Confessions of a researchaholic

November 23, 2010

Unpretentiousness

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 1:27 pm
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A few nights ago I went to a local Polish restaurant for dinner.

I booked it online only half an hour before the reservation time. (It was a cold raining night and I was looking for something warm and potentially exotic, and it is not uncommon for me to make snap decisions.) Upon arrival, the hostess, after flipping through a stack of fax papers, told me that she could not find my reservation. So they sit me in the high stool bar area. Obviously it is a newly opened restaurant; they do not have a computer reservation system (and thus receiving online bookings through a fax machine which obviously can drop your reservations especially those made on short notice) or even a cash register (they used pocket calculators and locked their cash in a small iron treasure box). They are obviously under-staffed; the host and hostess are the only people serving tables, and they are so obviously overwhelmed that I can see the later’s frustration through the white eyes she gave to the former. And not surprisingly, it took about eons to get my orders taken.

And yet this turned out to be my best dining experience in recent memory. Their kitchen did not seem to be understaffed as they churned out food pretty efficiently. Nor are they under-skilled; in fact, the dishes are very delicious, and surprisingly similar to the Taiwanese food in a good way. But the best part is the overall ambiance. Many of the guests are Polish (or at least Eastern European); this is not only a testament to the authenticity of the food but also gives the restaurant a local cozy family style warm and yet a bit foreign and exotic feeling. Furthermore, since I sit in the bar area, I can clearly see the inner workings of the hosts: how they cut the bread, calculate bills (using pocket calculators), pack to-go boxes, unlock/lock their treasure chest, pour wines, and show exasperations.

I did not fully realize why I like that Polish restaurant so much until another dining experience in a French restaurant. It is also a good restaurant with excellent ambiance and Ok food, but somehow the staff, by speaking in fake French accent, turned me off. After some analysis, I realized the key reason is pretentiousness. I am not sure if it is just me, but there is something genuinely charming about seeing people behave in their simple, direct, and natural manners. If a restaurant is understaffed, I would love to see them overwhelmed and exchange white eyes. And if you are obviously not French, I would find it very unnatural to hear a fake French accent.

Upon further analysis, it dawned on me that it also has a lot to do with the fact that I like to read people. I have a pretty good intuition on what people are thinking and feeling, and what kinds of personalities they have. And years of experience taught me that how trust-worthy people are and how well I can get along with them is positively correlated to how well I can read them. In particular, if someone tries to resist my reading, it is usually a sign that he or she is trying to hide something. And that is usually not a good sign according to my empirical evidence.

P.S. Here is the info for that Polish restaurant. If you are around the Bay Area, I highly recommend giving it a try. Just do not make reservation on a short notice unless you happen to also like sitting in the high stool bar area.


Bona Polish Restaurant
651-H Maloney Street, Menlo Park, CA 94025

September 13, 2010

Talent is overrated

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 3:00 pm
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by Geoff Colvin

This book is really about “practice is underrated”, but I guess the editors need a more catching title for sales. The main point of the book is that effective practice is more important than other factors including specialty talent and general intelligence, and can overcome obstacles such as aging. The book even argues that creativity, commonly considered as a serendipitous process, is actually the result of significantly cumulative knowledge.

And it is not just about any practice, and aimless hard-working and experience will not help. Effective practice must be deliberate and satisfies the following properties: (1) it must be designed to improve specific performance, (2) it must be highly repeatable, (3) there should be continuous feedback, (4) it must be mentally demanding, and (5) it is usually not fun. I actually disagree with the last one, and fortunately the book also pointed out for certain high achievers, practice can be fun. So the last part of the book is about the most important question: why some people are motivated to go through all these hard practice to achieve excellence while others cannot. The most convincing explanation is that some initial small differences get amplified through a positive feedback look of practice and performance: when a kid, who gains a little bit edge on certain activity (either due to innate advantage or benign environment), can be motivated to practice a little bit harder and longer, which translates to even better performance, which motivates more practice, and the loop goes on.

