Japan

What does it mean to apologize? 

Imagine a scenario between Bob, the "victimizer", and Alice, the "victim" of some event, E. 

Alice expresses that Bob should apologize. But Bob retorts, oh my God, what do you want me to do? I'm sorry okay? I already bought you dinner that one night to make up for it, why are you still upset about it, and besides that was like three months ago? Really what do you want me to do about it, when will you get over this? Can you please just forget about it and like, never talk about it again? 

When Bob asks "what do you want me to do about it" the assumption is that it's Alice's job to teach Bob how to apologize properly. I suppose it's also Alice's job to teach Bob how to be an empathetic human being and learn to listen, really listen, to why Alice is upset.

Unsurprisingly none of this makes Alice feel any better about it or forget it. Worse still, the longer this goes on, Alice is sure that Bob will feel even more justified in using the "that was X months ago" excuse. 

Not only that, the following week Bob has a total change of heart and refuses to talk about E at all, refusing to admit any sort of responsibility. 

Throughout all of this Bob's close friend Charles wants to have an opinion about the matter and takes Bob's side. Bob, after all, supplies a lot of Charles' electronics through his store and even draws him really cool cartoons. I mean never mind that Charles once literally blew up Bob's place, it's all in the past anyhow. 

Anyways, Charles comes in saying that Alice should forgive Bob because I mean, Bob really did buy her that expensive dinner and he's a real nice guy, honestly and he's done so much for her so just be reasonable, okay? In private, Charles and Bob discuss how unreasonable Alice is being, sometimes surmising that Alice may just be trying to manipulate Bob into feeling bad, or even trying to extort him. 

Alice is left trying to justify her feelings to them by listing out those things Bob hasn't done. She mentions how Bob keeps waffling back and forth, says things which suggest he hasn't learned a thing and even contradicts the apologies he's made before, and most importantly constantly tries to avoid the subject or is more interested in burying/forgetting the past than actually confronting, resolving, and committing to that resolution.* 

But Alice knows that these are not the main point -- the real diagnosis being that Bob is not taking Alice's feelings seriously and listening to her, made clear by the above list, and the fact that whenever Alice tries to talk about how she feels, the automatic reaction from Bob (and Charles) is to doubt her or talk about why her feelings are wrong. The assumption, of course, being that Alice is being petty or manipulative. 

On the national level, is an apology any different? Just because it is between two groups of people rather than two people, does it mean that feelings are not involved? Is it only a formal act, involving reparations and a formal statement, maybe a monument or two, a footnote in the history books, and it's over and done with? 

When you apologize and the other person is still hurting, the move is not to say "well I apologized already so if something's still wrong you're the problem". What changes when you take this to the group, national level? 

It is a highly non-empathetic act to, as the apologizer, to set the terms of the "apology" yourself, and expect that the victim feel better about it. It is straight up offensive to explicitly cast doubt on the victim and their feelings on the matter. This often takes the form of saying things like "But I already apologized" or "Get over it already", which directly implies that the victim is being either petty or manipulative. And really, in what kind of apology is that the move? 

In my personal opinion, which I believe many share in this instance, I don't think the victim has to provide "facts and logic" to justify why they are feeling bad about something. If they feel that a particular apology was insufficient, that's because it was. At the very least, if they are incapable of apologizing properly, the apologizer shouldn't say or do anything to make it even worse. And third parties incapable of feeling how the apologizee feels should mostly stay out of it if not to offer general support. 

Is it possible that the Koreans government and Korean people are deliberately trying to make themselves feel worse, victimized? Sure. But I wonder why that is the natural conclusion for some people. It seems really off. 

You know, isn't it weird that collectively, Jews don't actively protest and say angry things about Germany, at least not to the extent that Koreans do about Japan? It can't be, can it, that Germany actually properly apologized, that their government and history books are consistently transparent about the matter, or that they have an amazing track record of atonement and establishing anti-fascist policy in government and education despite the lingering anti-Semitism of some? It's not anything to do with the fact that the conservative Japanese government is and has always been far too prideful and nationalistic to admit that their country has any history of wrongdoing, much less war crimes, rape, torture, massacre and that as a result their people are barely educated on the subject? No, of course not! It has to be Korea itself which is the matter.

