does a company like that come to be? What are the secrets of building such an advanced product?

Here are some of the surprising things that Dr. Raibert said.

“The biggest limitation in mobile robots is power”

What is the biggest limitation to mobile robots? It isn’t perception, it isn’t control algorithms, it is power storage and delivery. Currently, robots are far less efficient than humans and far noisier.

To illustrate this limitation, take the Big Dog robot. The robot is driven by a ~15 horsepower gas-hungry Go-Kart engine. The engine drives a compressor that pressurizes oil to 3,000 PSI. The legs then move based on the variable firing of actuators in the legs, allowing the pressurized oil to flow in.

Whereas a human is perfectly silent while walking, Big Dog is loud - as loud as a Go-Kart. Whereas a human can walk hundreds of miles without sustenance, Big-Dog can walk 10 miles.

Things have improved in recent years. Alpha Dog is now quieter than Big Dog, can carry more load, and has double the range.

Batteries are currently nowhere near energy dense enough to drive these mobile robots. “It is hard to see enough battery improvements coming in the near future to afford their use in mobile robots.”

“Simple designs”

Open-loop control is the method of control by which the engineer uses a model of how an input affects an output. In order to achieve the desired output, the engineer uses the model to determine how much input to apply. Creating the model is often very complex and time consuming.

Closed-loop control is the method of control by which the engineer does not have a model of how the input affects the output. In order to achieve the desired output, the system varies the input, then using a feedback loop, ascertains whether that change in input affected the output quantity positively or negatively. Based on this feedback, the system then applies more of the same input or less of it, to eventually iterate towards the desired output. This method is iterative and easier to create.

Upon being asked whether Boston Dynamics focuses more on open-loop control or closed-loop control, Dr. Raibert answered that Boston Dynamics mostly uses simple closed-loop control. “Our robots have thus far been the most capable, which is evidence that at least up until this point, simple has been the right way to go.”

I found this answer to be particularly surprising. Whereas PetMan, Alpha Dog, and Cheatah look to be the furthest thing from simple from the outside, the mechanism that drives them is the simplest available.

“Calibrate your time-constant”

Expanding upon the answer on the Boston Dynamics brand of control theory, Dr. Raibert briefly took a step back to wax philosophical. Some people choose a grand project that is very far away, whereas others focus on an approach that will work now, and then iterate on that approach.

“I happen to believe that by taking the latter approach, you are more likely to reach your grand vision, but some people don’t agree.” We all have to choose which time constant we are aiming for. Boston Dynamics has chosen the short, iterative time constant, which has thus far led to the world’s most advanced robots.

“Decide who you are”

One may think that “the world’s most advanced all-terrain mobile robots” is a pretty specific mission statement.

According to Dr. Raibert, you need to be even more specific. Why aren’t their robots designed to be more aesthetic, safer, and even more efficient through improved product design?

“You need to decide who you are… we are an R&D outfit that is trying to make advanced technology. We aren’t trying to package a product.”

Product design and advanced technology R&D are different skill sets. Organizations that do both often have problems straddling. Having to choose which of the skills to divert precious engineers to is a real problem. Some robot companies suffer from this straddling. For example, iRobot does both military robots and the Roomba. Moving in both of these directions can cause resource conflicts.

“Specific functions”

Designers should “leave science fiction at the door” and build practical robots. Much of the general public feels that if we build a robot that appears human-like, it will somehow be human. However, robots are machines - they are not humans. Like all other machines, robots should be built with a particular function in mind, and their form should follow function.

Boston Dynamics has built some humanoids, which people may consider “general purpose.” But they only did so when driven by functional requirements. For example, one of their humanoids was designed for durability testing of human uniforms, and therefore needed to be in the human shape in order to wear and stress-test the uniforms.

Conclusion

Prior to this lunch, Boston Dynamics seemed to me as operating in some alternate reality as far as businesses go. Instead of making a simple web app, or a commodity like toothpaste, they produce these incredible walking robots that seem to have been beamed back straight from the future. My default belief was that they must be operating on some different principals than most other businesses: that they had a longer time-constant, that they had a way to manage very complex models, or that they had a more philosophical view of the future than other companies.

