Long Awaited Update!
“Embrace the uncertainty, for it is the herald of destined paths.”
Second Post
If the date of my last post didn’t already give it away, I’ve been away from this website for a long time. A lot has happened since then. And by “a lot,” I mean I’m genuinely not the same person anymore. I had no idea what life had lined up for me, both the good and the bad. Time moves faster than you expect. I was 15 when I first made this site, and now I’m 18 and in college.
Quick Recap
It’s funny looking back at how scared I was of junior year. In hindsight, I had every reason to be. Junior and senior year came with its own ups and downs, but it was also when most of my character development happened.
Traveling overseas. Learning new skills. Getting my first job. Getting a driver license. Joining different orgs. Getting my braces off. Making new friends. Graduating high school. Starting college. The list keeps going.
More than anything, those years pushed me out of my comfort zone. No doubt have I learned a lot, gained different perspectives, and grew for the better.
On the Origin of Ideas
Firstly, let me just say that everyone should write down ideas on paper whenever they appear in order to not forget them. I have forgotten ideas so many times because I did not bother to write them down, but then became really irked by the fact that I can’t actually remember it. Also, remember to sleep early because memory is heavily affected by sleep. So many of my friends say they have a bad memory but also sleep at 2 AM every day.
I tend to think that held beliefs can originate either externally or internally, personal experiences may form stronger biases, but ideas given by trusted (subconscious or conscious) sources, likely form a larger subset of values.
When making decisions and engaging with new or old ideas, it’s important to understand which beliefs originate from within and which were bought from others. By the way, individual decisions are limited by current conceptions of the present, so learning is good.
What really happened?
People want to know the exact truth. However, it’s impossible for the brain to store all information received; so, memory is a vivid yet loose reconstruction of compressed information. Of course, that memory is biased by other memories and beliefs, so a fraction of the actual truth remains. For instance, I sometimes forget whether I witnessed something or if someone else told me about something and then I hallucinated it.
However, this model breaks down because, with a few generous assumptions, a lot of the things people think and act on would be the result of random noise, which means the world is coming to an end soon. There are many safeguards against the loss of truth, such as confirmed truths, which serve as checkpoints, or the binary nature of most individual events.
For confirmed truths, it doesn’t matter if something is hallucinated or witnessed because it definitely happened. For example, if I’m not sure whether I imagined an event based on my trusted friend’s story, or if I was the witness, it doesn’t matter because I would still believe it happened. However, note that my decision to believe is based on my trust in my friend, something I value greatly. For people who do not trust others, they may be unsure of what really happened, because they would think, “What if my friend lied to me?”
Furthermore, for most decisions, there are only two relevant choices, and the step-by-step imagined probability of events throughout each day is an adequate approximation of the truth. It’s like how an electron will not teleport far from the nucleus within one second, so there is generally nothing wrong with assuming the electron will always be inside the atomic radius.
Consistency’s Consistence
While there may be no issues with small inconsistencies in beliefs across time, taken as a whole at one time, an individual’s values can seem contradictory.
Take the example of imposter syndrome at universities: someone believes they are inferior to most of their classmates in some way and do not belong. However, that means they put a portion of their self-value into their achievements; simultaneously, they probably have a few achievements that only a small percentage of people could have. So, the solution seems to be to balance those ideas out after some thought.
That was just one example of how people hold contradictory beliefs. Crucially, these opposing beliefs are born or had out of necessity in the moment; it is sometimes more helpful to believe in a contradicting ideas than maintain consistency[^1].
Furthermore, contradiction is not necessarily bad; it just means that you need to pick your poison when the time comes and accept the consequences. For example, if you forgot to do your homework and you believe in both the importance of being truthful and getting good grades, you may either choose to apologize to your teacher and accept a late penalty, or lie about your dog eating your homework (feel free to use this excuse) and then hand it in later.
In this situation, truth and getting good grades are at odds, so something must be lost. Context is important: if it were a massive project, lying has more value. However, being a good person has different value at different times: if you were thinking about a liar you dislike, you may be inclined to be the opposite.
Regardless of how they come about, inconsistencies must be removed in the long term because they can cause a chain reaction breakdown of individual belief systems.
I was without
Accepting external ideas without proper reasoning is a common source of inconsistency. If you realize you got an idea from somewhere else, it’s easier to get rid of it.
For example, money and fame is highly valued by most people, but does that align with the rest of their beliefs or were those ideas sold to them by society? Many people also value privacy, and it is impossible to have both fame and privacy, so there is some moderate fraction of people who say they want to become famous who actually might not enjoy it. For those who value money, there is also some fraction that values leisure more highly, but it is very difficult to get rich without working extremely hard and giving up free time.
Ultimately, independent thinkers use their ideas to serve themselves rather than become slaves to dogma. The next time you make an important decision, consider your true motivations and act accordingly; don’t blindly follow anything or anyone without reason.
Stoicism
It’s much easier to be a stoic with a good understanding of statistics because you realize just how indifferent randomness is to who you are.
Bad things happen to you not because there’s a higher power that has a personal vendetta against you, but simply because you happen to be on the other side of luck.
Epic Fails
It’s important to fail and be laughed at because you realize that the people laughing do not actually care about you personally. If it were any other combination of audience vs failer, the audience would always laugh.
I used to absolutely suck at ping pong and everyone was laughing, but it wasn’t anything personal.
Floating Possibilities
In quantum mechanics, an electron can be in an infinite number of positions until observed. In League, you can still win unless your base has blown up. Life imitates art, so obviously even if you are down a lot you can still make a comeback.
Pessimists and optimists both skew their guess at the future in their direction, but I believe that optimism makes more sense.
When an event that is out of our control (which can be good or bad after the collapse of the event) is still in a floating state of uncertainty, an optimist will assume implicitly that it will end well, and will not stress about the outcome, but wil be unprepared when it goes wrong. However, a pessimist will prepare for the worst case and be stressed until it happens, and will have wasted time stressing if the worst case doesn’t happen.
What’s more important is what happens between events though. The optimist will have to do a lot of work to fix the situation, but the pessimist will not look forward to the next day with hope.
Also, trying to prevent bad things from happening will not always work, since more can just pop up even when the right choice is made. So, it’s more important to make things right after just making a decision
Old feelings
There are some things you can only feel when you’re at home. Some combination of synapses, negative celsius weather, and the low hums of the heart reignite a sort of passion.
Why do people live in the cold? It’s because it’s what they know, and that’s a good enough reason. In the escape from the known, you realize that gut feelings are the guide for reasons.
Most people don’t move around their entire lives and experience different things.
There’s a simplistic beauty in sticking to what you know. Adapting to new situations isn’t always the most important. Sometimes, you just need to do what you know best.