A Quora discussion on systemic racism

This is a comment by someone else on Quora: 

Systemic racism implies that the entire society as we know it today is built with a strive to some sort of skin color supremacy. If you really belive that, then you really don't understand the basic values that moved humanity forward from the stone age. A few rotten apples don't make the entire batch bad and it is racist to throw them all away lightly, considering you are living in a somewhat functioning society, with tons of written knowledge, philosophy and law structure. The fact that you know what is good and bad in the general sense proves that there is no “systemic” racism. There is racism and unfairness, but it's not systemic, huge difference

My reply:

Racism is a product of an interconnected system.. it does not happen in isolation. It's a subtle, aggregate effect which seems to vanish when taken independently, not a few bad people saying obviously hateful things (although this does happen). People who live these experiences do not have the privilege of framing the world in such a simplistic, localized, and individual-basis point of view. The systemic nature of the situation is painfully obvious to them and it behooves us to listen.

If it helps, no one is saying that being a racist makes you a bad person — more often than not systemic racism is perpetuated by ignorance rather than malice. It's just a word… one which is, unfortunately, laden with connotation through history and triggers defensiveness in people (understandably).

However it's our job to see past that and listen. It's arrogance to dismiss the hidden complexity behind what others say and why they say it. Too often we interpret the words of others within our own frameworks, as subsets of ideas we already know, instead of entertaining the possibility that it's an entirely new frame of mind you have to learn. The acceptance that others truly know and experience things you don't is a form of empathy and a generally a good skill to have. In my experience, it really takes a lot of “letting go”, and admitting that there's something of substance there which you could not possibly understand with your current way of seeing things.

Another reason for the effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences

 Unreasonable effectiveness: Consider this from a statistical perspective... if you have to, imagine multiple universes that all work differently. 

By being surprised at this "unreasonable effectiveness", you're assuming that it's highly unlikely that mathematics would be effective in predicting things about the universe, creating an "isomorphic model", in other words.

However, isn't it quite feasible that a sub-system would arise under any particular universe, say, some lifeforms, and they might have "information processing" capabilities so as to survive and propagate within that universe's rules? After all, to have some staying power within the universe's rules (particularly if one of the rules is entropy), the lifeform must "care" somewhat for its rules and global properties. This itself is the definition of what it means to actually process information -- the capability to change in response to the data, dependency, responsiveness, non-constancy. 

So it also seems feasible that these creatures might do this in some fashion, perhaps even find a way to communicate information to each other, forming an information processing mesh... and they might do this with certain patterns, protocols. Perhaps the particular instances of information-sharing pertaining to deep concepts in how to survive and replicate -- i.e. information regarding the laws and properties of how their universe work -- could be called... mathematics? In fact, this seems more than just feasible... one might say reasonable, even.

In short, mathematics is reasonably effective because mathematics arises from a smart creature's very effective attempt to understand its universe via something like simulation, to live in it better. 

If you take a meta-universe view, it seems more obvious. You can even think about different example universes like Wolfram's different cellular automata rules. Within these universes you can create self-replicating sub-systems, like the lifeforms I described above. These sub-systems can more or less simulate the laws of their own cellular automata universe under their own paradigm. Kind of like building a Minecraft server within Minecraft itself? 

Play

It sucks that the notion of "play" -- as in free-associating, undirected and creative/lateral activity -- sort of disappears as an adult. Perhaps it also contributes to a loss of neuroplasticity, weakening of lateral thinking, and other cognitive changes.

I'd love to be able to reclaim the notion of play, but I honestly don't know how. Why do we look down on (adults doing) it? Are we so captivated by purpose, structure, and certainty that we fear anything outside of that framework, or view it as social deviancy? Is it the association with childhood and immaturity? Are there differences along Western and Eastern modes of thought?

But counterargument: Adults play, just in more "advanced" ways. We've exhausted the top-level stuff in breadth, and now we play with deeper things, which means hobbies, sports. 

I agree on some level, but I still think that there's something lacking even as we do pick up hobbies. In following hobbies, we are still purposeful. We still constrain our own state spaces, and direct our activities, coloring them with some form of purpose or ruleset.  

Play and Risk Management

Perhaps it's the adult responsibilities, the singular notion of survival and reproduction that naturally constrains us. Therefore, we must adopt a purpose-oriented, proof-seeking, constrained-space mindset. 

The exercise is to get out of that mindset for at least some time. It seems difficult for adults. I'd imagine that for particularly conscientious people it is more difficult.  I think order arises out of risk management, as order and structure induce proof and certainty. i believe it can be mathematically modeled as an optimal strategy. So this conscientious attitude likely is a defense against scarcity. It would explain the conscientiousness paradox. On the flip side, abundance and lack of scarcity gives us room to optimize and explore, and break more constraints. 