In fact, the opposite seems to be true. Boston Dynamics’ laser-like focus on pragmatic, common sense principals enables them to create this amazing technology. Their robots are specifically functional, built with simple models, in an iterative way. Having the opportunity to briefly peer inside Boston Dynamics was a nice reminder that it is these basic fundamentals that are at the core of even technological outliers.

The Best Way to Teach

Fri, 07 Mar 2014 12:00:00 +0000

Well done is better than well said

- Benjamin Franklin

Brian is the local manager at the Gourmet Heaven on Whitney Street in New Haven.

Brian is not college educated – he did not go to college because he had to work to support his three sisters. He has worked at local food stores his entire career. Recently, he slept 3 hours per night for 3 years in a row in order to run his store. He would go out and buy ingredients at night, and run the store throughout the day.

His children are very successful – his daughter turned down Harvard to go to Princeton, and his son is at the US Naval Academy.

I asked him what he did to have such successful children. He said, “it’s very simple, you have to do it too.”

“My son was playing too many games. I told him that he must give that up, and I will give up something I like, too. So I quit smoking and he quit playing his games. You cannot tell people what to do – you must do it yourself.”

Where the Words are Missing

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:00:00 +0000

Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life

-Victor Hugo

Most people agree that being precise is helpful to both understanding things, whatever they may be, and to communicating those concepts to others. Precision usually comes up in the context of language.

If we ask Alice, a chemist who has never studied airplanes before, to describe how airplanes fly, she could talk about how the engine burns fuel to propel it forward, and how the wings hold it up. But, she would have to stop there.

But, if we ask Bob, an experienced aerospace engineer, he would get into how Bernoulli’s principal provides lift on the wings, how the slats and the flaps affect the equation, and he would outline the key differences between airplanes with slotted flaps and those with Fowler flaps. The aerospace engineer would use much more precision, which he’s gained through years of systematically determining the differences and interconnections that exist between all the different parts of the airplane.

Bob doesn’t understand the way airplanes fly because he knows the words associated with flight. Rather, he is able to attach precise words to the concepts because he understands how they work. Understanding leads to precise language. Precise language is a signal that the understanding is there.

What’s amazing, though, is how little we realize where the words are missing in our realities, and therefore, where our understanding is missing. It has probably never occurred to Alice that she doesn’t really know why planes stay in the air.

The reason that I’m writing about this in the first place is that starting to write this blog has caused me to feel like a total Alice! I had no idea that the words were missing in the area of my personal identity, and that therefore, I didn’t really understand it.

John von Neumann once famously said that “there’s no sense in being precise when you don’t even know what you’re talking about.” For now, that sounds right. But hopefully, not for long.

In the meantime, we should pay attention to situations in which the words are missing. It’s more of a hint than it seems!

Failure As The Absence of Success

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 12:00:00 +0000

The past few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about failure. Most people tend to get caught up in the negatives of failure and they begin to overestimate its costs. Why do some people do this, whereas others aren’t phased by failure as much?

Failure is a very tricky thing to deal with. It looks very different depending on what angle you look at it from. From some angles, it’s intensely negative, and from some it can be very positive.

It’s obvious why failure can be negative. It hurts in the present and it may also hurt in the future. It may affect your relationships, your financial independence, and your future plans. People who understand this try to both maximize success, but also, perhaps subconsciously, to minimize failure.

What I’ve recently realized is that some people don’t think about minimizing failure at all. When Michael Jordan was asked what his biggest disappointment was in sports, despite having experienced many conventional failures, such as his 0.202 batting-average season for the White Sox Major League Baseball Team, he answered:

“I haven’t had any disappointments. […] I’ve looked at every experience that I’ve had, negative and positive, and I’ve taken that experience as a positive. Sure you don’t want bad things to happen, but you deal with bad things. You can’t have good without bad.”

“Turn every negative into a positive” is a platitude. What does it mean exactly? Whenever you fail, should you just force yourself to look at the positives?

Maybe that’s the way to do it. But Jordan was also quoted as saying, “Before you win, you must learn to lose”, and with that, it makes sense.

Most people try to increase the amount of success they have, and also subconsciously try to minimize the amount of failure they have.

Ask yourself this, in the following scenario, which person do you consider more successful at achieving her goal of winning the Imaginary International Math Competition?