I like this book as it fits my personal experience well. It has long puzzled me why some people have this innate drive to strive for the best while others do not, and this can happen among people with very similar genes and environments (e.g. siblings in the same family). The book also carries a positive message: anyone can achieve excellence if they are willing to go through the right kind of practice.

August 25, 2010

The man who loved China

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 9:13 pm
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I am not interested in biography, but I approached this book due to the Needham question: why China was taken over by the west in science and technology around 1500 AD after the amazing advances in earlier times? I was hoping that this book will provide answers, even though I never realistically expected that since this is a question about history, and thus can never be verified scientifically.

Well, I was right about that, as obviously nobody has ever managed to answer the Needham question. But that does not really bother me for several reasons.

First, I, like many others who have been through both Chinese and American style educations, know the main reasons more or less, even though none of us can rigorously prove anything. But answering a historical question is not really the point. The point is to find remedies and solutions. That, fortunately, I, just like many others, already know how to do practically, as evident from our achievements in modern scientific and technological activities.

Second, as pointed out in the book, the Needham question might be moot anyway, as China seems to have regained its rigor and creativity. But I cannot fully agree with this point; I agree that China has been improving, but it still has work to do to catch up with the American level creativity. Even from the young Chinese students I am collaborating today I can still see a lot of old problems that probably have been accumulated through hundreds if not thousands years of bad cultural impacts. But this is obviously fixable at least in an individual level; the million dollar question is whether it is also possible in a large national or even ethnic wise scale.

The funny thing is that the Needham question was not formally addressed until at the epilogue of the book. So the book is really testing my patience. Fortunately, the main part of the book, essentially the biography of Joseph Needham, turns out to be a fascinating read.

I recommend this book to anyone, especially (ethnic) Chinese working in the field of science and technology.

August 7, 2010

Life as loan

Filed under: Imaginary — liyiwei @ 10:56 am
Tags: , ,

Recently I read about an interesting point, in the context of usury and debt interest payments under the Catholic and Sharia laws, that life is a loan from God and thus (just like all loans) will have to be repaid one day.

I am not religious but I have found this an interesting mental exercise: if life is indeed a loan and one day we have to pay it back (to God) with principle plus interests, what the latter would be? In other words, what kinds of values do we have to add to our lives (for the sake of interest payments)? For simplicity, let us assume life is like a zero-coupon bond and everything is paid back in the end (of the life).

June 10, 2010

About work and motivation

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 3:55 pm
Tags: , ,

Axiom: I only work for myself.

Theorem 1: If I ever want to work for a company, I try to find one that happens to want me to do what I want to work for myself. Thus, I get paid for working for myself, and no manager ever needs to bother to monitor or push me. Everybody is happy.

Theorem 2: I only collaborate with people who want to work on things that I want to work on. Thus, I never have to push or monitor them. A good example is a bunch of students who also want to do SIGGRAPH and who would work with me for free and who also would work their ass off (to the point that I have to mandate a curfew that everybody go home and sleep no later than 2 AM everyday).

Theorem 3: If an unfortunate temporary situation arises that the company wants me to work on something that I am not interested in, then I try to package my stuff so that I can continue to work on what I want but also make it appear to be something the company wants. However if the situation persists, go to Theorem 1.

June 6, 2010

Take your time

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 12:20 pm
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When I was younger I always thought if I am smart enough I ought to be able to learn everything faster than normal (e.g. trying to pick up calculus at fifth grade but did not succeed until ninth). But as I grew older I gradually discovered that there are things that simply cannot and should not be accelerated. The universe moves at its own grace, and sometimes it is best to decipher its mystery simply by playing along.

Smart people can go faster, but intelligent people know when to take their time.

June 4, 2010

Being myself

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 10:57 am
Tags: ,

If you were an unusual and eccentric kid growing up in a culture that encourages harmony and conformity, you might have been taught, either implicitly or explicitly through the family and school education, that you should hide your peculiarities and try to appear as a normal person.