Play and Mindfulness

It's well known that there's a link between meditation and neuroplasticity. An element of mindfulness is a sort of "emptying" of thoughts. From another perspective, this is analogous to removing constraints, and expanding the space of possibilities (state space of mind-states?). A core function of play is some degree of detachment from purpose. Meditation explores this concept to the end in its concept of "emptying". 

Play and Art

Art is expression, and expression requires some degree of expression. There are, of course, self-imposed constraints when it comes to art, since there is often a message that requires conveyance. But the key that connects play and art is the degree of freedom allowed within both. Play can be seen as a form of art with the purpose of expressing joy, and art can be seen as a constrained form of message-passing play. 

Wants, Goals, and Objectives

How do we want things? There's probably some sort of neuroscientific "explanation" for it, in the sense that there is a granular model that fits the data around the phenomenon of wanting things. 

The idea of goals on the other hand seems much more immediate, tangible. We don't need psychology or neuroscience for this, because goals follow logical structure. A goal can be thought of as a set of outcomes. So goals can be related to each other by implication, as in the fulfillment of one goal can imply the fulfillment of another. So you can think of goals being ordered by this relation, creating some kind of goal-ordering, with goals and sub-goals and sub-sub-goals. 

Goals and wants are related in the sense that we can want a goal. 

Can we say something else regarding goals and wants? I feel that the best, or "true" goal in a sense, should be one that guides us to optimize for... something. Prevents mistakes, shortsightedness? Gives us a sense of "global" purpose, rather than stumbling around, following our wants at the particular moment. There's a sense of "locality" in the latter. It's like solving an optimization problem by gradient descent, but the objective function isn't known, and somebody has to whisper you the gradients for wherever you are that point in time.

Conjecture. Regret-freeness model. 

We seek to find a goal, or goals X such that fulfilling this X will provide us "exactly what we want", in the sense that we do not want any goal Y that contradicts X. 

Re-orientation clause: If ever we do find ourselves wanting such a goal Y, we regard this as a sharp state-change, a significant re-orientation of wants. 

It's not clear to me yet what picture I'm trying to paint here. The model isn't perfect, I think. The re-orientation clause seems to powerful, because you could invoke it quite liberally. And I need to work out whether time has got something to do with this. But if the model works, it should be pretty obvious when re-orientation invocations are "weird"... the model can always be fit, but there are some implicit rules on how to fit it, I think. 

I have a feeling that neuroscience and psychology are going to be an inexorable part of the analysis. If not directly part of the theory, at least something to draw inspiration and perspective from. 

I wrote earlier about how wants are essentially derived from basic human needs, even though they may be inaccurate, biased, unhealthy. Perhaps this gives us perspective; wants are a manifestation of a chemical algorithm that points our arrow to satisfy... well, some biological directive, in the immediate, but survival and reproduction I suppose, in the general. 

The above makes me want to ascribe "want" a lot less philosophical import... it's no longer very abstract or mystical. It's more or less a biological algorithm. Goals, on the other hand, are purely analytical. 

we don't solve our problems, we outgrow them

There are a couple of ways to understand a pie. 

Is pie = filling + crust? 

Or is pie = slice 1 + slice 2 + ... + slice 8? 

Say, how do you honestly answer somebody who asks the following:

• "I want to bake a pie, but should I bake slice 1 first or slice 8 first?"
• "Should I eat the filling first or the crust first?" 

Really think about it.

I think the immediate, natural response is not, "Well, technically, you bake all slices at once, you see" or even "You eat the crust and filling together, but I suppose your teeth usually hits the crust first, hmm". It's more like, "That's... not how it works", or "What are you talking about?". 

It's clear they don't really know what a pie really is, much less ever had one. (Unless, of course, you're talking about some weird deconstructed pies à la molecular gastronomy... in which case, what are you talking about?) Don't you just get this real aggravating feeling that you don't even want to grace that question with an answer, because it might confirm their ass-backwards way of thinking? And yeah, they're not technically doing anything wrong, and you can technically answer their questions like I showed. But something's off. Why would you think about baking pies in terms of slices? It's the kind of situation that makes you want to go, "Okay hold up there, what are you exactly imagining that baking is, and what a pie looks like?" I'm talking about those situations where a question just baffles you because it's so... wrong somehow. 

It brings to mind the image of some deeply enlightened Zen teacher frustrating his arrogant young student with his answers (perhaps with a koan?). Why won't you just answer the question, teacher? Tell me... is it, or is it not! Yet the youth isn't necessarily in the wrong here. Technically and literally, things are or things aren't. But perhaps, by giving the student a "straight answer" -- i.e. an answer that fits with the student's understanding -- the Zen teacher would be confirming the student's mindset, terminating potential development there. This would be a disservice to the student, choosing to specify their understanding in favoring of expanding it. 