Sam, who tried the competition 8 times before winning, or Judy, who won it on her first try? Most people would say that Judy was more successful, since Sam’s failures must be some sort of a detriment. I would have picked Judy by a small margin. Judy probably did it with less effort, time, and opportunity cost.

But I argue that for some people, failure doesn’t matter - it’s not at all negative. To these people, Sam and Judy are equally successful, since it’s the end and not the means that matters to them. MJ spent 6 seasons in the NBA before winning his first championship, but to him, those seasons weren’t failures.

Viewing failure as the absence of success, and not as an actual negative event has many consequences. You stop wasting your mental energy on it, and instead think only about how to achieve success. Things like “turning negatives into positives” begin to happen automatically, since by definition failure is no longer a negative thing.

This makes sense on paper, but does it work in practice? Surely there are real-life details about failure that make this impractical. I asked a select few of my most successful friends, and it turns out that they have been thinking this way for years.

I don’t expect you to just take my word for it, but if my argument was convincing, try it for yourself! I definitely will.

Well-Defined vs. Ill-Defined Problems

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 12:00:00 +0000

In high school, I played a lot of competitive sports. Every year, I would play for the school soccer team in the fall, and the tennis team in the spring. In my last year, I also tried rowing. The thing I loved most about sports was how directly my effort in practice and games translated into success. It was clear: the harder I ran and the more I focused, the better I played. Effort was so important that no other factors seemed to play a role in my performance. Nutrition, physical health, and the quality of the opposition, all didn’t make much of a difference. It seemed to all come down to effort level.

I came across the same phenomenon in academics. Spending more time and effort on homework and projects resulted in higher marks. Like in sports, there seemed to be no other factors. Strategies such as getting friends to look over my work, and experimenting with different work habits had little effect on the marks I got. I extrapolated this pattern to hold true in all areas of life. I believed so strongly that hard work was the dominant factor in life success, however you define it, that I would heatedly argue with my classmates about it. I distinctly remember once trying to convince my entire math class that hard work is the dominant predictor of success in all areas of life.

The older I get, the more I notice this approach failing me. It just so happened that all of the things I cared about in high school were all very similar in one specific way: they were very well defined problems. Let’s take soccer, for example. Soccer is well defined because its rules are constant. The process of becoming an excellent soccer player is easy to describe. All one has to do is master the well-defined skills required: passing, shooting, dribbling, and team chemistry. Is it difficult to master those skills? Sure. But can one do it with enough effort? Almost certainly.

There exists another class of problems: those, which are ill defined. Ill-defined means that rules may or may not exist, and nobody tells you whether they do, or what they are. You have to figure all that out for yourself. I am encountering more of these types of problems in adult life than when I was younger. What courses should I sign up for? What company should I work for, if any? Nobody can answer these questions for me.

A notable example of this class of problems is entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur can enter any market she wishes with any product she can develop. Her competitors may respond in an infinite number of ways, and she can only guess how her customers will react. If the entrepreneur doesn’t understand her market, she may build a solution to a problem that her market doesn’t have. So, for every unit of effort that the entrepreneur puts into moving the company forward, she must also dedicate a unit of time into understanding the rules of the market, and deciding which way forward is. This extra work is a sort of overhead, which is intrinsic in ill-defined problems, but not in well-defined problems.

Outward Focus

To perform well in well-defined problems, it is favorable to focus inwardly. In order to put in the huge amount of practice required to excel in a well-defined domain, one needs to be inward focused in order to ignore distractions. The problem is already well defined. All that remains is to execute well within that definition, and that takes practice. If a chess player became too interested in what her peers did in their free time, she would lose the focus required to put the countless hours required into her craft. The same is obviously true in sports. This is why chess players are often less social than average and successful athletes tend to be self-centered.

In ill-defined problems, focusing outwardly on the world is greatly favorable, since deciding what to do is arguably more important than how well you do it. In such problems, it is important to spend time talking to others, reading books, and trying to understand the external world. How does an inward focused person become more outward focused? I believe the answer may be as simple as exhibiting more humility. If the self becomes relatively less important, then by definition, the exterior becomes more important. With humility comes an increased interest in others and external events. It is no surprise, then, that so many entrepreneurs and businessmen are extroverted.