Please do not heed such advices. Always try to be yourself as much as possible, up to your personal threshold of withstanding societal pressures that try to “hammer down every nail that sticks up” (a Japanese proverb).

In retrospect, this is a major source of unhappiness in my early life. And I did not fully realize it until very recently. I guess one has to grow to be extremely confident to be able to identify this issue and choose to disobey such social norms. (It also helps that I have been living under a more individualist culture later on.) Without being fully myself, I simply cannot wield my full power. I remember I did not get the job for one of the first interviews upon graduation. I was trying very hard to behave like a normal job candidate. Later on, that very same hiring manager saw a more true-to-myself performance in a conference, and told me that he would have hired me if I had performed that way.

So from now on I will be true to myself and do what I am destined to do. Get in my way at your own peril. Life is too short otherwise.

February 21, 2010

Systemizing (SQ) and Empathizing (EQ) Quotient Test

Filed under: Real — liyiwei @ 4:55 pm
Tags: ,

While reading this paper in CHI 2009, I noticed the following interesting paragraph:

“In the EMB (Extreme Male Brain) model, highly gifted scientists and engineers with AS are found to have strong systemizing behavior but at considerable expense to empathizing. They are recognized as having abnormal social and communicative development as well as a very narrow set of interests, among other traits.”

This got me interested because the “symptoms” kinda fit me, but on the other hand I know I am pretty good at reading people (i.e. knowing on an intuitive/subconscious level on what people are really thinking or feeling) even though I seldom feel compassionate about them.

To figure out what’s really about, I tried the following test:

Your Systemizing (SQ) and Empathizing (EQ) Quotient Test Results

February 21, 2010

Click here to share your EQ SQ scores on your blog.

Respondent Average EQ Average SQ Brain Type
Males 39.0 61.2 Systemizing
Females 48.0 51.7 Empathizing
Your Score 40 79 Extreme Systemizing

What does your score mean?

Generally, the higher the score the greater your natural ability for that trait. However, the EQ test has 40 questions compared to 75 in the SQ test. As a result, although the unprocessed quotients may be used for comparing each trait ability between individuals, the absolute scores do not tell an individual if he or she has a greater tendency to empathize or systemize. A calculation taking into account the quantity of questions in each test is used to determine a person’s brain type along the following continuum:

  • Extreme Empathizing (Extreme E)
  • Empathizing (E)
  • Balanced (B)
  • Systemizing (S)
  • Extreme Systemizing (Extreme S)
Brain Types of Experimental Control Groups
Respondent Extreme E E Balanced S Extreme S
Males 0% 17% 31% 46% 6%
Females 7% 47% 32% 14% 0%

The important factor to consider is not your absolute score, but the difference between the two. This indicates whether you have more natural ability as an Empathizer or a Systemizer. If your scores are about the same for your EQ and SQ, then you have well balanced empathizing-systemizing capabilities.

October 24, 2009

Schrödinger’s cat

Filed under: Imaginary,Real — liyiwei @ 4:06 pm
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When I was a kid I have been deeply fascinated by theoretical physics (to the point that I was propelled to pick up college level calculus and physics around age 15), and a recent article in Economist reminded me of one of the questions I had in my mind a long time ago.

Here it is. If someone opens the box containing Schordinger’s cat without my knowledge, what will the cat’s existence to me? Is it still a quantum superposition (i.e. the cat is dead and alive simultaneously), or it will collapse into a definite probabilistic state (i.e. the cat is either dead or alive with a certain probability, but not both)?

I never ended up pursuing theoretical physics because I opted for a more practical major in college that would allow me to “hack” things, so I still do not know the answer to that old question. But now I think for all practical reasons, the cat (or any macroscopic object) is very unlikely to be in a true quantum superposition for a very simple reason: it is simply too macroscopic to be devoid of quantum disturbances that act as probes to collapse the quantum states. Thus, for all practical purposes, the intriguing situation is unlikely to exist; the cat is either dead or alive, but not both.

Growing old does not necessarily make one wiser, but likely more pragmatic.

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