More and more I notice I'm that youth, but surrounded by Zen teachers everywhere. I'm that strange dude who hasn't had pie before, doesn't know what it is, can't even ask the right questions about it. I've been noticing that fewer of my questions, even smaller ones, can be answered directly but instead require these difficult little enlightenments... the ones that make me go "Oh, I was totally thinking about it the wrong way" afterwards. 

But as they say, questions are more important than answers. A question zooms in, cuts and joins reality into different possibilities, and presents it. An answer simply chooses one out of these. In fact, my philosophy professor once said that philosophy is not really about answering tough questions (along  the lines of "What's the meaning of life? What is love?"), but rather about restructuring your mind... something about replacing and shuffling the "cabinets" of our minds which hold our thoughts, experiences. So, basically questions, and asking the right ones (it's my belief that "what is the meaning  of life" is the wrong question, but that's for another time). 

You know, a real nice side effect to actually changing up your whole brain is that it sort of makes things that were hard before, easier. Sure, I've made do with some more elementary mindsets, but it's always a struggle, building rulesets and attempting to imitate what seems to come so naturally to others. Like the guy that knows the moves of the dance, but something about how he shifts his weight and balance seems... not as natural, flowing. At best, I'm only 80% there. But then when it "clicks", it clicks. 

It makes me think of this quote by Carl Jung:

We don't solve our problems, we outgrow them. 

Lately I've become more and more convinced of its truth. Or am I just more and more understanding it?

It reminds me of those childhood and adolescent problems we outgrew: playground vendettas, puppy love, drama. And more generally: things never tried, curiosities never satisfied, naïve dreams never accomplished... all these "problems" becoming, for lack of better words, irrelevant upon simply growing up.  (I'm thinking of "problem" to include "things we want", not just "things we want to stop happening".) Forgotten, maybe? Discarded, in favor of something better? 

Growing up is a little bit complicated, isn't it? That old cliché "you'll understand when you're older" made it sound real easy, automatic. In reality, the process involves what can only be described as "paradigm shifts". It's less like the stream of incrementally building knowledge I once thought it was, and more like, I don't know, getting hit by a truck? Multiple trucks? But, good trucks, helpful trucks! 

The things we saw and wanted as children are as ripples on the surface, caused by some deeper system of undercurrents below. Once we grow up and see the undercurrents, we laugh at the past. Somehow, that past seems so trivial! We were so dumb, we say. And in our arrogance we are caught off guard when it happens again and again, when we are swept deeper and deeper still. 

It feels so great, doesn't it, expanding your mind, changing out the cabinets. Understand the true nature of pie! Answer that Zen koan! Even Plato was all about it, except he thought there was an end to it. Just look into the Sun, he said. But that's the thing, there doesn't quite seem to be an end, does it? No Sun, no Forms. And plus, isn't it somehow dissatisfying, that so many of those things we've been dying to try, accomplish, get... are only easy, trivial, and gettable when we're past the point of caring about them at all? Isn't it maddening, that most things you really want, you only get when you stop wanting them as much? And even when you do get them, you and that "more mature brain" of yours will just find something else to want! 

So... is ignorance truly bliss? Should we just stay children, so our wants stay simple and attainable? Maybe we are doomed to either never be satisfied, or to never grow at all. Is this some cruel trick of the mind? Of the universe? If so, I need to understand! 

Perhaps that's because of the complexity of the things we want today. The things that seem valuable to us are exactly that -- they seem valuable because they are fragments of things we can't quite understand and attain, and therefore appear valuable. So they are only valuable in our shallower frame of mind. 

It's not that we want only things which are inherently elusive. It's just that once we understand something, we no longer want that thing anymore, because typically once we have reached some higher understanding, the world complexifies, and there are other things that will provide us greater fulfillment. The previous things just appear to be "simple pleasures", literally.

Once we calm down a little, we might get a little meta and understand that we're posing the wrong questions and that we need to deepen our understanding. So the following is a discussion of two parts: decoupling want from knowing, and decoupling want from happiness. 

Wanting is independent of knowing (in some sense). Want, if the neuroscientific framework is to be believed, is driven by dopamine. Hits of dopamine encourage us to eat food, drink water, have sex. But the modern world is complex, and so are our wants. This happens because our immediate, biological needs are mentally tied (rationally or not) to the more abstract needs, like love, approval, wealth. Understanding this, it's easy to see that "want" is highly dependent on the experiences of the individual and not simply a function of how deep their understanding of life is. 

Put another way, "want" is just an "orientation" of sorts on top of one's understanding of the world. Understanding by itself doesn't really cause you to want or not want anything. If the way you understand the world is like some complex map of rooms, your wants are just arrows drawn on top of that map, leading to... "somewhere". However, when our maps complexify to include more pathways and rooms, our brains can re-evaluate, re-draw those arrows to perhaps find better ways to get to this... "somewhere".

For instance, imagine that Bob wants love, and through some life experiences has come to think of approval as the way to get love. Suppose then through some other big life experience, he comes to realize that approval does not imply love, and that there are healthier ways to get love, like, I don't know, loving himself. Without even resorting to neuroscience (though it's been a great help) we can see that it's no longer rational for Bob's brain to keep wanting approval from others, there's really no point anymore. But take Alice, for instance. She comes from a background where acceptance from the tribe meant the difference between life and death. Do her wants change because she realizes that she can just love herself? I doubt it. 

Want-fulfillment is independent of happiness. Well actually it might not be, at least in some neuroscientific sense. Apparently while dopamine encourages you to chase wants, opiates induce that pleasant state of... well, bliss, when you finally attain that want. BUT! The point is, happiness is something deeper than just going around knocking things off your want-list. It's something much more internal, more enduring and long-term. Something something peace, something something mindfulness. I don't think I need to belabor this point, plenty of philosophers and gurus and pretty much everyone beat this topic to death.

So, conclusion. Taking all of the above in total, the quote deconstructs as follows (but not like a weird pie): 

• 1. Solving our problems = actually fulfilling wants
• 2. Outgrowing problems = accruing deeper understanding, which cause us to re-align our wants. no longer wanting the previous stuff 
• Important to note, wanting and knowing are independent, we do not simply chase that which is elusive
• Quote says: we do 2 more than 1. 
• Author understands this, and is concerned: But wait, does that mean happiness eludes us forever? Is this some sick joke? 
• Author is no longer concerned (?): No, the assumption is that happiness comes from getting  what we want. But... happiness is independent of reaching goals, remember? (Or, it should be. It can be? I hope it is.)

Appendix

I failed to mention within the article, but I meant to talk a little about the nature of outgrowing perspectives particularly in mathematics but science in general. The titular quote should apply to not only brains but any theory or corpus of knowledge. Albert Einstein (supposedly) had a similar quote: "We can’t solve our problems from the level of thinking which created them." 
For example, in the behavioral sciences we have models which delineate between visual/auditory/kinesthetic learners, or categorize of mental illness, or even label personalities. I wonder what kind of impact advances in brain sciences will have on such models -- perhaps it will explain away and dissolve the categories as different activation patterns or different functions in the brain. As our understanding grows, perhaps categories will not be as useful. Kind of like how modern chemistry and atom theory makes splitting things up into Aristotelian elements a bit silly. Sure, you could index everything in the world by its makeup of "fire", "earth", "air", and "water", but... why? We already know it's just atoms.  

I honestly had some other stuff but I forgot.

Further examples (will add as they come to mind)

References

The Neuroscience of Wanting and Pleasure | Psychology Today

We Don't Solve Our Problems, We Outgrow Them | HuffPost Life

Notes

Mathematics and projection-- 3d rotating cube casting shadow onto Flatlanders who see some weird shit, but like us 3d-landers know it's just a cube, really

Nobody looked any finer
Or was more of a hit at the Parkway Diner
We never knew we could want more than that out of life

wealth, happiness, and the pursuit of want

Is it surprising that there are so many who are rich yet miserable? Or not so surprising, once you realize why some people are rich and happy? 

For the happy rich, money doesn't seem to be the main goal but a side effect... perhaps of some passion or goal that drives them and creates value. What they aim for is not wealth, but self-actualization -- some deeper "thing" from which wealth comes via the creation of value (of course it is not always true -- there are plenty of starving artists).

The miserable rich, on the other hand, pursue optics, excelling in projects and working long hours to please their C-level executives or the board. They pursue acclaim and admiration to get that next pay raise or promotion. They pursue the immediate and profitable, heading companies that appear to create value, yet in fact exploit people and the environment, destroying value. I wonder: of what value are their "goods", if produced by those who do not understand what good is? 

How generalizable is this conclusion? Is it only sociopaths who can find fulfillment in money not well-earned? How much wealthy misery can we attribute to the latter category? 

The key to understanding the relationships between these variables lies in, I think, understanding where want comes from, and divorcing that idea of want and happiness. Fulfilling a want does not necessarily make you happy! Refer to: "we don't solve our problems, we outgrow them"